The music you like is dumb

The other thread is literally pages and pages of shitty music that is shitty. Harrumph. You all are horrible-music-tastes people and I am the sole arbiter of what is good music.

Et tu, Elyscape?

This is my faviourite music, and I don't care what you think. (I actually have an LP of this album, not kidding.)

I love rock & roll, so put another dime in the jukebox, baby!

Kreayshawn is literally the worst thing that has ever happened.

You shall share my suffering. YOU SHALL ALL SHARE MY SUFFERING!

So music that isn't your cup of tea causes you two suffering? My condolences. Life must be hard with that disability.

Seriously though Mark, Kreayshawn isn't anyone's cup of tea. Even the 2 girls from 2 Girls 1 Cup would send that tea back.

How can you hate a song that contains the line "I've got the swag and it's pumping out my ovaries"?

No, sorry. As someone who loves electronic music, I really liked it. The lyrics aren't meant to convey meaning, they're there to keep the beat and to act as another instrument. Just like in electronic music.

Basically, although she's rapping, her songs have a strong electronic sensibility. The layering is interesting, and her use of beats & rhythms is really good. Just like in electronic music.

But my problem isn't that two people (now three) declare that music that I like is the worst thing ever. Rather, it's just so childish & limiting to declare objective facts about a subjective experience. Denigrating music just indicates your limitations; it has little to do with the music itself. The main exception to this is music that espouses truly repulsive values, like a lot of country music, or some heavy metal. For that stuff... denigrate away! But from what I've heart of Kreayshawn, I didn't hear anything worth objecting to.

Mark has a problem with someone using hyperbole for fun and profit, but mostly for fun, on behalf of an entity that will never feel the scorn of having been on the receiving end of said hyperbole. Also, who likely wouldn't give a shit, if the carefully cultivated public persona is anything to go by. Speaking of Mark, I am sure that he has never once, nope not never ever once no sir, done the same thing himself*.

You tilt at that windmill.

*apply this logic liberally to my posts at your leisure, I am perfectly self-aware of my own posting history.

Again, no. I'm sorry to be such a debbie downer on this, but this is incorrect as well. It's not their hyperbole. It's the denigration at all. Country music isn't the worst thing ever. It doesn't suck. It's not even bad music. It's just something I don't like. That's it. Same thing with Kreayshawn for Bill & company.

Yeah, they're just screwing around in a relatively friendly environment, and they're not trying to insult anyone or anything. I get that. I'm not furious with them or anything. Nevertheless, even considered as a joke, the "X Music is the worst ever" is a pretty tedious joke. And it's extremely common that people seem to forget that musical tastes are completely subjective, so I thought I'd mention something... especially since they decided to denigrate a music artist that, near as I can tell, is actually pretty good at her craft.

Well that kind of puts us at an impasse. I had no idea you actually liked Kreayshawn and if so, then cool. I certainly don't mean to malign you personally over it. I wish I could appreciate them the way you do. To me they sound like squirrels over a generic beat and I can't watch their videos without laughing. Just trying a little too hard, I guess, as I see it.

BEHOLD.

Would it help if you imagined the words "in my opinion, " prepended to those declarations? Because you should probably feel free to do so.

I don't know. People here don't hesitate to slag Dan Brown or Robert Jordan, for example, as hacks; same for Thomas Kinkade. One wouldn't get too many complaints for calling Duke Nukem 3D a bad game or Sex in The City 2 a bad film. Asking honestly -- what is it that makes music immune from such criticism?

Haha, I love that someone did an entire song in Pig Latin.

I think there's a very large difference between criticizing an entire genre ("rap sucks!") and criticizing a single artist ("Vanilla Ice sucks!") or song ("fuck Sleigh Ride!") The former argument is obviously too general to hold water, but the latter two are perfectly reasonable to make.

A given piece of music or a given recording really can be objectively "bad" in a number of different ways - poorly executed playing of instruments, production issues, even just being poorly constructed, etc.* - so of course it can be subjectively bad and there's nothing inherently wrong with expressing your opinion about such things. If you want to make a case in favor of the piece of music being criticized, go head on, but trying to make a meta-argument about how criticism is subjective and worthless isn't going to get you anywhere.

*This is not to say that "bad" music can't or shouldn't be enjoyed, but it is extremely difficult to make the case that, to use the hackneyed Salieri/Mozart comparison, Tarare is just as good an opera as The Magic Flute and that millions of people just happen to accidentally share the subjective opinion that the latter piece of music is better.

I'll say one more thing, and this will be my last time disrupting this thread: one thing I noticed when coming back from Europe is that in the States people use music as a badge of identity to an absurd degree,. And they tend to use that badge as an exclusionary thing: "I like heavy metal, so rap fucking sucks!" That mentality has always seemed weird & kinda sad to me.

So no, I never felt insulted by the attacks on Kreayshawn. I don't label myself as a Kreayshawn fan... hell, I'd never even heard of her before this thread. Most rap just isn't my cup of tea, and she is definitely rap, of a sort. It tends to emphasize the human voice to an extent that I don't like. Maybe that's why I dig Kreayshawn's stuff: her thin, chipmunky voice works for me. It's blended into the music & it's just another instrument. What's more, it's wonderfully balanced in the Gucci Gucci song by that distorted male voice that's looped over & over.

Well, yeah, it's the laziest joke there is. I can't think of very many professionals that can pull it off and of the ones that can they generally only do by resorting to some pretty major theatrics. When normal people use it? Lazy. It has a point, though, especially in a thread titled "The music you like is dumb," and it's what I was trying to highlight by calling out the fact that I know we've both used hyperbole before - it is a more effective tool in communicating a negative view of something than a positive view. Teenagers who coo over Ryan Reynolds, is that the stoner guy?, and call him the "bestest actor ever omg" - I don't actually know if this is a thing, I'm just guessing here - don't convey anything beyond the fact that they have little to no taste in film and have cultivated no mental library of film to form references and links to when determining relative quality.

When someone says "Journey are literally Hitler's cabinet" they're telling you a whole lot: that they aren't interested in a serious discussion, that they're just disseminating a flippant opinion in a way that is meant to be recognized as such, that they probably don't like the artist all that much but that they don't literally think they are capable of genocide, but, and this is a big but here, that they won't mind it all too much if people who are far too interested in what others think about x subject get caught up in the opinion or way it was expressed. It's mostly drunk college party antics, shouting about whatever shitty music is playing at the time, but there's a brilliantly subtle trolling aspect to it as well.

Which is why I never get when people get so caught up in negative hyperbole. Positive hyperbole? BRB I have kids to school on Youtube.

It's actually Norwegian, just pronounced and spelled weirdly.

I know, I was just making an awful furriner joke.

I never said criticism is worthless. I love criticism; it helps deepen your understanding of the subject matter when it's written well. What I said is that declaring objective facts about a a subjective experience is pointless. "Kreayshawn sucks" is bad criticism. It just declares a subjective opinion as objective truth which, frankly, is kinda worthless.

This is all because I said 80's music sucks. I TAKE IT BACK.

You got my like just for that. Fuck Sleigh Ride.

Oh, IT'S ON

Eh, I think you're splitting hairs. Either that or you are viewing "Kreayshawn sucks" as criticism when it should so clearly be viewed as a flimsily held opinion expressed flimsily.

I think John Wayne is a horrible actor. To say that "John Wayne sucks" would be bad criticism, but expressing that sentiment is not meant to be criticism, it is meant to be me expressing my opinion that he is a bad actor in as concise and dismissive a way as possible. I don't really want to discuss it, but I do want to let it be known that I think he sucks. Which is why I would hopefully be writing John Wayne sucks - this time not in quotes, because I mean it - in a non-serious discussion thread about movies that you think are dumb. Going on a ten page long dissertation about how he never actually acted, and instead only ever played a carefully cultivated John Wayne persona, would be criticism, but "John Wayne sucks" definitely is not. That dissertation would also be out of place in a joke thread, where there is no impetus for us to be Serious and Thoughtful, but not in a Random movie discussion thread, where we can be whatever we want.

John Wayne was Sean Connery before Sean Connery was Sean Connery?

What thread? Does it mean this thread isn't a complete non sequitor by Elyscape? That's kind of disappointing.

It works for me because it doesn't seem like they're trying that hard. If swag pumping out of her ovaries is supposed to be a dead serious line and not goofy and funny, yeah, it probably wouldn't work.

I'm pretty sure this thread is directed at me and my musical taste anyways, the rest of you can keep linking youtube videos to make me feel better though.

Seriously, I gave up on myself when Pandora suggested that I might like The Dandy Warhols.

What's wrong with The Dandy Warhols? All I know of them is the Veronica Mars theme song, but I kinda like it.