- Yes, artists should definitely get credit for trying ambitious stuff. This is not necessarily the same as automatic praise, though; as I'm sure we all know, ambition can often fall flat on its face, and arguably knowing your strengths and using them appropriately makes someone a greater artist. - A lot of the time, though, an album which is sold as "ambitious" is nothing of the sort (it's usually "slightly weird" or "lazy"), but critics have a tendency to fall for this sort of talk if it comes from the right sort of act. Kid A is an obvious example. - Really genuinely ambitious records which succeed at what they try to do are PRETTY RARE. Kate Bush's Aerial and Erykah Badu's New Amerykah spring to mind - albums whose scope is so immense and so unlike anything else that you're overwhelmed by them. Kanye West's new album will be an interesting case in point too - for a rapper at the height of his popularity to turn around and produce a collection of skeletal, sparse meditations on paranoia and loneliness sung entirely through Autotune is incredibly ambitious, and to see that sort of artistic chutzpah from a major commercial act is really excellent. I've reviewed it twice and that definitely influenced my praise for it - but what's most important is that he mostly pulls it off. The album sort of teeters between working and falling flat (some of the lyrics, agh), but the visceral emotional pull of the music wins out in the end I think. Though once I've had time to live with it I may feel differently!
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- A lot of the time, though, an album which is sold as "ambitious" is nothing of the sort (it's usually "slightly weird" or "lazy"), but critics have a tendency to fall for this sort of talk if it comes from the right sort of act. Kid A is an obvious example.
- Really genuinely ambitious records which succeed at what they try to do are PRETTY RARE. Kate Bush's Aerial and Erykah Badu's New Amerykah spring to mind - albums whose scope is so immense and so unlike anything else that you're overwhelmed by them. Kanye West's new album will be an interesting case in point too - for a rapper at the height of his popularity to turn around and produce a collection of skeletal, sparse meditations on paranoia and loneliness sung entirely through Autotune is incredibly ambitious, and to see that sort of artistic chutzpah from a major commercial act is really excellent. I've reviewed it twice and that definitely influenced my praise for it - but what's most important is that he mostly pulls it off. The album sort of teeters between working and falling flat (some of the lyrics, agh), but the visceral emotional pull of the music wins out in the end I think. Though once I've had time to live with it I may feel differently!