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>> It alarms me to realize that Corgan was a more formally interesting songwriter in that period than Stipe was. "formally interesting". I'm a native English s

>> It alarms me to realize that Corgan was a more formally interesting songwriter in that period than Stipe was. "formally interesting". I'm a native English speaker and composer and don't understand your phrasing. >> I'm on REM's side of the political spectrum, and have always found Stipe's activism to be performative; I disagree, but it entirely rests on what one person's definition of "cringey" is. I think your awkward attempts at sounding intellectual are alarmingly cringey and less formally interesting.

tptacek 2y ago
Something is formally interesting when it varies a basic aspect of the genre. A song that was one long verse with no chorus would be formally interesting. Throbbing Gristle was formally innovative in exploring noise rock and creating "industrial" music. Kid A was a formally interesting British rock album (to the point of alienating fans). The Flaming Lips made an album delivered on 4 CDs that you'd queue up and play simultaneously, so that the minute differences in timing would ensure no listen was precisely the same. Formally interesting (also: not very good). By 1993, neither REM nor (obviously) The Smashing Pumpkins were formally interesting bands. But REM would go on to make the same album, just with fewer and fewer hooks. Adore, on the other hand, was the Pumpkins Kid A, a transition from "Shopping Mall Shoegazer" to gothy electronic (it gives me no pleasure to report that the album predates Kid A by 2 years, but may have been expedited by Corgan's hair loss). It wasn't, like, a great album, because the Pumpkins are not Radiohead. But it was a departure, both from their previous catalog and from what was playing on the radio at the time. (I reassure myself by telling myself that both Radiohead and the Smashing Pumpkins stole this musical shift from Bjork). An aside: I think you will in the future find that dunks work better when you don't precede them by saying out loud "I don't know what the words in this dunk mean".

tptacek 2y ago

Something is formally interesting when it varies a basic aspect of the genre. A song that was one long verse with no chorus would be formally interesting. Throbbing Gristle was formally innovative in exploring noise rock and creating "industrial" music. Kid A was a formally interesting British rock album (to the point of alienating fans). The Flaming Lips made an album delivered on 4 CDs that you'd queue up and play simultaneously, so that the minute differences in timing would ensure no listen was precisely the same. Formally interesting (also: not very good). By 1993, neither REM nor (obviously) The Smashing Pumpkins were formally interesting bands. But REM would go on to make the same album, just with fewer and fewer hooks. Adore, on the other hand, was the Pumpkins Kid A, a transition from "Shopping Mall Shoegazer" to gothy electronic (it gives me no pleasure to report that the album predates Kid A by 2 years, but may have been expedited by Corgan's hair loss). It wasn't, like, a great album, because the Pumpkins are not Radiohead. But it was a departure, both from their previous catalog and from what was playing on the radio at the time. (I reassure myself by telling myself that both Radiohead and the Smashing Pumpkins stole this musical shift from Bjork). An aside: I think you will in the future find that dunks work better when you don't precede them by saying out loud "I don't know what the words in this dunk mean".