“Aww, you motherfuckers thought it was over! It’s not over.”

Tom, I really really really really really really like you.

i guess this was bound to happen, eventu….ugh, forget it.

Now I’ve lost total respect for you.

This is the Age of Trump. When you’re wrong, you double the fuck down.

MELT ALL WAX MUSEUMS

“The songs on E•MO•TION are about love and crushes and heartbreak”

On a POP album?? No fucking way!

That each mention of a song in the review links back to an article with text nearly as long makes me view this as your own personal Infinite Jest, Tom. It also helps that this is a great write-up.

Also, #hottake: this album is v v good.

This was the only part that bothered me, and it’s not even a real critique of her lack of pop image. That portion of the review begins critiquing her lack of personality, which I agree with and wish came through clearer. It feels like the one area in which she can really mature as a songwriter/singer.

What the review ultimately ends up positing, however, is not the need for personality but, quite literally, the need for her to become a meme or #brand. The listener cannot boil Carly Rae Jaspen down to an irreducible 800×800 px image with Impact font bolted atop it, and the Pitchfork review treats this as the album’s great sin. I’d counter that this is a misreading of what makes pop music compelling, and the existence of “meme-able” pop stars narrows the power of pop*. Really good pop–the kind of pop that makes you dream big and dance like a total goof without a care and makes your cynical heart unafraid to swell–comes from artists who operate _through_ that irreducible personality. Rather than exist as a simple meme, pop artists wear an ever-changing mask that reflects back the listeners desires. It connects with such a wide range of people because the vagueness allows it to do so and be read into. It’s also why the pop artists who refuse to let their mask (or brand or image or whatever) become static so often transcend their fifteen minutes in the spotlight and become icons rather than relics of an era. When you reduce a pop artist down to a meme, it becomes shallow emotional medicine rather than music (“Take two Swifts and call me in the morning.”). Pop music like that can still be great and have its place. It’s just also too narrow and quick-and-easy-Internet-Identifiable to suggest that’s the major route pop artists should now proceed. So while Carly Rae Jepsen might need to better define her personality as an artist, it should be a multi-faceted one that still remains elusive and not an “adjective noun” to file away until needed.

*I think the way Pitchfork reduces some of the artists in the review down is unfair to their total work, even if they mean it as a complement. But that would take more time to get into, and this ramble has already taken long enough to write.

“seriously, tom. pick any album you like. it’s totally your choice. the rest of the staff leave it in your capable hands.”

Yes

It’s kind of a little late. And the statement doesn’t say much. He offered his condolences. I don’t see how that could ever be misrepresented as anything else but. He should have given his condolences within the first couple days.

What does a 9-day-later open letter do for the families that lost a child.

The right thing to do is the right thing to do.

Muzik should be shut down. Period. No discussion on that.

As for his OVO fest, we can’t legally stop him from holding it, and the concerts themselves are fine, but it’s clear he brings on a lot of attention and hostility. And that follows him to the after-party.

As a gesture, I wouldn’t hold OVO next year. Take a year off. 2 years in a row people have been killed at his after-parties. This is madness. As a gesture, take a year off. The following year you can begin having it again, and I would suggest not having an after-party. If there is an after-party, I would say that police department of the City of Toronto should issue a warning wherever it’s held that advise you don’t attend. For that year and all subsequent years indefinitely.

I’m just a dude on the internet, but we cannot say Drake is not at least somewhat responsible for these deaths. Obviously not directly, but at some level indirectly.

I don’t know how people can still give this man “mad” respect.

I’m out.

Greenwood has long been the only interesting part of this band. Freeing himself from the stagnation of this group would be in his best interest. I feel he’s being held back by the whims of a lazy eyed mad man.

Radiohead enjoy the same phenomenon that Kanye does, in that they’re not required to actually make good music a lot of the time. Whatever they release will be considered genius regardless of quality and their coffers will be refilled. We do these artists no favours, besides monetary, by pretending everything they do is great.

Just in case you didn’t know, she has been sucking the white mans dick for YEARS. Her current boyfriend is WHITE.

this list is basic af

Can’t defend them, but the video was pointless focused on a wet Lavren..

i know i’ve been giving crj a ton of shit lately, but honestly, after watching that performance, i’m man enough to admit that i didn’t watch that performance.