Tentative Andy
I'm in the Meal Deal
This has been on my mind of late:
First, the juicy confessions. Stuff I like that I'm sure would be considered middlebrow - Fleet Foxes, Interpol, Arcade Fire (kind of), Eels and what I suppose you'd call the 'big-hitters' of trip-hop, Portishead, DJ Shadow and Massive Attack. In terms of older things, I do like quite a lot of Pink Floyd's output, and not just the Barrett-era stuff either. However, I would like to state categorically that I think The Wall is a terrible record.
I hope that anyone who replies to this thread will join in the fun and post all their guilty (or otherwise) middlebrow pleasures as well.
Now for the soul-searching theory bit - what exactly do we mean when we describe something as middlebrow? I'd assume that it's almost always used as a somewhat perjorative term. You might say that it just means any artist that it is the subject of a consensus of critical praise - so basically the same as the perennial complaint that such-and-such is 'overrated'.
But I think it's more precise than that, I think it has to mean things where there is something objective in the style of the music itself that guarantees in advance that it will appeal to the average music critic, and to the sort of people that take the opinions of these critics as a guide.
I think a mark of middlebrow music is that it employs whatever the sonic signifiers of 'serious' and 'deep' are at a given time, but still manages to avoid being too genuinely challenging, so that it provides listeners the best of both worlds: the kudos of listening to something with art status but with the familiar coast-line of pleasent, usually tuneful features. I think big, solid production values are usually a standard feature of middlebrow music. But perhaps this is all putting it a bit cynically; as I say, I like a fair ammount of the stuff.
First, the juicy confessions. Stuff I like that I'm sure would be considered middlebrow - Fleet Foxes, Interpol, Arcade Fire (kind of), Eels and what I suppose you'd call the 'big-hitters' of trip-hop, Portishead, DJ Shadow and Massive Attack. In terms of older things, I do like quite a lot of Pink Floyd's output, and not just the Barrett-era stuff either. However, I would like to state categorically that I think The Wall is a terrible record.
I hope that anyone who replies to this thread will join in the fun and post all their guilty (or otherwise) middlebrow pleasures as well.
Now for the soul-searching theory bit - what exactly do we mean when we describe something as middlebrow? I'd assume that it's almost always used as a somewhat perjorative term. You might say that it just means any artist that it is the subject of a consensus of critical praise - so basically the same as the perennial complaint that such-and-such is 'overrated'.
But I think it's more precise than that, I think it has to mean things where there is something objective in the style of the music itself that guarantees in advance that it will appeal to the average music critic, and to the sort of people that take the opinions of these critics as a guide.
I think a mark of middlebrow music is that it employs whatever the sonic signifiers of 'serious' and 'deep' are at a given time, but still manages to avoid being too genuinely challenging, so that it provides listeners the best of both worlds: the kudos of listening to something with art status but with the familiar coast-line of pleasent, usually tuneful features. I think big, solid production values are usually a standard feature of middlebrow music. But perhaps this is all putting it a bit cynically; as I say, I like a fair ammount of the stuff.