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

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

The whole argument is predicated on the unspoken assumption that listeners need to trust an artist because otherwise they will be wasting money. This obviously no longer applies for a lot of listeners, even legal downloaders because you can HEAR music or samples of it so easily for free whether you buy or not. I simply don't need to know whether an act has a track record or not - if I hear a new thing is good, I can check it out, doesn't matter who it's by. My top 10 lists this year were full of people - MIA, Groove Armada, Good Charlotte - who had previously released music I thought sucked. In the old days of "building a relationship with an artist" I simply wouldn't have listened to their new records.

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

I think the whole argument is predicated on the assumption that listeners need to trust an artist because it is more satisfying. Which it is! I like most of the tracks posted here, but I’m not going to go to these people’s shows, or spend massive amounts of time talking about them on the Internet, or even seek out other tracks by them – that’s what my obsession with Kara DioGuardi is for. And actually, no, the argument isn’t about trust, it’s about caring – listeners need to care about an artist, and it’s how often do you care about people you just met? My top 10 included plenty of people I hadn’t heard (or had heard and vehemently disliked) till this year, too, but including Leona Lewis in my top 10 tracks of 2007 =/= giving a shit about Leona Lewis in 2008. In fact, I'm probably going to spend 2008 being really excited about A Tribe Called Quest and Arthur Brown.

otherwise they will be wasting money

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

although on one hand i think you're largely right about this, the flipside of the coin is also that with everything so accessible now, it's your time and energy you have to ration. no, it doesn't take that long to find and listen to something new, but it does take a certain amount of discipline to weed through all the noise. at this point, it usually takes repeated mentions, often coming from different places, before I'm motivated to try something completely new (or who have sucky track records).

(One should also note that this article was by someone who is not just anticipating existing acts vs. new ones, but who is expecting that next classic record that Oasis still have in them, not to mention REM and U2.