Music critic in being critical of music shocker

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Next best thing? "Botherd" says McCormick

Most of this article made me go 'oh, what a load of t0ss', but there's a point lurking about in there somewhere: does an artist need more than one great album in order to become AMAZING? Does an artist even need more than one great song? Does a string of consistently 'very good' albums count for anything if there are no dazzling peaks?

Comments

Rock and roll is no longer in the business of living fast and dying young

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

There was an article in the New York Times last week about Natalie Merchant, if anyone remembers her and 10,000 Maniacs. She's got no record deal at all, and focuses much more on performing. Ten years ago one would have scoffed at her the way I currently scoff at tours by Nazareth and Smokie in the former Soviet Union - "artistic career over, no longer popular, playing on nostalgia, etc." But with all this talk about changing business models for the industry, artists making money from performance not record sales, etc. its difficult to be so disdainful. I mean, is Natalie Merchant any more artistically bankrupt than Bob Dylan or REM?

I think the answer is "no" BUT the key is that both of those artists built up a portfolio of GRATEness. "Don't You Want Me" is AMAZING but I wouldn't honestly tell you I thought the Human League were AMAZING. Men At Work had two #1 singles from their first album; would anyone call them AMAZING? No. So I think there needs to be a body of work; I also think that being able to peak interest more than once (so there's a time factor, too) is part of what convinces people about an artist.

Re: Rock and roll is no longer in the business of living fast and dying young

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Oh yes. However there is a flip side of the longevity coin: U2 have managed to release an ENORMOUS amount of sh1te compared to their awesome singles. Thanks to Bonio's annoyingness this isn't even a factor in considering whether U2 are amazing or not!

Re: Rock and roll is no longer in the business of living fast and dying young

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

hmm - YMMV: with a very very few exceptions I ignore all U2 after Zooropa (similarly all REM after Automatic for the People). It kind of forces you to put the band into historical perspective, i.e. "U2 was an AMAZING band" as if they'd broken up 15 years ago