[amphibian]

QuickTidal, on 14 May 2016 - 12:23 AM, said:

Disagree on all counts. Sorry.

You're not engaging much and I'm not sure why. I like MIA's music, so it's not an attacking a musician I don't like thing here. It's critically engaging with what she says and realizing that Beyonce choosing to focus her social efforts/artistic projects on American black women isn't a bad thing.

[LinearPhilosopher]

So since this has turned into a general hip hop thread, i dont suppose someone could recommend something similar to stromae.

[worry]

It's moved beyond Kanye specifically, but I don't think it's just become a non-Discussion music thread. But if you wanna talk about what you like about Stromae, maybe what sets him apart for you, that might spur discussion and get you recos on similar artists.

[LinearPhilosopher]

with stromae what i like is the layered composition but more then that i feel like his songs actually go somewhere and don't just stay stuck in one place while the vocalist is talking/singning.



Specifically his use of brass in this song and how it complements the rest of the composition is something else. (as well as the odd syncopation of the beat)

Could aslo be the fact that hes speaking french but i find he also does pathos quite well, the emotion in this song is quite palpable espcially near the end.


Even then if you listen to the music side i find that the song has a certain dynamic to it. Aside from the chorus theres always something going, something changing, be it the piano in the background, the periodic piano chords followed by slight modifications in the beat.

This post has been edited by LinearPhilosopher: 23 May 2016 - 05:10 AM

[worry]

Wow I see what you mean. Can't think of anyone that's too much like him -- I mean there's the jazz-hop of the 90s but that didn't necessarily mess with structure.

Maybe in spirit Ana Tijoux? She's Chilean so the underpinning musical touchstones are different, but she incorporates local styles into her music with (I believe) a lot of live instrumentation and musicality. She tends to move between hip hop, trip hop, and R&B and it's definitely not as jazzy as that first Stromae song.

[LinearPhilosopher]

Really like the second one you posted. Its got a certain attitude I like. Also like the colours in the videos. Even then its got a certain oomph. The song changes and moves around, heck there was even a bit of classical strings in it at some point. Gona check out some more of her material.

[Itwæs Nom]

Althought it gives me headache, it suits perfectly into this thread

I love Bo




Also, apparently you're not the only one struggling with pringle cans Maccy (1:59)

This post has been edited by Itwæs Nom: 14 June 2016 - 07:23 PM

[QuickTidal]

Kanye continues to prove he's a blight who doesn't care who he bothers, nor what they might bring at him lawsuit-wise.

See, it's shit like this that makes me go "You're trying to be edgy and artsy...and it comes off as dickish and banal, at the expense of others."

But yeah, if I were someone like TSwift, I'd take him to the mat over this. This is basically a modified version of the whole thieving of those celeb phone images that made their way onto reddit or whatever. It's just that it's been created instead of stolen...but the end result is still the same of presenting nude representations of celebrities to the public, whether they want you to or not. Which is the height of dickishness.

EDIT: Adding that this guy debuted a goddamned MUSIC VIDEO at a Los Angeles 17,500 seat venue and charged people $30 each to see it. I mean, wot?

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 28 June 2016 - 04:52 PM

[amphibian]

There's nothing truly wrong about what Kanye did there - he's being provocative (while referring to old master artworks) and also willing to ride the publicity wave AND pay up to whoever sues him.

Compare that to MIA going off on black people again on Twitter.

I get it - you don't like Kanye. However, the bad stuff he says and does are less damaging than the stuff other big artists say and do. He's also more willing to fess up and make restitution than someone like MIA.

Really wish Mathangi would stop doing this anti black people stuff too. Her music has been great and her words and attitude are puzzling reminders that even "woke" people can have huge flaws in their outlook and work.

[amphibian]

Also, this Kanye video is not analogous to the phone hacking and dissemination of celebrity nudes.

Wildly different things.

[QuickTidal]

amphibian, on 28 June 2016 - 05:31 PM, said:

Also, this Kanye video is not analogous to the phone hacking and dissemination of celebrity nudes.

Wildly different things.

Is it? I don't think they are that different at all. Put yourself in their shoes. If someone made a nude wax version of you and used it to their own ends, how does that make you feel? I would imagine as invaded or privacy as if they stole pics of that actual thing.

Kanye knows EXACTLY what he's doing...and being a dick is what he's doing. This isn't art...this is him lashing out at people he has issues with. It's as CHILDISH as pushing people down in the schoolyard. Bullying is bullying.

[amphibian]

QuickTidal, on 28 June 2016 - 05:38 PM, said:

Is it? I don't think they are that different at all. Put yourself in their shoes. If someone made a nude wax version of you and used it to their own ends, how does that make you feel? I would imagine as invaded or privacy as if they stole pics of that actual thing.

The stealing of photos I or another took - with the built-in assumption that they would remain private and/or limited to only those who I shared them with - is very different from, in both my own view and the general legal view of, someone building a wax nude model of a public figure.

The latter is artwork of a public figure in a manner of parody. The referential nature of Kanye's video is made clearer by the specific posing of the wax figures to correlate to Desiderio's Sleep artwork - and by Desiderio being aware of and thrilled by the homage/transformative use prior to public release.

I'm more concerned by Kanye's lines in the actual Famous song regarding Taylor Swift than any of the wax figures in the video.

[QuickTidal]

amphibian, on 28 June 2016 - 06:29 PM, said:

QuickTidal, on 28 June 2016 - 05:38 PM, said:

Is it? I don't think they are that different at all. Put yourself in their shoes. If someone made a nude wax version of you and used it to their own ends, how does that make you feel? I would imagine as invaded or privacy as if they stole pics of that actual thing.

The stealing of photos I or another took - with the built-in assumption that they would remain private and/or limited to only those who I shared them with - is very different from, in both my own view and the general legal view of, someone building a wax nude model of a public figure.

The latter is artwork of a public figure in a manner of parody. The referential nature of Kanye's video is made clearer by the specific posing of the wax figures to correlate to Desiderio's Sleep artwork - and by Desiderio being aware of and thrilled by the homage/transformative use prior to public release.

I'm more concerned by Kanye's lines in the actual Famous song regarding Taylor Swift than any of the wax figures in the video.

See, but I think that if it was parody in the pursuit of art, it would not be people he VERY clearly has real life issues with (most of them anyway), and would reach a broader spectrum of "celebrity" if you will. This just feels like the schoolyard bully using his own forum to slam down people. Taylor chief amongst them (as the center of a very recent controversy involving him and his lyrics...and her placement directly to the side of him should not be lost on anyone). This is him saying "I'm doing this because I can, and you can't stop me."

This type of thing can be done less directly, and less bullying and more nebulous and STILL get the point across....Take Dave Grohl, There are no less than 3 Foo Fighter songs that take pot shots at Courtney Love (whom Grohl has never hid his dislike about) ...but they never mention her directly. We all still know who he's singing about...but with her not named, it really is just a part of the art of that song. It's a communication of the emotion about the subject, without involving the person. Same goes for Alanis with "You Oughta Know". We all know who it's about (Dave Coulier), but without direct names, it's art in service to the emotion as opposed to a direct pot shot at the person by naming them chidlishly...or in this case naming them in the song AND representing them in the video in a provocative way.

But I agree his song lyrics are also quite at issue here.

[worry]

I'm not seeing much difference between this Kanye video and, say, this video:



which for one thing depicts Reagan mass-murdering people with a nuclear bomb. Hate the art all you want, just don't mess with his ability to make it.

I think we're all familiar with how intrinsic direct confrontation is to hip-hop, with diss tracks, battle raps, etc. and while I'm not super into these particular lyrics (they're pretty blah, though I've made myself clear early on in thread about how not mad I am about K interrupting T at the MTV Awards, and how I think his subsequent villainization fits a convenient narrative), I don't think expanding the tradition to non hip-hop artists/celebrity in general is a bad idea. And frankly, it's not like T Swift is a stranger to diss tracks either, even if hers are ostensibly more cryptic.

[Terez]

Back to this thread because a while back I mentioned that a lot of the musical oversimplification that I dislike in hip-hop has bled over into regular pop music, and that the pop music of the last decade or so has some particularly tedious repetitions. I actually thought about writing out the numerical representations for typical pop melodies so that you guys could easily see how repetitive they actually are, but I didn't because that would have required me to actually listen to a bunch of pop music on purpose.

Fortunately a guy named Patrick Metzger has saved me at least a little bit of the trouble by identifying and giving a name to one of the most tedious pop tropes. He calls it the Millennial Whoop. Apparently it is now also common in country music. Personally, I find the Whoop to be part of a larger phenomenon which I will call (in the interest of continuity) the Millennial Fifth, the interval in which most modern pop melodies are contained. It's a fairly small interval in which to contain a melody, which is part of why there's so much melodic repetition in pop music, including the Whoop.

This Whoop thing is going around Facebook, but everyone who posted it in my feed is a musician. (Because we have all noticed it.) The video going around Facebook misidentifies the guy who named it as Richard Metzger, though.

[polishgenius]

Hey, we already knew that every pop song ever is based around the same four chords...

[Terez]

Yeah, after I made my post, I saw an article at The Atlantic, which I now can't find even via Google and scrolling through their Facebook feed which is where I saw it. I read the comments, and there were hundreds, criticizing them for bashing millennials (yet again!) so now I'm wondering if they removed it. Anyway, that article mentioned the 4-chord thing, which I have seen before in various iterations. I tend to think these melodic repetitions are worse, though. You can do all sorts of melodic variations over 4 chords; that's part of what makes little parody medleys like that so funny, all the different melodies over those same chords. With recent pop music, though, the similarities get so persistent that it just gets boring and annoying after a little while.

In some of the Facebook comments on that Atlantic post, I saw someone argue that since the Whoop originated in the 80s (like the article said!) then obviously it's not a millennial thing. But I think they missed the point. It's not that the Whoop is original or even very distinctive musically. You can probably find it going all the way back to the Renaissance, here and there. In current music, it's not here and there. It's everywhere.

[D'rek]

Isn't it always like that though? Couldn't it be that this same Whoop motif was used exhaustively in the 'pop' music of 1630s troubadours, but that music despite being popular at the time wasn't remembered through the ages? Maybe in a couple hundred years none of this repetitive modern pop music will be remembered much either (though the internet would affect that in an unprecedented way) and the "high art" music of today that will be remembered won't have the Whoop, so people of 2250 will be talking about the Whoop being a modern-for-them thing that didn't happen in the 1980s-2020s.

[Terez]

D, on 30 August 2016 - 05:41 PM, said:

Isn't it always like that though?

No. Top 40 music has never been characterized by great originality overall, but the musical parameters are getting objectively narrower.

D, on 30 August 2016 - 05:41 PM, said:

Couldn't it be that this same Whoop motif was used exhaustively in the 'pop' music of 1630s troubadours, but that music despite being popular at the time wasn't remembered through the ages?

Sure, but after a while the documentation excuse gets thinner. Pop music has been pretty well-documented over the last 50 years especially. You could argue that the YouTube generation has allowed the truly common music to finally get a noticeable and lasting platform, but I'm not sure that argument makes any kind of mitigating point.

[D'rek]

Terez, on 30 August 2016 - 05:48 PM, said:

You could argue that the YouTube generation has allowed the truly common music to finally get a noticeable and lasting platform, but I'm not sure that argument makes any kind of mitigating point.

Yeah, not much of a mitigating factor.

The mechanism of the internet widening the audience could be a pretty big factor, though, in a variety of ways.

One such way could be that with a wider, globalized audience you need to appeal to a more diverse set of musical tastes and backgrounds in order to be the most popular, and the parameters that fit all those overlapping tastes are narrower, encouraging songs to say in that tiny overlapping space, if you know what I mean.