Music critics confess to disliking musicians/bands they feel they should like.
Also, the beatles quote on the Led Zeppelin page is perfect.
Comments
Boomkark? Hahahahahahaha, fuck please can we keep it like that?
And can we start a band by that name too?
Hahahahahaha, that is so funny to me!!!
“At this point, there’s nothing novel about the Beatles – even if you’ve never heard them before.”
This is basically my opinion, too. They kinda bore me, which I attribute to oversaturation. Sure, some songs are good, but if I don’t want to hear the Beatles specifically, I sure as hell can’t sit through listening to them.
WOW BOOMKARK.
Holy shit. I love that word. I’m very tempted to keep it…
I can understand criticisms of Radiohead, especially as they creep into the more abstract and structureless. But I love them, they unerringly strike me right in the boomkark.
I should hate The Beatles. My mother was a hard-core fan that obsessed over them as a teenager and lovingly assembled scrap-books devoted to her intense fan-ness… by all rights, she should have overexposed me to them. But somehow I managed to avoid most of their output until I was much older. And plenty of titles that I got around to and went “Oh, that was the Beatles? Cool!”
I don’t get Randy Newman at all.
Nor Bruce Springsteen.
See those are all fairly lame because they’re all very general and “Well, I don’t like them as much as I should.” and give nothing but vague, non-specific reasons with too many apologies. Man, up.
I’ll say I hate the Beatles and I know exactly why: Because every thing about that band that people coat themselves in rhetorical jizz while flapping their gums about them, other people did better previously or at the same time. But because the Beatles were an attractive bunch of marketable young white kids they get the credit. They weren’t good at being a “rock band”. Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, The Rolling Stones or any other number of bands were all predecesors or peers who were more dangerous, louder, more rebellious, etc. So as a rock band: FAIL.
Their pop melodies were and are pedestrian and cloying, on par with the worst nursery rhymes from a Barney episode. You could swing a dead cat at a Motown or Brill building catalog and hit literally hundreds of better writers of catchy pop melodies. As a pop band: FAIL.
Their lyrics were no match for pretty much any folk artist and again were little more than half-witted, brain dead nursery rhymes at their worst, and Hallmark card slogan pablum at their absolute top dollar best. As lyricists: FAIL.
And let’s not even embarrass them as practioners of their respective instruments because as guitarists, bassists, drummers, and singers: MASSIVE FUCKING FAIL.
Oh, and please Beatles fans, tell me for the 8 millionth time about all the studio trickery they did first because that really bolsters the case for them not being a pre-fabricated, well marketed band who rode big record studio machinations to a literal and figurative gold mine. No, they didn’t invent multi track recording Les Paul did. But because be wasn’t going to make pre-teens swoon….sorry Les, suck it the fuck up and listen to a bunch of swooning teenaged girls talk about how innovative the Beatles were.
See? That’s how it should be done.
they unerringly strike me right in the boomkark.
AHHAHAHAHAHHA
I agree with the Tom Waits guy. And to a lesser extent, the Sonic Youth one.
Re: Kevin,
You were wrong about:
- Their singing ability. Their voices were so fucking perfect, there still are very few that can reach their heights. CSNY, Alice in Chains, maybe.
- Their melodies. What songs are you referring to? I can’t help but feel you’re ignoring large swaths of their catalog because every time you talk about them, it only seems to apply to their pre-Sgt. Pepper stuff.
And you completely missed:
- Their masterful marriage of classical music with pop. As someone who was raised on classical music and whose first record was The Nutcracker, there is nothing out there that reaches the musical heights they do. Whether it’s your lack of formal training in or your reactionary inclination to more refined music, you’re really missing the boat here. Talk all you want about them ripping off young blues musicians or rock bands, there never was and never will be another Elanor Rigby, All You Need is Love, or A Day in the Life.
- The culmination of the century up to that point. That’s what they are to me. A giant review of the beauty and wonder that is 20th century music. Does it have the nuance of all the individual artists? No. But it shouldn’t and doesn’t need to.
And so, in closing, The Beatles are awesome and you are stupid and you don’t know anything about anything.
Yeah, some of those selection are pretty dubious. I mean Tom Waits, Sonic Youth, and the Grateful Dead are pretty specific niche artists who while I love all 3, are not necessarily designed to be universally loved and acclaimed and are only going to appeal to a small subset of listeners (at least compared to the rest of the artists on that list).
I also like Springsteen but used to hate him so I can obviously empathize there.
Also, Joni Mitchell? Is she really that universally loved and acclaimed? Or did I miss something?
And what is Conor Oberst doing on this list?
Oh yes, the harmonies. It is pretty much just CSNY, the Beatles or maybe any doo wop or motown group that every set note to record or the Righteous Brothers, Everly Brothers, Mamas and the Papas and on and on and on.
As for the lyrics, for the Hallmark stuff see pretty much Let It Be, Long and Winding Road, In My Life, any of that similarly maudlin dreck. For the nursery rhyme stuff yeah Sgt. Pepper is the pinnacle but also I Wanna Hold Your Hand, Love Me Do, Life Goes On, Yellow Submarine, etc. Crap, all of it.
As for the rest of it, with all the “culmination” stuff, you pretty much agree with and make my point. All they did was combine what came before, but a happy and marketable face on it, and rode it like a gravy train.
So in closing, I am right, The Beatles suck and you are a teenage girl.
K-Mart said:And what is Conor Oberst doing on this list?
Yeah, that was another what the fuck inclusion.
Kevin said:As for the lyrics, for the Hallmark stuff see pretty much Let It Be, Long and Winding Road, In My Life, any of that similarly maudlin dreck. For the nursery rhyme stuff yeah Sgt. Pepper is the pinnacle but also I Wanna Hold Your Hand, Love Me Do, Life Goes On, Yellow Submarine, etc. Crap, all of it.
Isn’t this kind of like submitting SpaghettiOs as evidence that Italian food sucks?
K-Mart said:
Isn’t this kind of like submitting SpaghettiOs as evidence that Italian food sucks?
I could have gone on, but limited it to a select cross section of shitty lyrics.
John said:Blah blah blah. Me am a idiot.
I totally agree.
sammy’s got the use of blockquoting pretty much down to an art.