listen to the weekend for sheils. charity evening.

[Corpsey]

Intangible, isn't it, hard to pin down. I don't FEEL any real emotion in it, except perhaps self pity.

What's real emotion? Perhaps that's a spurious distinction to make.

Compare his obvious model Michael Jackson. In MJs music there is a feeling of yearning and passion (tending towards uplifting passion) which at least reflects a love of music and performance. Probably not reflective of the true emotional complexity (and darker desires/feelings) of the real man, so still a performance... But FEELS authentic, feels "warm".

As contrived as MJ was (right down to his face) his music felt lively and human. Weekends music seems totally manufactured, contrived, airless...

It's very well produced and written music, I clearly have found some of it very effective but I can't shake a feeling of soullessness listening to it. I don't warm to it as I would expect to to pop music.

 

[luka]

Popular Music has a settled emotional vocabulary, ways to convey desire, yearning, anger, loss etc and the more familiar and well used it becomes, the emptier it feels, the more disconnected from its supppsed referents

 

[Corpsey]

I wonder if this is more of a problem for me because he's supposed to be a pop star now.

I think his earlier music when he was deliberately being all sinister misogynistic drug addict I didn't find it (ironically) as sinister

 

[luka]

And i think we work on the assumption that emotion is contagious and can be transmitted

 

[Corpsey]

It's actually an underrated aspect of Michael Jackson's music that despite being (to be insensitive about this for a second) a total weirdo his music gives such a strong sense of emotional connection.

 

[luka]

And we trust that to tell us if the performance is sincere

 

[luka]

It's actually an underrated aspect of Michael Jackson's music that despite being (to be insensitive about this for a second) a total weirdo his music gives such a strong sense of emotional connection.

Until his late period where hes just a screaming trauma mask

 

[Corpsey]

And i think we work on the assumption that emotion is contagious and can be transmitted

Maybe the weekend fits into your theory about love being extinct or whatever it is

Beyonce is another one who at least on paper is much more emotionally charged but I again feel no sense of real emotion to it, it feels posed and demonstrative, and her voice a terrific instrument but also histrionic rather than emotionally resonant

 

[Corpsey]

Until his late period where hes just a screaming trauma mask

Yes he becomes more and more mannered

I think maybe the emotion I find in mj is JOY, albeit a sort of plaintive tortured joy

No joy in weekend songs

 

[luka]

Beyonce has never had an emotion its certain.

 

[Corpsey]

Is joy in general a discredited emotion in music

Outside of music for babies

Compare grime and drill

Grime very angry, aggressive etc but still has a sense of joy to it

Drill very humourless bleak personality erased like faces by ski masks

 

[luka]

The werkend tho, like a lot of modern music, the affectless quality is the point of it isnt it

 

[Corpsey]

Sure a million examples can be cited now to blow that half-baked theory out of the water (Taylor swift? Shake it off?)

 

[shiels]

He is operatic and theatrical. He is humourless

 

[luka]

Hes not trying to be some warm hearted humanist saint like curtis mayfield. Hes performing his numbness

 

[Corpsey]

The most joyful song by him I can think of is "i can't feel my face" which undermines it's own joyfulness by comparing love to cocaine

Reminds me of those horrible scritti politti songs which sound fun but are actually about Marxism or something

 

[Corpsey]

Hes not trying to be some warm hearted humanist saint like curtis mayfield. Hes performing his numbness

It's probably to do also with rap musics ascendancy and rnb being swallowed up by it (although this cuts both ways), so instead of songs about falling in love it's songs about facefucking

 

[shakahislop]

Theres a difference too between first flush of wealth kid in a candy shop wealth and bored reptile sated wealth

there's a whole genre of Popular Music album that's someone articulating their unease with being successful and money is always half of what those albums are about: the second dizzee one, the second tricky one, the drake one take care, the second lana del rey one. there's ones as well which are about being massively successful and becoming unhinged: 808s and heartbreak and my dark beautiful fantasy, marshall mathers. partly about stardom but they're also about money and how it changes your world. they tend to highlight the negatives. the best one is the dizzee one i love that one

 

[shiels]

he doesn’t really indulge in women physically it’s all just how the sex makes him feel or actually not feel

 

[shakahislop]

Beyonce is another one who at least on paper is much more emotionally charged but I again feel no sense of real emotion to it, it feels posed and demonstrative, and her voice a terrific instrument but also histrionic rather than emotionally resonant

she sounds like a car horn the air being squeezed out of a car horn