Stereogum & Pitchfork 2018 charts: ridicolous - Music

Fischman
RockMonster, JazzMeister, Bluesboy,ClassicalMaster

Gender: Male
Location: Land of Enchantment

Skinny wrote:

Fischman wrote:

Yep.
A harsh term that may unfairly paint some folks with a same brush as others who actually deserve it.

I admit it.

It was a strong term to make a point... that popularity and artistic merit are not necessarily the same thing.

Meanwhile, you're false accusation was directed at a single person when there is ample evidence to the contrary, and contributed to making no point at all except your need to label someone because you don't like his POV.

You keep saying it's a false accusation as though you aren't an evident elitist with a proven predilection for prog.

You keep calling me a prog elitist when you know I love many types of music and my love for prog doesn't prevent me from enjoying the likes of basic rock, new age, adult contemporary, funk, and many others, including some pop.

So the prog elitist label is clearly false.

Fischman
RockMonster, JazzMeister, Bluesboy,ClassicalMaster

Gender: Male
Location: Land of Enchantment

RockyRaccoon wrote:

Fischman wrote:

Even closer to pure art, one need not be William Faulkner to know that Victor Hugo wrote greater literature than Tom Clancy... even though the latter has sold a lot more books.

I mean, in your opinion, sure. I know plenty of people who would prefer Clancy to Faulkner. Shit, my wife read Faulkner and hated it, and I can promise you she'd tell you she prefers Nicholas Sparks to Faulkner.

But I assume all those people are part of the mindless masses and their opinions don't matter.

Hell, I prefer Clancy to Faulkner. But I at least have the intellectual honesty to not claim that Clancy is somehow "better" in any objective sense or even good. It does hit a certain spot that lots of of people enjoy and that's fine. It's just not justification for calling it great literature.

Fischman
RockMonster, JazzMeister, Bluesboy,ClassicalMaster

Gender: Male
Location: Land of Enchantment

craola wrote:

Figure skating, rhythmic gymnastics and women's artistic gymnastics all suffer from the "let's judge artistic" business though. It opens up the door too wide for cheating, and as someone working in the gymnastics industry, I can tell you there has been a lot of cheating over the years. I admit that I've read through the code for figure skating, and it's generally stronger than the aforementioned gymnastics disciplines, but I don't think you can justify judging a sport artistically. You can make the sport more artistic through demanding certain form requirements, element/skill requirements, groups, etc., but as soon as you cross the threshold into "eye of the beholder", you're short-selling the athletes. On that note, Rhythmic Gymnastics is getting a major overhaul right now because the IOC and the FIG essentially told them their sport is B.S., since the artistic component makes it more Cirque Du Soleil than Olympic sport. There were a couple dozen specific changes the FIG imposed on the Rhythmic Technical Committee (only half of which were followed through on so far), so it's slowly improving. But I've watched and judged the exercises. The results would be much different if you were only looking at the difficulty and execution scores. There are a couple of gymnasts in particular who are clearly, blatantly inferior to other girls on the floor, but when an eastern European gymnast who is scarcely an orchid of a woman walks out onto the floor, she gets a perfect artistic score simply for existing. This is a major problem.

As I stated previously, you don't have to be Usain Bolt to look good in running shoes. I'm pretty sure the folks modeling in all those shoe adverts spend less time in the gym than Tom Brady and Serena Williams. Art isn't about technical prowess and athleticism. It can have that element. It can rely solely on that if it wants to, but music is not sport. How boring that would be...

Ah, I love Victor Hugo, but once again, it all depends on how "greater" is defined. There's no concensus on what "greatness" in art is. And as Rocky pointed out, plenty of folks would disagree with your assertion here. I haven't read any Tom Clancy to weigh in one way or another, but I know a handful of people who are turned off by Victor Hugo or simply wouldn't dare to invest themselves in something as lengthy as Les Miserables.

Look, I get it. I grew up an athlete competing at a high level against guys who would go on to compete in the Olympics, coached by guys with Olympic gold medals and World Championship titles. I came from a competitive world. I too find myself wanting to elevate the more athletic artists. The ones who push themselves to be "better", more technically sound, faster, stronger - what have you. But in the end, you have to separate art and sport. You can appreciate both for what they are. I don't think I'll be listening to much Brandi Carlyle for years to come, but I don't see the need to undersell what she's accomplished. Any degree of success in this industry is tough, and I would argue that connecting with people on any level is a success, indeed even qualifies it as quality music.

But even art has principles and application of said principles. To make the example even more extreme, nobody would say that "See Spot Run" has as much artistic merit as any of the classics. Nobody. So clearly, there is some stratification, even in art, which is admittedly mostly subjective.

Just look at the name of the site we're all discussing on here: "Best Ever Albums." The mere existence of this site implies some things are better than others. Of course, we'll not always agree on criteria, or even if we do agree on criteria, we'll still disagree on who actually exemplifies the criteria best. That's what makes sites like this go.

Fischman
RockMonster, JazzMeister, Bluesboy,ClassicalMaster

Gender: Male
Location: Land of Enchantment

Skinny wrote:

One can be a prog fan without being a prog snob. Fischman can't manage it, though.

Again, you are the most deliberately ignorant troll on the site. My lists are populated with all sorts of non prog. In some years I have very little, if any prog at all.

Yeah, I like to rag on a couple forms once in a while, especially country. But the #1 album on my 2011 list is country. So I can, and do, overcome my predilections when I see/hear/feel something moving to me. There is no snobbery preventing me from enjoying, or praising, anything that I think worthwhile, no matter how devoid of proggish complexity it may be.

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but you put prog as the best music. it makes sense to associate your snobbery with your enthusiasm for prog, especially when it's such a common phenomenon. though of course there are the non snob prog fans as well, you guys are cool.

craola
crayon master

Location: pdx

Fischman wrote:

But even art has principles and application of said principles. To make the example even more extreme, nobody would say that "See Spot Run" has as much artistic merit as any of the classics. Nobody. So clearly, there is some stratification, even in art, which is admittedly mostly subjective.

Only if you're making them evaluate things on your terms, which defeats the purpose. I skimmed amazon and imdb ratings, and there were plenty of folks rating See Spot Run a 5-star film while giving "classics" 3s and 4s.

No, no, no, my man. Art is ENTIRELY subjective. There are some nurture involved, sure, that may impact certain demographics, but that doesn't detract from the subjectiveness of it all.

In traditional Kayan culture, unnaturally long necks are seen as attractive, so women stretch their necks to make them longer, causing permanent damage. Are long necks objectively more attractive? I've never thought so. In ancient Chinese culture, women wrapped their feet to try to make them small and sexy. My grandmother-in-law's feet were mutilated to meet this "objective" image of beauty that was prevalent at the time. Americans seem to think the big bosom is what it's all about. Whatever it is you see as objective is a facade. It's nurture.

If qualities of greatness in music was objective, it would all start to sound the same after a while, wouldn't it? If X+Y+Z=perfect, everyone would do that, but it's really not.

And then there's all these weird, nonsensical opinions that float around my head. Like, I think "rock-a-bye baby" is a GREAT song - a classic. I friggin hate "twinkle twinkle little star". No reason for it so far as I can tell....

But back to my own stretch of examples, I like to close my eyes and imagine how sexy a long-necked, heavy-chested woman with tiny feet would look. She wouldn't be able to stand up, head and breasts reaching for the ground with feet totally unable to support her. It does nothing for me. Something as basic as human attraction isn't even remotely universal in part because our culture indoctrinates us into thinking one thing is better than another.
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RockyRaccoon
Is it solipsistic in here or is it just me?

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Fischman wrote:

RockyRaccoon wrote:

Fischman wrote:

Even closer to pure art, one need not be William Faulkner to know that Victor Hugo wrote greater literature than Tom Clancy... even though the latter has sold a lot more books.

I mean, in your opinion, sure. I know plenty of people who would prefer Clancy to Faulkner. Shit, my wife read Faulkner and hated it, and I can promise you she'd tell you she prefers Nicholas Sparks to Faulkner.

But I assume all those people are part of the mindless masses and their opinions don't matter.

Hell, I prefer Clancy to Faulkner. But I at least have the intellectual honesty to not claim that Clancy is somehow "better" in any objective sense or even good. It does hit a certain spot that lots of of people enjoy and that's fine. It's just not justification for calling it great literature.

You’re talking as if there is some objective way to measure the quality of art.
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elo269megv
Punk Rock Detective

Gender: Male
Location: Michigan

Fischman wrote:

Appealing to the mindless masses is "doing something right" if that something is making a quick buck. If something right means making quality music, well that's something else.

Look, to avoid unnecessary offense, please understand that people like what they like and that's perfectly okay. My point with the admittedly harsh statements above is just to point out that popularity does not necessarily equate to goodness. If you dig something, that's great. Dig it and stand by it with pride and authority. That carries more weight than trying to dredge up cliche justifications that are really no justification at all.

Not sure how this thread became targeted at Fischman, or where this came off as snobby...Made for an interesting read of back and forth banter, so thank you for that. But can we agree a majority of these major publications' year end charts are horrendous? Surely users from this site could compose better comprehensive lists, but then again, that'd be subjective too
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talking about music that does not appeal to you as being for the mindless mobs is textbook music snobbery. and hey there can be some value to that, there's an interview on the best show where tom scharpling talks to james murphy about how record store jerks saved their life, it's a really great listen. but in this case, describing interests people here may have as mindless can end up being considered hostile.

RoundTheBend
I miss the comfort in being sad

Location: Ground Control

RockyRaccoon wrote:

Except those are measurable skills? The sports to music analogy is not a good one. There are statistical ways to determine that Ryan Tannehill is worse than Tom Brady, there's not really a comparable way of measuring whether an album is "good"

Except for sales baby!

I mean, uh... hehe

Just kidding... I'll see myself out.