Controversial Music Opinions On BEA! - Music

RoundTheBend
I miss the comfort in being sad

Location: Ground Control

It's both. Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis. Hegelian Dialectic. Done.

theblueboy

RoundTheBend wrote:

It's both. Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis. Hegelian Dialectic. Done.

No Hegels. It has to be one or the other and you must choose one of these diametrically opposed options and nothing in between. Pick a lane, buddy Laughing

baystateoftheart
Neil Young as a butternut squash

Age: 29
Location: Massachusetts

Michael1981 wrote:

It's generally more meaningful and discussion worthy than someone saying "here are my personal favourite albums, please don't @ me". It's only interesting to find out about someones personal favourites if you want to find out about that person.

I find personal favorites a lot more interesting. There's a lot more convergence in what albums people find culturally important, and a lot more divergence in personal favorites. So reading through a chart based on personal favorites, I'm much more likely to find something I haven't heard that looks interesting.

Also, people can write about their personal favorites in a way that is discussion-worthy and addresses the substance of why they find the music good. It doesn't have to be autobiographical.

Your comparison is between someone who wants to have a discussion and someone who tells people not to engage with them. Meanwhile, my attitude is more "here are my personal favorite albums, please do @ me."
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Last edited by baystateoftheart on 09/15/2019 19:31; edited 1 time in total

RoundTheBend
I miss the comfort in being sad

Location: Ground Control

Michael1981 wrote:

No Hegels. It has to be one or the other and you must choose one of these diametrically opposed options and nothing in between. Pick a lane, buddy Laughing

Well it's like grass is green... well if you know anything about the science of color, is it still green, well yes, but it's also not, and both are true. That is all.

Also that's the great thing about lanes, you can be in one and then move to the other and then back... but I'll try my best to just stay in one at any given time... Laughing

theblueboy

baystateoftheart wrote:

I find personal favorites a lot more interesting. There's a lot more convergence in what albums people find culturally important, and a lot more divergence in personal favorites. So reading through a chart based on personal favorites, I'm much more likely to find something I haven't heard that looks interesting.

Also, people can write about their personal favorites in a way that is discussion-worthy and addresses the substance of why they find the music good. It doesn't have to be autobiographical.

Your comparison is between someone who wants to have a discussion and someone who tells people not to engage with them. Meanwhile, my attitude is more "here are my personal favorite albums, please do @ me."

Yeah, I agree that personal preferences serve a purpose in discussion and they can be helpful for discovering new music. I'm not really trying to dismiss personal rankings, even though they are not something I'm especially interested in at this point. I just don't think that personal preferences serves the purpose of helping us to rank/ evaluate the greatest albums of all time. For this I think we have to consider the cultural impact of albums.

theblueboy

RoundTheBend wrote:

Well it's like grass is green... well if you know anything about the science of color, is it still green, well yes, but it's also not, and both are true. That is all.

Also that's the great thing about lanes, you can be in one and then move to the other and then back... but I'll try my best to just stay in one at any given time... Laughing

Nice analogy. I like that.

I wonder what Hegels would consider the antithesis of my argument? Probably Scaruffi! Laughing

baystateoftheart
Neil Young as a butternut squash

Age: 29
Location: Massachusetts

Michael1981 wrote:

baystateoftheart wrote:

I find personal favorites a lot more interesting. There's a lot more convergence in what albums people find culturally important, and a lot more divergence in personal favorites. So reading through a chart based on personal favorites, I'm much more likely to find something I haven't heard that looks interesting.

Also, people can write about their personal favorites in a way that is discussion-worthy and addresses the substance of why they find the music good. It doesn't have to be autobiographical.

Your comparison is between someone who wants to have a discussion and someone who tells people not to engage with them. Meanwhile, my attitude is more "here are my personal favorite albums, please do @ me."

Yeah, I agree that personal preferences serve a purpose in discussion and they can be helpful for discovering new music. I'm not really trying to dismiss personal rankings, even though they are not something I'm especially interested in at this point. I just don't think that personal preferences serves the purpose of helping us to rank/ evaluate the greatest albums of all time. For this I think we have to consider the cultural impact of albums.

Evaluating importance and impact requires putting a lot of distance between one's rankings and one's evaluations of the quality of the music, which is very hard to pull off because our preferences will always create biases. There are many influential albums that aren't widely regarded as good, and they get overlooked in such discussions. Whole genres that were popular and impactful get repeatedly set aside. And so in my view what you get from these discourses are mostly feedback loops.

Also, what are we really searching for? The greatest albums? Or the best ever albums? It could be that the best ever album is fairly obscure, lost to time, and therefore without the cultural importance that would make it great. The only way for it to gain cultural importance / greatness would be through increased recognition, of which our collective rankings form a very small part. But if we all base our ranking system on sifting through what is already important, that will never happen. I wouldn't use any ranking system that would prevent me from putting what I believe is the best ever album at #1.
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theblueboy

baystateoftheart wrote:

Evaluating importance and impact requires putting a lot of distance between one's rankings and one's evaluations of the quality of the music, which is very hard to pull off because our preferences will always create biases.

Yeah, I'm sure it's challenging and bias comes into it but you can try to offset this. It's flawed- but I'd say much less so than basing rankings on personal preferences (particularly if done by just one person not a large aggregate like BEA).

Quote:

There are many influential albums that aren't widely regarded as good, and they get overlooked in such discussions. Whole genres that were popular and impactful get repeatedly set aside. And so in my view what you get from these discourses are mostly feedback loops.

I don't see this as an issue really. There is room for disagreement and you can always make a case for an album/genre you feel is overlooked. In this way, it could be used to provide greater focus on albums that represent marginalised groups (which are often underrepresented on aggregate lists of best albums- just ask the Guardian lol)

Quote:

Also, what are we really searching for? The greatest albums? Or the best ever albums? It could be that the best ever album is fairly obscure, lost to time, and therefore without the cultural importance that would make it great. The only way for it to gain cultural importance / greatness would be through increased recognition, of which our collective rankings form a very small part. But if we all base our ranking system on sifting through what is already important, that will never happen. I wouldn't use any ranking system that would prevent me from putting what I believe is the best ever album at #1.

If an album has never been popular and is not thought to have influenced other artists or impacted on wider culture, then I couldn't really make a case for it's greatness (at this time) and wouldn't mind missing it out for something else. It could still prove to be great though if it finds influence, popularity/longevity some time after it was made.

Yeah, I don't think everyone on aggregate ranking systems should base their rankings in this way. There is no real need to aggregate in this method anyway and you might lose more than you gain in terms of diversity if you decided to aggregate a bunch of lists based on cultural impact. It's more a method for one person or a small group of people in conversation.

I wouldn't want to replace aggregated lists (or deny the right for people to shout about personal favs). Actually though I think a good list based on cultural impact is likely to give a more convincing narrative of the greatest/best albums of all time than even an aggregated list-particularly with justifications given for the choices.

DommeDamian
Imperfect, sensitive Aspie with a melody addiction

Gender: Male
Age: 23
Location: where the flowers grow.

Michael1981 wrote:

Yeah, I don't think everyone on aggregate ranking systems should base their rankings in this way. There is no real need to aggregate in this method anyway and you might lose more than you gain in terms of diversity if you decided to aggregate a bunch of lists based on cultural impact. It's more a method for one person or a small group of people in conversation.

I wouldn't want to replace aggregated lists (or deny the right for people to shout about personal favs). Actually though I think a good list based on cultural impact is likely to give a more convincing narrative of the greatest/best albums of all time than even an aggregated list-particularly with justifications given for the choices.

Your point is clear, but we are maybe looking for two different things when it comes to discovering music. I've come to the point where I prefer a individual's story about how an album has impacted him/her and their case for it being a musically great album, rather than a man talking about an already known album influenced a culture without the full details. The individual thing makes me wanna listen to something out of interest - the culture thing is a feeling of necessity and I don't really like it.
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theblueboy

raadfactoryxny wrote:

Michael1981 wrote:

Yeah, I don't think everyone on aggregate ranking systems should base their rankings in this way. There is no real need to aggregate in this method anyway and you might lose more than you gain in terms of diversity if you decided to aggregate a bunch of lists based on cultural impact. It's more a method for one person or a small group of people in conversation.

I wouldn't want to replace aggregated lists (or deny the right for people to shout about personal favs). Actually though I think a good list based on cultural impact is likely to give a more convincing narrative of the greatest/best albums of all time than even an aggregated list-particularly with justifications given for the choices.

Your point is clear, but we are maybe looking for two different things when it comes to discovering music. I've come to the point where I prefer a individual's story about how an album has impacted him/her and their case for it being a musically great album, rather than a man talking about an already known album influenced a culture without the full details. The individual thing makes me wanna listen to something out of interest - the culture thing is a feeling of necessity and I don't really like it.

Yeah. Get where you are coming from. Pressure to listen to what is widely accepted pretty much sucks.

I think I just like a good story now when I'm finding out about music. An individual's personal story is interesting but I also find the cultural history of albums cool too. Maybe after listening to music for so long for me the stories start to become more interesting/ distracting than the music itself. I dunno...

Anyway, good chat guys.