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

[martinv.livejournal.com]

That is an article full of crap, but I do agree with his point about artists taking the next step.

Personally, to care much about an artist I do think they have to have released more than one great song. That doesn't stop me loving an individual song at all. But I would never say 'I love X artist' just because I've heard one single and enjoyed it. I'd rarely even do it after a debut album. I usually make my decisions about whether I'm bothered about a band after hearing two albums/ two sets of singles from two albums if I'm less involved. I don't really know whether this is important or interesting.

That article made me think that I've never seen so much blind critical consensus on 'who's going to be big this year' than in 2008.

Joe Lean and the blah blah blah
The Ting Tings
Duffy
Adele
and if the author is a bit more indie inclined
Vampire Weekend

Every. Single. Article.
Yawn.

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.

[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.