I think the first two Dido albums are great because they disguise really bleak, alienated sentiments in the language of post-club pop techniques, she might sound posh and plain but lyrically there's some really direct and heavy stuff about modern life that makes more sense to me the older I get
I should know better than to try to engage with you on a topic you've made your mind up to ignore the liminalities of so you can indulge in your own hobby-horses irrelevant to the conversation, but nonetheless:
the point with Dido isn't spontaneous alchemy or unrehearsed performance - it's the sound of everyday, downtrodden misery and frustration. Everyman recognisable misery. The sad recognisation of I deserve nothing more than I get because nothing I have is truly mine. The performance here doesn't require showmanship or authenticity (whether affected or otherwise) because the feelings and sentiments of Dido's music aren't designed to be outsized and powerful, they're resignated and frustrated, the quiet sigh of not anger or lust or frustration but the jaded ennui of missed opportunities and lost potential.
when I use the word "disguised" I don't mean that there's nothing masked there - it's hiding in plain sight, and easy to brush off if you're not paying attention, but blatant in its descriptions of the misery and trudge of post-modern life. The Tesco-mum-listener diss (which, by the way, is a reflection on an imagined audience and not the music itself) allows this stuff to be quietly subversive in a way that Adele or whoever isn't, because the subject matter can be darker than the surface level of glossy sheen and contemporary (then) production lends itself to.
I found this I think it's half dido half Turkish?
but what you've done prior to this isn't good arguing. You've thrown post-punk, electro, garage, London and Sizzla at the wall to see what sticks. There isn't anything you're saying here that makes me reconsider my position on Dido or enlightens me on to why you (or anyone else) is actively against it. That's not really a debate, it's wilful disengagement. I don't even want to have The Big Dido & Adele Discussion really (I think Fisher said it best on Dido already).And can we please stop with the hobby horse diss. This is a forum. It by default invites argument.
My own views on hip hop are well known. Here are some reasons why I don't like it any more:
1. Black indie. Yes, yes, hip hop is very diverse from a certain POV, but the same case could be made for indie. The reality is that hip hop, like indie, is in the main massively conversative and inertial. Like indie, it serves a consumer base who will be loyal to it no matter what. The difference is that no-one would be mad enough to pretend that indie is cutting edge, whereas ppl still, ludicrously, make that case for hip hop.
2. Tedium. Unlike Tim F, I have no interest whatsoever in guns, hos and booty. I find them boring. Hearing actual ppl talk about such things would be extremely boring, why does it become interesting over a breakbeat? (And it really isn't the case that I 'thought that about hip hop before I was into it' - I really did like hip hop in the 80s, when it was a modernist force, not a complacent cartoon.) Hip hop keeps black males in blackface.
3. Ethics. A logic that can only be called racist excuses all this. If white males were engaging in misogynistic, violent discourse, they would presumably be condemned. The licence given to the black males of hip hop reflects what? A sense that this is 'all that can be expected' of them? Or a 'liberal' causal argument that this is the effect of their social conditions etc? Either way, the message is that less can be expected of black males than of other groups.
4. Masculinism. Consider the posturing of the hip hop male - that frozen swagger, the conspicuous refusal to engage with others except from a position of imperious hostility. It's ugly and unpleasant, and what it represents is FEAR, not confidence. I have to deal with the consequences of this behaviour on a day to day basis. It contributes to a situation in which black males achieve much less than almost any other social group in education, with obvious knock-on effects for life chances, employment etc.
5. Contracted horizons. Hip hop produces a double trap for the underclass black male. He is already trapped at the level of the social, marginalized, unemployed or underemployed; but hip hop also traps him at the level of fantasy. Hip hop's utopia is only a grotesque hyperbolized version of capitalism; in his dreams, the hip hop male still acts like a slave (to the reality principle). In other words, hip hop is Capitalist Realism.
6. Fashion. Hip hop has a HORRIBLE effect on male fashion.
(btw, did anyone see Ekow Eshun's piece on Biggy Smalls as his hero in the Independent the other week? In a year replete with rubbish journalism, that nevertheless stood out for its embarrassing cluelessness...)
it's true, look it up!I refuse to believe she called her son Eminem. Marshall I could maybe buy. Not Eminem.
when I say Dido's music isn't designed to be powerful I think I'm being imprecise here: the performances are deliberately not powerful and within that small, hermetic delivery there comes a certain emotional effect. Or rather the power comes from not being a powerhouse performance. And I don't think it codes as outsider positioning to say that I find those inward-looking lyrics and performances relatable and familiar in everyman recognisable misery.
He's called Stanley Gavin!it's true, look it up!