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jtl
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It’s ok to love this album. It’s not a guilty pleasure.
Wow this song. It’ll have to settle for being my favourite track of next year.
Frank Ocean – Channel Orange
I’m just looking at all these lists, and there is always a few “controversial” omissions or orders, and it kind of smells like bullshit.
There is always wiggle room for the definitive order of a best songs or best albums list, but to use your website’s influence to try to re-write history under the guise that “music lists are subjective” feels wrong. “My Girls” is one of the best AnCo songs, “Heroin” is one of the best Velvets songs, and “Pablo Honey” is the worst Radiohead album. Everyone knows this. It’s not subjective.
The editors must know that this kind of stuff will cause a shitstorm, so it feels like they publish bogus lists for the page views and comments. It’s a similar mentality to that LA Weekly article a few weeks back about ‘the worst hipster bands’ or whatever.
I really like lists, by the way.
You’re sacrificing integrity for the sake of page views and comments.
Leonard Cohen is the best. Suzanne is my favourite song, by anyone, ever.
The Dead Prez/Two Weeks mash-up is just incredible.
Does California Stars count? Because it should.
A Shot in the Arm is easily a top 5 Wilco song (if not top 3). And A Ghost is Born is vastly underrated.
Well yeah
You Are Free is leaps and bounds better than Moon Pix.
This is great. but are we not going to discuss “Anything We Want”, which also came out and is on soundcloud?
Because it’s even better.
There should be no reservations here. This album is great.
Fassbender
I think you meant to post at Brooklyn Vegan.
“Miss You” sounds a whole lot like Yeasayer
I’m between this and Radiohead’s “Seperator”
This just further illustrates how Radiohead is so obviously tops. These live versions are amazing, the album is amazing. I’m hoping more people come around to it.
It’s a difficult situation for Stereogum to be in actually. On the one hand, it does seem like they are praising this guy’s music without adequately addressing how problematic his lyrics are (putting him ‘on a pedestal’). On the other hand, Tyler is news and they have to write about him. This is especially true because they are a blog and so they let people (like you) voice your opinion. It’s important for Stereogum to post about Tyler precisely so that you can talk about how offensive his lyrics are.
Still, I don’t know about other publications like Pitchfork. They’re not a blog, and their features and reviews (not necessarily their news) are definitely crowning Tyler the Creator. I think that P-fork is assuming their readership will see beyond the offensiveness or be thoughtful about how problematic it is, and so they’re don’t feel a need to address it that much. Maybe they see it as a ‘preaching to the choir’-type situation if they address it in a review or feature. But I think that’s kind of a reckless thing for P-fork to do. It should be addressed.
I agree with this. But I’m less interested in stopping the criticism towards Tyler and more interested in talking about how we’re all to blame. It’s not necessarily fair that Tyler is getting the worst of this criticism, considering there’s all kinds of other musicians/ people guilty of this language, but he’s also not innocent.
And it’s obvious why we’re singling out this one individual. He’s the talk of the town. He’s simply very good at provocation. We all want to get our two cents in.
The crappy thing about this issue is that he’s obviously very awesome otherwise. Tons of energy and confidence and skill.
I’m semi-certain that Tyler doesn’t hate gays or wish harm upon women or condone violence, but that’s not the issue. The problem is that there is a systematic marginalization of gays and women (for example). It’s a real problem that exists and hurts many people. When a rapper casually makes gay jokes or rape jokes he/she may not mean it, but they are perpetuating the harmful language. You say ‘fag’ for example, you might not mean it, you might not even mean a gay person. But ‘fag’ is still a hurtful slur towards gay people, and by joking about it you’re making it an ok word to use. It’s not ok to use.
I think “Albatross” is an amazing song. Hope the rest of the album follows its lead.
I keep refering to ‘taste’ because I’m trying to differentiate between taste and goodness. The enjoyment (or taste) of an album is subjective, the goodness of the album is not. I guess it’s not mathematical objectivity, but its objective through observation. If you look at music critics and avid listeners of indie rock (in other words, experts) it’s clear that the majority of them think this album is good. They know their shit, they think it’s good, therefore its good. It doesn’t matter if you don’t like it.
Go to metacritic.com to see my point. This album has got an 87 rating, based on a compilation of various critics ratings. Their are 3 middling reviews ( or 3 other Brandons), but for the most part its got a great score. The user rating is high too. This is an observational way of determining an objective goodness.
Actually yes. I think it’s a lot like math. My biggest point is that there is a difference between personal taste and good music. Admittedly, both The National and Arcade Fire suit my tastes, but I also think they are objectively good. This idea comes from Kant (which is really pretentious to drop here, I know). There’s no such thing as “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. There are good albums and bad ones and in between. Who decides? Learned individuals, experts, and maybe the test of time. Enough critics and listeners who know what they are talking about have already determined that this is a good album. You don’t like the Suburbs? That’s fine. It’s great actually, I believe in people discussing they’re personal tastes. But’s it’s an objectively good album. You just happen to not like it.
I know that people will hate this. But I believe it. To hammer it home: You might not enjoy Shakespeare or Picasso, but you know it’s good. Same goes.
This will be my AOTY, for sure.