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Hit Charade
- colordrops 11y agoThis is no different from a car company using the same chassis for multiple cars. They've got a money making formula so why change it.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- wpietri 11y agoWhat a good article. Given the bits about how related popular songs are, I can't believe we're far off from algorithmically generated songs being fed to a variety of meat-puppet stars. Or can we skip that and go right to CGI anime pop stars?
- caractacus 11y agoRead up on AKB48. Japanese girl "group" with more than a hundred members split into teams. Often the record company will let fans vote on which members will become part of the next single. To vote? You have to buy the latest CD (and physical CDs remain huge in Japan). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AKB48 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AKB48
- bjacobel 11y agoJapan did. http://youtu.be/YSyWtESoeOc http://youtu.be/YSyWtESoeOc
- wpietri 11y agoNeat. More for the curious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatsune_Miku https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatsune_Miku It mentions she has over 100,000 released songs, which I presume are mostly fan created. I guess I was thinking more like a virtual pop star in the sense of the pop stars mentioned in the article: meticulously controlled, always-on-brand industrial product. Sort of like the way a virtual Tupac appeared at Coachella, but made from scratch so that the money all flows to the puppeteers.
- objclxt 11y ago> more like a virtual pop star in the sense of the pop stars mentioned in the article: meticulously controlled, always-on-brand industrial product Well, that's kind of what a group like Gorrilaz is, I think, although maybe not quite as industrial/mass-produced a product as you're suggesting.
- chromaton 11y agoI think this trend started with The Archies or perhaps Alvin and the Chipmunks.
- imauld 11y ago> This article is about the Vocaloid character. For the video game series which features her, see Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA. In this Japanese name, the family name is Hatsune. Amazing. Japan, what will they think of next?
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y agoWhat's amazing? That Japanese family names come first (not unique to Japan: China, Korea and other places also do this) or that Miku has her own rhythm video games (not unique to Japan: Guitar Hero, anyone?)?
- fenomas 11y agoFor those not familiar, Hatsune Miku is a promotional character for voice/song creation software. In short, Yamaha sells a music synthesizer IDE called Vocaloid, and one of its features is that you can add lyrics via voice synthesizer packages, and then control the tune, vibrato and whatnot. Several 3rd parties sell voice packages for Vocaloid, and usually they were just given names to distinguish them, but a company called Crypton made a voice package called Hatsune Miku, and marketed it along with visual assets and a minimal backstory. Importantly, they released the character (not the software) under remix-friendly licenses that encourage (noncommercial) reuse, so fans sort of took Miku and made her their own in a very Gibsonesque "Idoru" sort of way. As such, the difference between Miku and bands like Gorillaz or similar is that here there's no particular artist behind the scenes. The company who owns Miku's copyright just makes software; the music comes from fans.
- cdr 11y agoIf you count professional music artists, producers, and songwriters among fans, sure. It's certainly true that anyone can create a vocaloid track and have it gain popularity, but a number of the biggest hits have unsurprisingly been produced by people already professionally involved in music.
- fenomas 11y ago> If you count professional music artists, producers, and songwriters among fans If they're making something outside of work and sharing the result on niconico for free, I don't know why I wouldn't.
- rquantz 11y agoIt's even been used at least once by a classical composer: Matt Marks' Kamikaze Karaoke, a setting of texts written by kamikaze pilots before their missions, for flute, violin, cello, percussion (the incomparable Cadillac Moon Ensemble), and Hatsune Miku. Here's the fourth movement, my favorite: http://youtu.be/j8h6PKkAvdo http://youtu.be/j8h6PKkAvdo
- kalleboo 11y ago
- afarrell 11y agoAs someone who uses music for mood-modification about 90% of the time, I would be on board with Soylent Music.
- adamnemecek 11y agoThe charade is so well covered up that you have to go all the way to wikipedia to learn who wrote the single songs.
- api 11y agoIn the age of noise you don't have to keep somethings secret to cover it up. You just have to avoid drawing attention to it.
- adamnemecek 11y agoCalling that a charade makes it sound like there is some sort of conspiracy though.
- api 11y agoI'm sure the music industry isn't eager for people to really know this, at least not the general public. Not sure I'd call it a "conspiracy."
- adamnemecek 11y agoWhy would anyone care?
- anigbrowl 11y agoBecause authenticity is a highly valued cultural currency. Fans of pop singers are invested in the idea of an emotional or erotic connection with the object of their affections, and this fantasy depends on the idea of some kind of mutual understanding between the fan and the idol - much as the intensity of religious faith depends on the notion that prayers are heard by a deity. Considering that pop stars can attract hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, maintaining the fantasy that the performer is expressing their own feelings rather than those of someone else is probably a lucrative strategy.
- tomkwok 11y agoThe previous story about Max Martin (Martin Karl Sandberg): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7127488 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7127488 [600 days ago] One Man Has Written Virtually Every Major Pop Song Of The Last 20 Years
- infofarmer 11y agoHow meta would it be if both articles were ghost written by the same person?
- nostromo 11y agoCheck out how similar Tik Tok and California Gurls are when they're mixed together: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2dPA2dCRNY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2dPA2dCRNY The similarity is striking. Both are written by Lukasz Gottwald, one of the songwriters mentioned in the article.
- doughj3 11y agoHere's another one, Part of Me by Katy Perry and Till The World Ends by Britney Spears: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXC0ihxJQAQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXC0ihxJQAQ (This is a mix of the two, but you can also clearly hearing it just by listening to one and then the other). Both songs by Dr. Luke and Max Martin
- david-given 11y agoI haven't heard of either (lucky me!) and I literally can't tell where the seams are in that track. (I suspect it probably helps that I can also barely distinguish the two pitch-corrected voices...)
- zasz 11y agoDude, what the hell, Atlantic. This article lifted a bunch of quotes straight from The New Yorker article on this a few years ago. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/03/26/the-song-machine http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/03/26/the-song-machin... The quotes about needing a hook every seven seconds, and the magic that makes someone an artist and not a performer, were stolen. Edit: guys stop upvoting me, I jumped on the plagiarism wagon way too quickly.
- w1ntermute 11y agoThe author probably took those quotes from an upcoming book by the same author as that New Yorker piece[0]. The book's linked in this (Atlantic) article. 0: http://www.amazon.com/The-Song-Machine-Inside-Factory/dp/0393241920 http://www.amazon.com/The-Song-Machine-Inside-Factory/dp/039...
- zasz 11y agoAh, you're probably right.
- Eric_WVGG 11y agoThis five minute excerpt from Before the Music Dies is one of the most amazing, illuminating things I’ve ever seen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irk3_p15RJY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irk3_p15RJY
- SwellJoe 11y agoI think that's almost like the "uncanny valley" of pop stars. For all of the skills and tools that have to "make" her a star, she doesn't have that something that, say Rihanna or Katy Perry have, and it seems apparent that she doesn't within seconds of the video playing. Certainly, Katy Perry has a bigger budget behind her, but, I think there is an undefinable something else. The industry would love to be able to create a Katy Perry on demand, because Katy Perry commands significant money and has much more control over her career than a new artist. I'm not suggesting Katy Perry or Rihanna are better, musically, than the next skinny hot teenager that comes along. But, evidence indicates they are better at being the face of the musical machine than the dozens of others that have come along with the same producers, same studios, same music execs, etc. backing them. So, it's simplistic to suggest anybody hot could be a star like Katy Perry, because I don't think it's actually true. Anybody could sing on key, because there's a plugin for that. But, that's not all there is. I feel like this video (which I've watched before, and had the same sort of reaction to it) wants to present a story of the masses being bamboozled by these "made" artists. I think plenty of people want a manufactured product. Just like people don't buy laptops made in a garage, and instead choose a laptop designed and manufactured by thousands of people. I don't like it (I'm a musician myself, and a huge music snob with a huge music collection), but I can't help but acknowledge that it is so. I want to listen to art, but many people just want an escapist product; the same could be said of film, television, etc.
- philwelch 11y agoTo be fair, they didn't exactly put the kind of budget into this example that they do into actual pop records. And they went with the first pretty teenage girl they could find. There are plenty of teenage girls in the world who are at least as pretty as that model and have the ability to sing (Auto-Tune is pretty limited--notice that the girl in the clip doesn't seem to effortlessly belt out her song the way Katy Perry can; even if you do have to be Auto-Tuned, it helps if you have some enthusiasm and volume you can pump into it). I don't know if they're as rare as we are led to think (though their market value suggests they are), but it's certain that natural talent isn't an overriding concern.
- WalterBright 11y agoHmmph. Maybe this explains why I keep going back to music from before 1990. Or maybe I'm just old :-)
- WalterBright 11y agoIt also explains why David Cassidy never had another hit after leaving the Partridge Family, and the Monkees never had one after deciding that they were real musicians and could write their own music :-)
- dbcooper 11y agoI have a soft spot for Michael Nesmith. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsOW_9KJSaw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsOW_9KJSaw
- Joeboy 11y agoHe wrote Listen to the Band, the only Monkees song I ever listen to voluntarily. Edit: Evidence the Monkees were a seminal garage punk band: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3VQIHyq9lA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3VQIHyq9lA
- spudlyo 11y agoYeah, the magic behind the Monkees were Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, who wrote most of their hits and later toured with Dolenz and Jones.
- smacktoward 11y agoThat was my thought too, yeah. We all have a tendency to romanticize the stuff that came before us, but manufactured pop was a thing long before 1990. EDIT: To provide an example, here's a very good 2001 article by British journalist Jon Ronson about the culture of child sex abuse that surrounded the UK's hitmakers of the '70s: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2001/dec/01/weekend.jonronson http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2001/dec/01/weekend....
- ksml 11y agoI'm sorry, and I guess I'll probably get downvoted for this, but why the heck is this #1 on HN? Edit: I'm not saying the article is not interesting, but it is hardly related to tech.
- anigbrowl 11y agoExample of the inner workings of a system being very different from what you might expect, plus the weekend.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- waterlesscloud 11y agoI think it's interesting that even after two decades of very intense and traumatic disruption, the pop music business is still essentially controlled by a handful of men.
- noobermin 11y agosomeone already suggested ML generated pop. All we need is an overfunded startup from sv to do it.
- PhantomGremlin 11y agoI'll probably get downvoted for this An interesting dynamic here on HN. You are being downvoted. In contrast, in yesterday's slashdot, the quickest way to get modded +5 insightful was to start off by saying "I know I'll get downvoted for this ...".
- detaro 11y agoHN is not just for tech. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
- infiniteseeker 11y agoThe more years I live on this planet the more I realise how smoke and mirrors a lot of things are. Its all an illusion??
- chillingeffect 11y agoYeah, it's mostly all an illusion and mostly it works for most people. The standard script our rulers provide gratifies our emotions, giving us just enough safety to raise our children and just enough of a glimpse into the fearful world (think: police shows) to make us never question them while the billionaire rulers fly from house to house, from beach to beach, with a short stop at the schools to make sure as few as possible of us learn how to self-govern (hint: by emphasizing answers rather than questions). If you look, at least at American music culture since the beginning of the industrial age, you'll see cycles of people seeking authenticity (the beats, hippies, hip-hop, grunge, etc). Generally, that authenticity gives birth to some consumable form, such as the stuff that passes for hip-hop nowadays, as well as the "corporate grundge" of the 90s. I'm not as familiar with other eras, but I understand authenticity to be a huge point of critique w/r/t 60s pop culture. My favorite (ironically-meant) part of this article was when they pointed out the music was engineered for shopping malls, as opposed to home stereos and that it is "more captivating than virtuoso musicians." The fact that a cybernetic artifact (pop-by-committee) can supplant the intimacy of a live performance by a master is astonishing and disturbing. I hope it's not true... but if you think about it, even the concept of a virtuoso is an economic artifact of a ruler/leader with excess capital to support the specialization of a lifelong performer. I believe the same or more authenticity can be had from amateurs or mid-level players, although that's probably my own bias.
- venomsnake 11y agoPunk -> Metal -> Hair Metal/Ballads
- philwelch 11y ago> If you look, at least at American music culture since the beginning of the industrial age, you'll see cycles of people seeking authenticity (the beats, hippies, hip-hop, grunge, etc). Generally, that authenticity gives birth to some consumable form, such as the stuff that passes for hip-hop nowadays, as well as the "corporate grundge" of the 90s. I'm not as familiar with other eras, but I understand authenticity to be a huge point of critique w/r/t 60s pop culture. I think this is the beginning of understanding what is so loathsome about hipsters. Hipsters are some awful Hegelian synthesis of the impulse towards authenticity and the culture of irony. Hipsters mostly express the urge for authenticity as a type of consumerism, but then immediately undermine authenticity through their commitment to irony.
- pat2man 11y agoIt seems incredibly hard to "discover" an artist these days. There are so many musicians out there that aren't quite good enough. To be able to pick out the good ones pretty much requires dedicating your life to it: http://www.npr.org/people/2100252/bob-boilen http://www.npr.org/people/2100252/bob-boilen Its much easier just putting together a dream team of writers and musicians that have made hits in the past. That being said there is still an amazing amount of great music out there that doesn't hit the charts. Live music seems to be the best place to discover and contribute to those artists. Too bad its mostly focused in a few major cities.
- wmt 11y agoThere are more good artists today than there ever has been, but the issue is that the Jimi Hendrixs of today are typically tossed to the "not quite good enough" -pile by those who professionally discover new artists. It's unfortunate that nowadays to listen to good new artists you'll need to be active and follow genres where an artists become popular through word of mouth and good music.
- pakled_engineer 11y agoUniversity radio playlists http://www.earshot-online.com/charts/citr.cfm?intChartTypeID=1&dWeekOfID=2015-09-15 http://www.earshot-online.com/charts/citr.cfm?intChartTypeID... this is the most played this week http://faketearsmusic.bandcamp.com/track/second-wind http://faketearsmusic.bandcamp.com/track/second-wind Or follow independent labels you like, let it be their F/T job to find artists. I follow Warp, Asian Man Records, Mint Recs, few others.
- mafribe 11y agoThere are so many musicians out there that aren't quite good enough. I disagree with you. There are more good enough artists than ever. Pop music orchestrates the transition from childhood to adulthood. It helps structure sexuality, make it more predictable. In order to fulfil this function, the musical quality is not too important, as long as a certain standard is met. And modern production technology can help just about everybody to achieve these minimal standards. What is much more important is achieving a critical mass of fans, which is to a substantial degree a question of marketing, and hence access to capital. Even though modern production outfits like Max Martin's are highly skilled, most of their artists fail. But the 1 in 10 who make it big recoup the loss by the 9 others. The music industry's main business model is thus this: find 10 young (hence cheap) musicians, try to make all of them a star, live on 1 of 10 unicorns. As you can see, that's the Y Combinator business model. The music industry got there first. I would not at all be surprised if Y Combinator were consciously following in the music industry's footsteps.
- addisonj 11y agoIncredibly fascinating article. The article mentioned both the 'sameness' of pop music as well as blatant copying, but what I find the most interesting is how they pop industry has somehow found some magical rate of evolution to keep most people interested while not changing too fast to alienate certain demographics. A few years ago, when dubstep was still fairly new, a build up and shift as dramatic as the typical dubstep 'drop' would have been fairly jarring for most pop music. Fast forward to today and you hear elements of it almost everywhere, but it all happened gradually enough to make it feel familiar but different enough to be exciting.
- otis_inf 11y ago> A few years ago, when dubstep was still fairly new, a build up and shift as dramatic as the typical dubstep 'drop' would have been fairly jarring for most pop music. Fast forward to today and you hear elements of it almost everywhere, but it all happened gradually enough to make it feel familiar but different enough to be exciting. Agreed, and that's what's bugging me: I missed a bit in the article the following: how do they get massive groups of people buying into the products they are selling, every time? If you look at the whole pipeline, from writing the 'hit' to recording / mixing / mastering to getting it on iTunes (record store?) and the shows live in the halls / stadiums, where and more importantly: how, are they getting the people that far that they part with their money to 'own' a copy of these, often dreadful (music wise), songs? It is, IMHO, that part of the whole pipeline that they have mastered, not the song writing/recording: the product isn't the music, the product is something else, the front person ('artist') + the whole entourage around it, but it's fascinating how they manage to construct _that_ entourage that is sought after by people with money to burn. they must know an answer (which is sold in the form of the artist+entourage+shows+music) to an unknown question / benefit sought a lot of people have.
- guscost 11y agoThe piece you're not quite mentioning is that for a very long time now, mainstream pop culture has been mostly about getting adolescent kids to lust after the celebrities or musicians or whoever. That segment of the market sells (images of) people as sex objects, not any particular creative media on its own merit. It's a bit disturbing but there you go.
- huuu 11y agoThis also reminds me of Carol Kaye, a female bass player who, because she is a woman and too old for the industrie, remained unknown while playing a lot of songs for the famous. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Kaye https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Kaye
- jdietrich 11y agoI can highly recommend "The Manual" by The KLF. It cynically documents how they wrote and produced one of their many hit singles. It was written in 1988, but proved to be remarkably prophetic. http://freshonthenet.co.uk/the-manual-by-the-klf/ http://freshonthenet.co.uk/the-manual-by-the-klf/
- omnibrain 11y agoThere is a german audio play "Tophit leichtgemacht" http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/389813234X http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/389813234X based on this book. It's rather hilarious but one has to admit that there is some catchyness to the tune they end up producing.
- david-given 11y agoIt's a great read. For reference, here is the video in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdTELokKfCk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdTELokKfCk And, simply because it's awesome, even though it's totally unrelated to the conversation, here's... a thing... with the KLF, Daleks, George Bush, and Green Day in it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAzzhJeTp-I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAzzhJeTp-I
- snarkyturtle 11y agoThere's a great Planet Money piece about which touches upon this process of pop song creation: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2011/07/05/137530847/how-much-does-it-cost-to-make-a-hit-song http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2011/07/05/137530847/how-m...
- devit 11y agoDoesn't really seem a bad thing. It seems natural that picking the best performer and the best song writer would give a better result than having the same person do it all. It's a bit like complaining that in a videogame, the programming, game design and graphics are often done by different people.
- look_lookatme 11y agoWhat is sad is how critics, like the Times Jon Caramanica, are complicit in this system.
- IkmoIkmo 11y agoA lot of the reactions in this thread remind me of Bourdieu's book La Distinction. It's one thing to say that these songs are algorithmic and not deeply creative which is objective fact, it's another thing to say the songs are crappy, not good to listen to and indicative of poor taste. It's these latter statements - that I came across in this thread - that La Distinction touches on in a very interesting way, I can recommend everyone to read it.
- ams6110 11y agothere are no musicians anymore, at least not human ones. Every instrument is automated. There really aren't vocalists either. In pop music today, the vocals are processed through an Auto-Tune[1] device resulting in perfectly on-pitch vocals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-Tune https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-Tune
- orbitur 11y agoIt's not true to say there are no singers, since the existence of Beyoncé and Ariana Grande contradict you. Recordings might be fine-tuned to remove imperfections but there are plenty of legit singers at the top of the pop charts, and probably not any less than previous eras.
- erichmond 11y agoCountry pop is not spared by this formula: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY8SwIvxj8o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY8SwIvxj8o
- marincounty 11y agoIn freshman Psychology, I happen to have an Instructor at a community college that worshiped B.F. Skinner. Mr Goddard, worked part time as a landscaper. He wasen't a tenured teacher yet. He definitely tried to help us understand the world, and knew the majority of us--never had anyone one who really cared about our education, or future. He wanted to prepare us for a deceptive, complicated world. A world we would be forced into very soon. (Hell, most of us were already working adult jobs at the time, trying to just get through school, and get a four year degree somewhere?) Well, my take on B.F. Skinner was we all copy in one way or another? There are few original ideas, or thought in B.F. skinner's world? When I read an new author, listen to a new artist, look at a new website; I always see a lot of copying. Be it subconscious, or conscious the results are the same; the work looks similar? I don't know why we act so suprised when someone points out similarities in an artist's/inventor's/scientist's work? When I do find anything remotely original, I'm honestly impressed, until I find they stole someone's idea. I don't think seen, or heard anything truly original. I didn't know it was even debatable? I sometimes think we need to go to sheltered communities in order to get anything related to originality? Maybe the indigenous people of the rain forests? Let's not though? The last thing they need is our diseases, and white men stealing their original ideas?
- jccalhoun 11y agoAdorno was talking about this back in the 1940s in "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception" https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/adorno/1944/culture-industry.htm https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/adorno/1944/cultu...
- kevinwang 11y agoFor what it's worth, Taylor Swift is a songwriter.
- gcv 11y agoIs or was? The article explicitly mentions several of her tracks as having come from the pop production machine.
- Jedd 11y agoA couple of points. Boy band (and girl band) often seem to conflate the word 'band' with an entity that produces / creates / makes their own music ... with a group of people that can sing or mime to a song someone else made, without needing to play any instruments. In 2002 there was a story about Carly Hennessy[1] (who later made at least one somewhat contentious 'comeback' on a pop TV show in the US) who'd basically been financially destroyed by a wager the music industry had placed on her at our (and her) expense. We don't seem to be making much progress on this front. [1] http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1014678641479060480 http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1014678641479060480
- mwsherman 11y agoNo mention of the Brill Building [1]? Pop music has always been factory-produced. Also, multiple hooks per song is a better song. We like pop music for the hooks. If we don’t like the hooks, we don’t like pop music. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brill_Building https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brill_Building
- coldtea 11y ago>Pop music has always been factory-produced. Correction: pop music has always had factory-produced hits. It also had other hits.
- morgante 11y agoThis is a great article, but I don't understand the undercurrent of judgement and the overt judgement here on HN. Yes, songs are produced by teams of people behind the scenes who adopt common formulas and churn out hit after hit. So what? They're a product just like anything else. My enjoyment of the latest movie isn't lessened by the fact that the actors didn't write the script. I don't dislike my iPhone just because it's a mass-produced item which is just a small tweak from its previous iterations. Just because music is a product doesn't mean it's not enjoyable (or worthy of enjoyment).
- emsy 11y agoWith each one of these products it's clear that they weren't produced by the "figureheads". the iPhone is not a Tim Cook/Steve Jobs product but an Apple product. This isn't the case with music.
- morgante 11y agoI'm not sure I entirely agree. Steve Jobs was definitely portrayed as an iPhone figurehead. His personal image was highly tied to the Apple products. Likewise, movies put leading actors/directors forward as figureheads for the production. However, I do agree that there is more widespread misunderstanding of how music is made. What I don't agree with is that this misunderstanding is essential to the popularity or enjoyment of music. I'm fully aware that music is produced and I still enjoy listening to it. Or take the example of K-pop/J-pop, which is more overtly produced than American music. In some cases, fans literally vote on who gets to be included in the band. Despite the "production" process being in full view, fans still love the music and artists.
- donall 11y agoI think the difference is that the actors in movies aren't trying to give the impression that they wrote the script, whereas musicians talk about "their" songs like they conceived them in a process of true artistic expression. Revealing that they are actually manufactured in a formulaic manner by the same people who wrote all the other hit songs can leave a sour taste in the mouth of a fan who is perhaps emotionally invested in a song or artist...
- rdslw 11y agoI always give a two months quarantine to an article about some theory which is nice to hear (celebrities are fake), groundbreaking (they're doing it so long and are bald swedish vikings!), and on the verge of conspiracy theory (the're hiding), WHILE THE ARTICLE IS BASED ON THE BOOK "INCIDENTALLY" ;-) JUST TO BE RELEASED (AND BOUGHT BY US ;-). Two months it's a great time to wait and decide if it was book promotion or worth read.
- danbmil99 11y agoThere has been crap pop music churned out by modest talents for decades. 90% of commercial music is completely devoid of any redeeming artistic merit. Great music is produced by every generation. All you have to do iisten for it.
- mynegation 11y agoEven more succinctly, funny, and cynically: "Four Chords Song" by Axis of Awesome: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I