The great unwashed / popular taste

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
One interesting thing is how some of these tunes which were seen as cheesy or the devil at the time have over the years settled comfortably into being canonised classics.

Then of course there are others which remain cheesy shite to the end of days.
 

droid

Well-known member
Did it sound fake to you? Not the proper stuff?

Didnt really pay attention TBH. This was pre grime (obv), so thought it was just some random UK hip hop thing and only bounced the needle off it. It was about a year later when i heard it somewhere else and realised how good it was.
 
Everything free for everyone killed off the factional tension thing. Weaponised taste was decommissioned by algorithms and streaming services. There’s very little ‘cultural capital’ in music taste now because the machine knows us too well, there’s nowhere to go and fester.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
Didnt really pay attention TBH. This was pre grime (obv), so thought it was just some random UK hip hop thing and only bounced the needle off it. It was about a year later when i heard it somewhere else and realised how good it was.

That’s interesting that is.

It’s funny how when someone encounters new music a lot of the times you instantly put it in a predermined box. I know with dissensus the initial reaction to drill for example was “it just sounds like trap” and only after I waged a war of attrition did you finally get “oh well I spouse the drums are different. Oh and those lurching bass sounds are strange. Oh they really do rap in a very UK style”.

My reaction to the trap dancehall stuff at first was just “it’s just normal dancehall, what’s the big deal about?” And only with time can I see it is a shift.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
I do find the thing of music journalists pretending to like Taylor swift albums disgusting though. disingenuousness in the pursuit of mundanity. If some journalist goes “I only like derek Bailey, slips it and gabba” I’d think it’s fake but at least that lie is in the pursuit of making an aesthetic point about hardness and extremity.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
My nan’s favourite band is west life. She was born in 1935. Their first album came out in 1999.

She currently loves Ed Sheehan, rag and bone man and George Ezra.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I do find the thing of music journalists pretending to like Taylor swift albums disgusting though. disingenuousness in the pursuit of mundanity. If some journalist goes “I only like derek Bailey, slips it and gabba” I’d think it’s fake but at least that lie is in the pursuit of making an aesthetic point about hardness and extremity.

It's interesting cos it might be that liking Taylor swift is now the more profitable thing to do for an online publication and therefore for a music journalist - so in turn it might make people like Taylor swift more "genuinely" cos they should do (for their careers sake) and at the same tim it might mean that journalists who genuinely DO like her are better placed to get jobs.

I'll sound like a right pseud now but I've genuinely never heard a song by her.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
It goes to show though that pop music probably doesn’t document the listening habits of the young very well. I’ve never ever known a young person who likes Ed Sheehan.

I don’t know how they weight streams vs sales when they do the charts, but I think only old people are buying music these days which means that pure sales alone are completely unreflective.
 

luka

Well-known member
It goes to show though that pop music probably doesn’t document the listening habits of the young very well. I’ve never ever known a young person who likes Ed Sheehan.

I don’t know how they weight streams vs sales when they do the charts, but I think only old people are buying music these days which means that pure sales alone are completely unreflective.

Billboard doesn't measure purely by sales anymore which means the likes of Beiber are getting eclipsed by people you've never heard of
 

entertainment

Well-known member
I think a lot of people go through this period of obscurantism, but I don't think it's a shallow thing of socio-cultural identity construction aka being cool.

When you start getting into music, there's an instrinsic allure to the obscure. The obscure knows something. It has secrets, hidden to those who stay ignorant of the dimension in which it operates. A new, higher experential plane kept away beyond the barriers of classic tonality and mellifluence, waiting to be unlocked. At least I felt this thing, where I wanted to learn all these secrets. And of course reality don't really live up to that promise, but there are rewards that make it worth it.

The problem with this approach is that you go in and assume that everything you don't like is because you just don't get it yet. This is a weird flux to float around in where art seizes to become nourishing because you're questioning yourself and the legitimacy of what you feel when listening to something.
 

luka

Well-known member
A lot of the time what you don't like really is something you just don't get yet. And even if that's not that case it's a good assumption to work from. Otherwise you just turn into the equivalent of one of those anti-intellectual boors who say things like "no one really likes Uylesess they're just being pretentious"

It's not a good attitude that. Keeps you locked in your own stupidity.
 
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entertainment

Well-known member
When I first encountered this forum, it seemed like it was a window to all these cool secrets about music that no-one else knew. Not obscure music, but this hidden potency in all these excentric genres like jungle, grime and dancehall, uk funky.

There was a cognitive dissonance that I was drawn towards resolving.
 

luka

Well-known member
When I first encountered this forum, it seemed like it was a window to all these cool secrets about music that no-one else knew. Not obscure music, but this hidden potency in all these excentric genres like jungle, grime and dancehall, uk funky.

There was a cognitive dissonance that I was drawn towards resolving.

Now you know it's just a load of cunts talking bollocks
 

luka

Well-known member
I think it is very important to feel like you are not good enough and have to try harder. But it's bad to think that you're so rubbish that any effort you make will be futile, because you're rubbish. There is a sweet spot. Just the right amount of insecurity.
 
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