existence of retro movements does not contradict the fact of our culture's prevalent, dominant, underlying obsession with innovation and newness.
Lana Del Rey - Born to Die
- Thread starter IdleRich
- Start date
existence of retro movements does not contradict the fact of our culture's prevalent, dominant, underlying obsession with innovation and newness.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Well, uh, if you say so. But anyway, the very fact that you're constantly banging on about how [new thing X] is a vastly inferior copy of [original thing Y] surely argues against it to an extent. It's hardly as if you're the only person who thinks like this.
baboon2004
Darned cockwombles.
Why is everyone so down on inauthenticity?
mistersloane
heavy heavy monster sound
I know. Who wants to keep it real anyway? Look at the Real, it's fucking horrible.
rubberdingyrapids
Well-known member
neither of these statements are wrong or incorrect.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Beats me. An insistence on originality, authenticity, 'realness' and so on is actually a pretty conservative mindset. And in any case, it's not like it has to be one thing or the other - no reason why you can't like both Led Zeppelin and '30s delta blues, or Vitalic and '80s Detroit electro - or LdR and Nancy S, for that matter.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
I think what I was disagreeing with mainly was zhao's assertion about "our culture", like there's this one monolithic thing called Western Culture which at any one time values this thing or doesn't value that thing. I suppose there are kids who are obsessively into the latest and most cutting-edge of everything and on the other hand there are people who exclusively collect 7"s from the 1960s.
But however you cut it, there is an awful, awful lot of revivalism (of all sorts) around at the moment. I mean, there always has been, but it seems to be particularly prevalent over the last decade or so.
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baboon2004
Darned cockwombles.
yep, most of the best music ever would never have happened if music had to be 'authentic'.
Actually, more than that, it's incoherent. Delta blues/Detroit techno/morris dancing is not absolutely 'authentic', it's music that has various antecedents like anything else. Problem with the authenticity argument is it's quickly reductio al absurdum. Italian cooking - inauthentic and hybrid, the tomato comes from Latin America!
More widely of course (taking it outside music, so not part of the current discussion) the extra problem with it is that it quickly becomes fascistic.
IdleRich
IdleRich
Yeah, surely this is uncontroversial - different music has different purposes, sometimes you want something to dance to, sometimes something to cheer you up, sometimes you just want to lie in a dark room and contemplate suicide. There is room in the world for pop-music and delta blues - I don't think that there is or could be a list of songs starting at the best and going all the way down to the worst and any time you choose to listen to a song lower on the list than one that's higher you're simply making a mistake.
we've had this conversation about a million times but i'll defend my position another million if i have to.
the polarization is flawed, limited, and reductive, there are many gray areas and exceptions, but for the most part:
Rakim is "fucking horrible", Vanilla Ice is great
Linkin Park much better than Motorhead
who needs Big Youth when you can have UB40?
Skrillex vastly superior to Mala
and MIA is pure awesomeness compared to "fucking horrible" "Real" dancehall or grime.
i realize this is really really boring but please tell me i'm wrong
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Joey Joe-Joe Jr. Shabadoo
Well-known member
because it is inauthentic?
CrowleyHead
Well-known member
Stealing from the past is fine, so long as you know what you're doing.
LDR exploits women's obsession with abuse and Americans (or even the rest of the world's) obsession with Trash Americana. She's just the only person smart enough to make the dull shit of the modern-era (Boys with gauges who play video games and cook meth) seem like it's got glamour, because of the old-school glamour she throws onto it.
It's why Amy Winehouse succeeded where Duffy failed, nobody really understood that there was actually a hip-hop core beneath a lot of those things. A pop-hip-hop via Ronson core, but hip-hop nonetheless. They dragged the old torch singer role, took her out of jazz clubs, and forced the old junkie drummer to play "Impeach The President" instead of the standards she's used to. There was a whole re-contextualization thing that people failed to pick up on.
The whole 'pure singer' thing didn't appear until Adele's 2nd LP thing, because by then, Gaga had happened, and we entered into house overdrive. So obviously, even a truly shit singer could make a killing with that dramatically 'authentic' sound.
LDR exploits women's obsession with abuse and Americans (or even the rest of the world's) obsession with Trash Americana. She's just the only person smart enough to make the dull shit of the modern-era (Boys with gauges who play video games and cook meth) seem like it's got glamour, because of the old-school glamour she throws onto it.
It's why Amy Winehouse succeeded where Duffy failed, nobody really understood that there was actually a hip-hop core beneath a lot of those things. A pop-hip-hop via Ronson core, but hip-hop nonetheless. They dragged the old torch singer role, took her out of jazz clubs, and forced the old junkie drummer to play "Impeach The President" instead of the standards she's used to. There was a whole re-contextualization thing that people failed to pick up on.
The whole 'pure singer' thing didn't appear until Adele's 2nd LP thing, because by then, Gaga had happened, and we entered into house overdrive. So obviously, even a truly shit singer could make a killing with that dramatically 'authentic' sound.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Exactly. A fetishism for 'authenticity' easily becomes a fetishism for 'purity' - which is surely as concise a definition of fascism as could wish for.
baboon2004
Darned cockwombles.
Who needs Rakim when you can have the first rapper who ever lived? etc etc. You're just naming good artists who also happen to have been recording earlier, versus shit artists. I dont' see what that proves.
Rakim is good because he's good, not because he's 'authentic'. Which he isn't anyway, because such an assertion is meaningless.
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Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Is that what those minging hole-in-your-ear piercings are called?
well? go for it then!
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
I genuinely cannot begin to imagine what point you think you're making here. Of course mistersloane is not saying all "inauthentic" music is better than all "authentic" music - to the extent that there's even a meaningful distinction - he's just being a bit tongue-in-cheek. Which apparently is totally inappropriate in a discussion of something as sacred, eternal and life-and-death important as pop music.