On HU
Robert Stanley Martin with on-sale dates of comics in late 1947.
On how Hitchcock is the Birds.
Chris Gavaler on the superheroes of Patricia Highsmith.
Little reviews of Legion of Two and Sonic Youth.
Phillip Smith on the morality, or lack therof, of the Lego concentration camp set.
On why exploitation rape/revenge is better than Bergman’s Virgin Spring.
Utilitarians Everywhere
At Playboy I wrote about PBR&B and condescending to R&B.
At the Guardian I wrote about She Shred magazine, and fighting the erasure of women guitarists.
At the New Republic I wrote about The Intern, and Hollywood’s gross celebration of working without pay.
At Splice Today I wrote about
—the GOP’s inability to pander to women.
—Sonic Youth and Chuck D’s Kool Thing, and whether white people can make non-racist music videos.
—the first black Marvel superhero (not the Black Panther)
Other Links
Celebrate! Happy Birthday is in the public domain!
David Brothers on the importance of being careful in writing about race. It’s painful for me, since I’m one of his big negative examples, but he’s right. I should have been more careful.
Your ‘The Intern’ link just sends us back to the Hulk article.
@Badlanders:
Here it is, for now: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/122915/just-what-america-needs-movie-celebrates-unpaid-work
@Noah
re Sonic Youth and Chuck D:
Separate but equal?
Also: Can white people make non-racist criticism? (Rhetorical question.)
One more, re PBR&B:
Nobody puts an asterisk on Kanye West.
I’d say the problem is rather that indie rock gets credit for being innovative even when it isn’t (and like all forms of music, it usually isn’t) – because it’s collegiate, or maybe because it’s white and collegiate (because it certainly is white), or maybe because it’s non-black and collegiate, but demonstratedly not simply because it’s white – country’s white too and gets no unearned credit for innovation – with PBR&B being R&B that somehow sounds kind of like indie rock.
One more more thing, re the [i]Intern[/i] review:
This is superb.
This too:
Graham, the rhetorical question is worth asking!
I think Kanye’s genius isn’t actually as solidified as a lot of indie rock…country has class things going on that inflect it differently…
And sorry about the messed up link; I’ll fix it. And fire my unpaid intern…
You mean Kanye West’s reputation as a genius is less secure than that of a lot of indie rock, or that he isn’t as good as a lot of indie rock?
I’d say indie rock likewise has a class thing going on, but in its favor rather than to its detriment.
“And fire my unpaid intern…” Ha! It’s funny because it’s true and horrible.
I meant his reputation isn’t as secure. I think the combination of working in a pop idiom, insisting he’s a genius, and being (vocally) black means a lot of people want to think he’s a talentless fraud.
My enthusiasm for Kanye is somewhat variable, but I’d certainly rather listen to him than a lot of indie rock genius crap (like Ryan Adams, for example.) I loved the Kanye/McCartney collaboration from earlier this year.
Certainly he gets a greater quantity and quality of hate than any indie rocker, or any white musician, period, but I think currently he gets a greater quantity and quality of admiration too (rightly so). Anyway, my point was, I don’t see people saying he’s closer to white music than other black artists (I’ve seen people say it about Graduation and 808s and Heartbreak, but not about his subsequent work).
“I loved the Kanye/McCartney collaboration from earlier this year.” “Only One,” “FourFiveSeconds,” or both? In any case, me too (especially the second)!
Only One. I had somehow missed FourFiveSeconds. I like that okay…a little cutesy for my tastes (the general problem with McCartney.) But it’s an interesting collaboration.
McCartney – the greatest composer since Debussy died and Schoenberg and Stravinsky became responsible grown ups – is cutesy like a fox.
It’s when he tries to be Honest that he gets into trouble.
“McCartney – the greatest composer since Debussy died and Schoenberg and Stravinsky became responsible grown ups”
Yeah…that’s an utterly insane thing to say, imo. But different strokes…
I mean, that appears to be making McCartney a greater composer than Duke Ellington, among other problems.
If he weren’t so great, there wouldn’t be so many people explaining that he isn’t.
That’s…not convincing logic. He’s extremely, extremely popular. So you’ve got lots of people saying he’s great and lots saying he isn’t. Trump isn’t our savior just because lots of folks say he isn’t, you know?
Unless you believe in the wisdom of crowds in some sort of straightforward way, cultural profile isn’t an indication of genius (it’s not a counter-indication either, of course.)
Sorry, missed the second reply. Let’s put it this way – Jimi Hendrix is better than Ellington, and McCartney is better than Hendrix.
Yes, those are both false statements. If we were in a Bergman film, God would strike you down.
Dear God, we’ve synchronized our commenting.
I’m not just talking about popularity – though popularity does mean something, and long lasting popularity means more – but about the intensity of the negative criticism. Of course even that isn’t final proof of greatness, but especially since it has next to nothing to do with any of the above articles – and also because I’m lazy – I thought a suggestive sentence was better than a long defense.
Trump is actually a good analog: He’s a far worse person than even most of the left realizes, but he’s undeniably a talented campaigner, and the frequency and intensity with which people have tried to deny that by prematurely declaring his candidacy dead merely confirms it. Talent isn’t morally normative. (I know you know that, but it’s worth repeating.) Godfathers of rock criticism Lester Bangs, Robert Christgau, and Greil Marcus ended up hating the Beatles as the villains who took away rock’s innocence. (They were wrong – graduation from naïveté to experience is always a good thing – but they thought they were right.)
Marcus loves the Beatles.
Trump isn’t a good campaigner. Trump is a good entertainer; he’s talented at getting publicity, which is a way to rack up poll numbers. it’s not a good way to win the nomination, though, which requires things like getting support from party actors (through endorsements, contributions, etc.) and building campaign infrastructure (which all signs suggest he’s not very good at.)
So…yeah, basically nothing you said about Trump makes any sense, imo. He’s very good at getting press attention, and so that creates a dynamic where lots of people point out that he’s not in fact going to win despite lots of attention. But that doesn’t show that Trump is a good campaigner.
Similarly, the fact that some handful of rock critics don’t like the Beatles doesn’t tell you the Beatles are great, any more than the fact that the overwhelming majority of rock critics love the Beatles tells you anything in particular.
Though John’s a much better songwriter than Paul, of course.
“graduation from naïveté to experience is always a good thing ”
Seeing the Beatles as more sophisticated and less naive than Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, or Etta James is quite confused, imo.
I appreciate the contrarian chutzpah in going for McCartney over Ellington, though. Misguided, but impressive.
No, he hates them. He just learned to hide it as he got older and wiser (i.e. less interesting). Here’s his manifesto from before he did: http://greilmarcus.net/2014/07/11/the-beatles-1979/
Key passage: “Revolver retains the flash its title promised, but little of the soul its predecessor delivered. Compared to either, Sgt. Pepper appears playful but contrived, less a summing up of its era than a concession to it.”
That’s what the cows who run and comment on the process when the status quo is secure claim is required, because it’s what they know how to do.
But that’s beside the point here anyway – the point is, everybody’s been saying for months that he sucks so bad and this is the crisis that will finish him – and then it doesn’t, and then they say it again, and then it doesn’t. (But hey, there’s evidently no price to pay for getting it wrong over and over again, so if they just keep saying it, then when and if he goes away they can claim foresight, and if not, they’re fine anyway.)
This is cant, but interesting in that it’s pure unreconstructed cant from the ’70s.
Subtext: “Damn it, it was understood that we critics (English majors) were going to be providing the sophistication in rock & roll by explicating its cultural semiotics, and now those fucking Beatles go and make the music sophisticated? They’re not supposed to do that. We don’t even know how to write about that!”
There’s no chutzpah in saying the Beatles are better than Ellington. Maybe in saying “McCartney” instead of “the Beatles,” but that’s its own conversation.
What does tell you whether or not the beatles are great?
Missed this part:
There are basically two kinds of Beatles commentators: The ones who just don’t know enough about who did what to know that from Revolver on it was McCartney’s show, and the ones who do know but take pains to say it in a way that’s nicer to Lennon.
@evan
Same thing that tells you whether any art is great. (I’m not putting it that way to be elusive, but because of course nobody agrees on what tells you whether art is great – with many people – well, many humanities students – believing there’s no such thing as artistic greatness in the first place.)
If you mean how do I conclude that the Beatles are great, the answer is, primarily by the degree of originality that I, as best I can judge, hear in their music, or have had pointed out for me by other commentators.
But the way they make critics fume, and more importantly the way subsequent important musicians (notably including Kanye West) seem to be obsessed with them – judging by things they say and/or by the ways the Beatles’ music shows up in their own – are among the things that reassure me that my judgment is correct.
Yeah…it wasn’t McCartney’s show. It got less of a group effort, and that’s when Paul’s songs went in the toilet.
Trump’s doing well in the polls. It’s months before anyone votes. Polls don’t matter that much. Some folks were arguing that polls meant more now, and endorsements less, because there’s more money now, and so people wouldn’t drop out as they had in the past. But in fact people are dropping out. It’s possible campaigning has transformed suddenly this cycle…but probably not.
Bernie Sanders doesn’t have a chance either, which will probably annoy you even more.
The Beatles aren’t especially original, I don’t think, nor especially important to pop music at the moment (they haven’t been since white rock stopped being the most important thing.) But they’re still good.
Chuck Berry doesn’t need cultural commenters to point out that he’s really smart any more than the Beatles do. You just have to listen to his lyrics. He’s an incredibly sophisticated and witty writer—way more so than Dylan or the Beatles. Next you’re going to be telling me that Marion Williams isn’t as musically sophisticated or original as Taylor Swift. Please.
But hey, you want to be out here lumping Trump and McCartney together as geniuses the intelligentsia can’t appreciate, it’s okay with me (seems a little mean to Paul, but I’m okay with that.)
I remember you said the same in your review of “Only One” (which I read, enjoyed, forgot about, then remembered after you specified you were talking about “Only One” in this comment section).
Leaving aside the Beatles’ influence on important black musicians, I think what you’re primarily doing is wishfully asserting that white people don’t matter any more in popular music, which isn’t true – electronic dance music is of course important, and more pertinent to this discussion, so is Swedish pop music, which is massively indebted to rock both directly (Max Martin started out in a rock band and you can hear it all over his work, starting with “Baby One More Time”) and by way of ABBA.
On the contrary – I don’t think he has a chance either, but your quietly growing negative obsession with him (see, I read your weekly reviews even when I don’t comment on them) is one of the things that give me a bit of hope.
Case in point.
Yeah, no.
And here we see that, even as a lyricist, Berry does need cultural commentators to build him up to the level of Dylan, or even the somewhat less eminent level of Lennon (not that he asked them to do it).
Depending on what “musically” means, you could say that neither of them are very sophisticated or original in that respect – but with regard to words, and the relationship of words and music, Marion Williams isn’t as sophisticated or original as Taylor Swift.
Taylor Swift isn’t sophisticated and original at all! For pity’s sake (and certainly not as much so as Williams.)
Here we see that Bob Dylan desperately needs cultural commenters to build him up to the level of Chuck Berry. See what I did there? (And hey, there are even more cultural commenters building Dylan up, so he must be worse!)
Seriously, Dylan’s lyrics are mostly sub-Beat doggerel. It’s a constant wonder to me that anyone thinks he’s a profound or thoughtful writer. For the most part it’s, hey, what’a good rhyme…oh yeah, there’s one. And it makes no sense. The cultural critics will love it!
The only interesting thing about this old critical Hail Mary is how weak it is.
An adequate evaluation of Dylan’s lyrics of course has to account for how they’re effected by his music and/or vise versa, and to evaluate them as written poetry is to evaluate a deformed fragment – yet even so, as written poetry his lyrics annihilate all of the written poetry by the Beats.
…I think Dylan’s a better singer than he ever gets credit for…
[runs] (I really do think that, though.)
No reason to run (well, maybe from Noah) – he’s one of the greatest singers ever.
Oh dear…now you’re putting me in the position of defending the Beats. That’s rough. I pretty much loathe them all…but yeah, they’re still often better than Dylan (though he has his moments….and of course he sometimes uses traditional lyrics, which tends to work better.)
BU, you don’t need to defend Dylans’ singing. He’s regularly cited as one of the great rock singers. Obviously lots of people (including me) criticize him too, but if there’s a consensus either way, it’s probably on your side (I suspect Graham thinks he’s a genius as a singer, for example.)
_____
Re: Bernie Sanders, I’m way more obsessed with rape/revenge films than with him. So maybe rape/revenge films will be the next president!
I’d be happy to be wrong about Sanders winning the nomination…so if you feel like doubting him is likely to bring that to pass, I should probably just keep on keeping on…
Hah! And sure enough, Graham weighs in with the conventional wisdom. Seriously, everyone’s convinced themselves Dylan’s singing is marvelous as part of the general “Dylan is awesome” groupthink. You’re totally safe, BU.
Here’s one of my all time favorite Marion Williams tracks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjnwwkH5yY4
I guess Graham won’t be impressed—but the way she uses her breathing to add rhythmic starts and staggers to the lyrics is amazing, imo—you can really see the connection between blues shouting and preaching rap. And of course the “oh” addressing death gets drawn out and turned into a moan and lament. I love the way she stretches out “this is the way death begin-in-in-in” — as if afraid to have death begin, or acknowledging that there is really no beginning of death; once you’re started that’s it.
I have some trouble figuring out how Taylor Swift stands up to that in any regard…or Bob Dylan for that matter. But of course no accounting for, etc. Maybe Graham thinks Taylor Swift declaring in a snotty thin whine that “he’s handsome as hell/he’s so bad but he does it so well” is an amazing and original feat of lyrical prosody. (If you do think that Graham, you really, really need to pitch to mainstream sites. Somebody will pay you to say that, I guarantee it.)
Here’s Chuck Berry; one of my favorite lyrics of his is “Nadine”. “I shouted to the driver here conductor please…slow down” The pause between please and slow is everything.
also “coffee-colored Cadillac” and “I was pushin’ through the crowd tryin’ to get to where she’s at/I was campaign shouting like a Southern diplomat.” He does all these great changes in register, using aave and then switching up to throw in an unexpected vocab word like diplomat — or mispronouncing a la carte so it’s got an extra syllable in “Promised Land,” or telling a bobby soxer “wiggle like a whimsical fish.” It’s so funny that Graham’s like, “critics have to beef this up” blah blah…anyone can understand why Chuck Berry’s wonderful. Kids can get it. He’s funny and smart and silly and wry, and just loves language. It’s like Ogden Nash (who is also a genius.) But, sure, Dylan’s a genius because she breaks just like a woman, and the sky cracks with naked wonder. Whatever.
and finally fwiw, Graham, it’s not about white musicians not being influential. It’s the Beatles specifically who don’t have that much of an influence. Kraftwerk is a rather different story.
Okay, let’s say it out loud: This has nothing to do with aesthetics, and a lot to do with post-Baby Boomer daddy issues. (And of course conversely I’m enlisting McCartney and Dylan as grandparent allies against my own Oedipal fathers, but I’m also right.) Everything you write about the Beatles and Bob Dylan reeks of insecurity (hyperbolic denigration alternating with attempts to look impartial by giving insignificant amounts of credit). If somebody else were writing it, and it concerned artists to whom you’re indifferent, you would notice immediately.
Interestingly, what you’ve written about Taylor Swift gets a bit intemperate too – “snotty” and “thin” and a “whine”; telling me a mainstream publication will pay me to praise her (as if there’s any shortage of people already doing that). Unlike the Beatles and Dylan, whose work you obviously know fairly well even if you do your best not to think too carefully about it, you seem to be only casually familiar with her, so maybe that’s just a reaction to her critical clout.
re particular points:
– Oh really? Which Beats in which passages?
– Conventional wisdom is of course sometimes correct, but if it weren’t, it’s just as conventional to say Bob Dylan’s singing sucks as to say he’s a great singer. Your opinion on Twilight is unconventional. Your opinions expressed here aren’t.
– If you (you specifically) wanted to, you could write thousands of words itemizing powerful effects of inflection in Dylan’s recorded singing performances as you do for Marion Williams above. You just don’t want to.
– Your calling Ogden Nash a genius is a self inflicted knock out – that’s not the intellectual sanctifying low entertainment, that’s just middlebrow taste. Though you are exactly correct in identifying Chuck Berry as essentially a writer of light verse.
– The Beatles are influential. They’re influential on the most ruthlessly commercial pop of our time – as I already mentioned, and you ignored – and on the most prestigious (Kanye West, whatever indie band Pitchfork likes this year). Live with it.
– It’s too late to bring in Kraftwerk as token whites now, you already omitted them from your list in the piece to which I referred (“But James Brown and Michael Jackson are clearly a lot more important to what happens on the radio these days than Lennon/McCartney”). (Of course, Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones owed a lot to Kraftwerk, but you didn’t say so.)
– It occurs to me that I never replied to your reply, re McCartney’s role in the Beatles after 1966.
First, it didn’t become “less of a group effort” – or rather, an effort of a team of two, which is all it ever was – until after Sgt. Pepper.
Second, I strongly suspect that you just have no idea how much McCartney did with many of the others’ songs. Honestly: Do you know that, for example, the mellotron line that begins “Strawberry Fields Forever” and later gets taken over by the horns is his? Or that the “I’d love to turn you on” refrain in ‘”A Day in the Life” is his, and the drums playing ornamentation rather than keeping the beat at least half his (he suggested the concept to Ringo and they wrote the part together, as they often did – who came up with precisely what is probably something only the two of them know, if that). I can keep going for a long time. (Or you could just read Mark Lewisohn’s and Geoff Emerick’s books.)
I have NEVER in my entire life heard ANYONE say Dylan could sing – except me. Maybe I need to crawl out of my cave more often, but I’ve heard a lot of the exact opposite.
Briefly, my case is just that there’s more to good singing than a perfect voice. He does have timing and -for lack of a better term- soul.
—
Incidentally, swipes at a pop princess’ musical talent is not exactly daring, is it? Did Ms. Swift do something to your dog, Noah?
@BU
I think Noah’s problem may be that too many people are talking about her as though she’s more than a “pop princess.”
:D Funny, the stuff that pops out when you have a roomful of contrarians -and I certainly don’t except myself- trying to out-contrary each other like so many Kilkenny cats. I never thought I’d live to be associated with ‘groupthink’ for doing a ‘Bob Dylan can TOO sing’ drive-by…
I can’t speak for you, but I don’t consider myself a contrarian – I’m just often right when everybody else is wrong – and I don’t think Noah is either. He’s just original.
Just to be impossible, I’m going to agree.
Graham, you’ve descended into psychological whining and general personal insults. Which, you know, there really isn’t any reason to do that. I’m not insulting your mom; I’m trying to talk amicably about music. If you like different stuff, that’s fine. I think you’re wrong, but I’m generally interested in other’s opinions about such things.
I was *not* insulting you about writing a mainstream piece about Taylor Swift! I was totally serious. I think you have a unique take on her, and somebody would pay you to write about her. If you want to email me, I can try to point you to editors who might be interested. Yes, of course, everybody writes about her already, but that’s the thing; people want to read about her. You’ve got something to say. It’s not a diss at all; my job is writing about pop performers everybody writes about. I’m just saying you could do it well, that’s all. Somebody will pay you to write about how Taylor Swift is a technically proficient singer who has advanced the musical art; no lie. This is a thing you could absolutely get paid for.
I don’t give a crap about Strawberry Fields or A Day In the Life, pretty much. Not Beatles songs I especially like or care about (I don’t dislike them either; they’re fine). I generally assume much of the fussy studio trickier is McCartney. That’s not what I listen to the Beatles for.
Why is it too late to mention Kraftwerk? I wrote something once and never may I add or subtract? Kraftwerk’s wonderful. I’m sorry if it throws off your demon Noah caricature to praise them, but conversations can be like that. (I mean, you could alternately say, “hey, I like Kraftwerk too! common ground!”)
I don’t have “daddy issues” with the Beatles or Dylan. I think they’re overrated, but I like a lot of their music. I think Dylan can be wonderful, and the Beatles are great. It’s you who seem bizarrely anxious about it. Is it really some sort of monstrous threat to your aesthetic paradigm and sense of self if someone says, “the Beatles— great, but maybe not the best ever”? Come on now.
I don’t hate Taylor Swift either. I kind of wish I liked her more, because I’d be able to get paid to write about her, but she’s fine for the most part, and has written some entertaining songs. I have no problem with people taking her seriously — why not?— but yes, I don’t think she’s comparable to Marion Williams, and her singing is mostly kind of crap. She’s got a talent for pop hooks, though, and I find her persona intermittently interesting. I quite like song/video/lyrics for “We’re Never Ever Getting Back Together.” There are lots of bands I like less (Pearl Jam, for example.)
Honestly, I was hoping the conversation would go to you explaining at greater length why you think Taylor Swift is a good singer, not to you getting offended because I suggested it would be interesting for you to talk at greater length about why you think Taylor Swift is a good singer. That’s the way it goes though, I guess.
BU— Dylan’s on Rolling Stones list of greatest singers. He shows up on such things a lot. I agree that having a conventionally good voice isn’t the same thing as being a good singer; I just don’t think Dylan is a good singer or has a good voice (as opposed to Billie Holiday or Dock Boggs, two singers with not conventionally good voices who I think are good singers.)
Dylan does have his moments as a singer, he sometimes does interesting things with what he’s got. But it’s pretty inconsistent, imo.
Oh come on, Noah, I could practically see the spit on your monitor in your next to last comment. (“Hah! And sure enough, Graham weighs in with the conventional wisdom…”)
That’s in reply to the first two sentences of your new comment. Reading the rest now.
Graham, you weren’t seeing spit, you were seeing red. Get over yourself.
“Oh come on, Noah, I could practically see the spit on your monitor in your next to last comment.”
??? I mean, obviously you don’t have to believe me, but that was totally said in good humor. It doesn’t bother me that you love Dylan’s singing. Like I said, lots of people love Dylan’s singing. I’m sure you could articulate reasons why which I would enjoy reading more than I like reading Greil Marcus’. I just thought it was a little amusing that I predicted it, that’s all.
Why should I get over myself? I love myself and myself loves me back.
@Noah
I’m half way through a longer reply, but getting this out of the way first: If that was good humor, it sure disappeared fast in the next sentence.
Oh, come on. I’m not allowed any jabs or I’m somehow writhing in envy and daddy issues? Seriously, if occasional sneers are some sort of sign of psychoanalytic chaos, you’re a mess. (I don’t think they are, and I don’t think you’re a mess.)
Noah, you told me and BU that we’re controlled by groupthink.
And please, you’ve (rightly) hanged artists for fewer occasional slips than I’m enumerating here.
I think it’s clear that we’re both a mess in many ways. Doesn’t mean we aren’t both sometimes right.
– Okay, so what Beatles songs do you like?
– You were insulting me (seriously, go back and read that paragraph from beginning to end and tell me it looks like anything else), but I’m flattered that you think I could write well about her and very grateful for the offer, though I won’t be taking you up on it. Writing about Taylor Swift is particularly difficult for me. Defending her proficiency is easy and at this point mostly redundant. The question is whether she’s more than that and by how much. I intuitively feel like there’s more there than I can consciously identify – but of course intuition can be wrong, and what I think I can identify could just be me outsmarting myself.
– You’ve somehow moved from being mad at me for saying she’s good at writing words and combining them with music to asking me why I think she’s a good singer, but okay, since I think she is, two examples from the new album: in “Blank Space,” the downward slurs in “got a long list of ex-lovers”; in “Style,” the way she articulates every syllable of “James Dean day-dream” with separate breaths, giving her voice percussive effect, in sync with the drum machine – again, all especially common in rap, though of course not unique to it – and then the abrupt switch to soft head voice at the last note of “look in your eye” (replaced by full chest voice at the climax).
Uh huh.
“It’s a constant wonder to me that anyone thinks he’s a profound or thoughtful writer. For the most part it’s, hey, what’a good rhyme…oh yeah, there’s one. And it makes no sense.”
“The Beatles aren’t especially original, I don’t think, nor especially important to pop music at the moment (they haven’t been since white rock stopped being the most important thing.)”
And in both cases this is the third of fourth time that I’ve seen you say things like the above (of course, this is convenient – if I remember past instances, then I’m the obsessive one, and if I don’t remember them, then they never happened).
“No, you’re crazy.”
I don’t know – is that the kind of thing that makes you tell people they’re “Misguided” and “quite confused”?
Forgot: You can’t separate the “fussy studio trickery” (“fussy” means “complicated and also I don’t like it”) from… well, whatever it is you do listen to the Beatles for. (What is that)
My favorite Dylan vocal performance is “Tell Me Momma” from that Royal Albert Hall Concert (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1rOxU3IzuQ). There’s some impressive wailing in that one.
Not all of Dylan’s lyrics are great; Noah mentioned “Just Like a Woman,” which Woody Allen made fun of in Annie Hall. But I think a lot of them resonate. “I can’t even touch the books you’ve read,” “”Something is happening here but you don’t know what it is,” “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows,” “They’ll throw up their hands and say ‘We’ll meet all your demands,’ but we’ll shout from the deck ‘Your days are numbered.'” I even like “I’ll pay in blood but not my own” from his last album. He’s written a pretty wide range of lyrics, not all of which are stream-of-consiousness stuff about one-eyed midgets and “curfew plugs.” His 60s-era liner notes and that book Tarantula may be sub-beat doggerel, but a lot of it is great.
The Beatles and Dylan are considered gods; you can like them a lot and still think they’re really overrated. Of course, you can reassure yourself that I don’t *really* like them if it makes you feel better, or gives you someone you’d rather argue against—I can’t do anything about that.
Beatles songs I like! I love Helter Skelter (which is Paul of course). “What Goes On” from Rubber Soul is wonderful and weird (I think that’s John and Paul both, right?). “Everyone’s Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey”, “I Saw Her Standing There”, “If I Needed Someone”, “Yer Blues” “Money” “Boys”, “Come Together” (a little overplayed, but I still like it), “Tomorrow Never Knows”…I don’t know. Lots of things. They’ve been one of my favorite bands at various points; not sure that’s quite the case now, but they’re still great.
I’m not mad at you for your enthusiasm for Taylor Swift in any regard. Be enthusiastic! In this case conventional wisdom is on my side, so there’s no reason to be exercised about a dissenting voice.
“Fussy” doesn’t really mean complicated. Paul’s arrangement are fey and arch— dink, dink, dink, wink. I don’t always find that off-putting in every context (not even from Paul), but the music hall tooting does get on my nerves sometimes (especially in the dreadful mega-hit ballads like Yesterday or Michelle; bleah.) But I like Blackbird quite a bit too; when Paul had someone to edit him, he could be great (as I think the collaborations with Kanye seem to be showing as well.) I don’t have much affection for Wings though.
Jack, I can’t say I’m enthusiastic about any of those lyrics. “Something is happening but you don’t know what it is” always struck me as particularly crabbed and self-righteous. But better than “Bucket of rains/bucket of tears/all these buckets coming out of my ears”; sheesh.
I don’t know, maybe you’re right. It’s hard to quote rock lyrics and talk about how great they are without embarrassing yourself. Maybe his best lyrics are just simple sentiments made more powerful by music, like, “Any day now, any day now, I shall be released.”
I remember someone pointing out that “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” includes some outright embarrassing lyrics (“Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter/Heard the song of a clown who cried in the alley”) mixed with lyrics that hint at some kind of apocalypse in an understated way (“I saw a white ladder all covered with water”) and one that in retrospect seems like a prophecy about African child soldiers (“I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children”).
@Noah
– I do believe you like them. I know as well as anybody that to truly hate something you also have to like it.
– Okay, so to rewrite the earlier question: Do you know that “Come Together” was just going to be a Chuck Berry pastiche before McCartney started making suggestions (slowing it down, and the drum part is another co-write by him and Ringo); or that the skipping beat under “Tomorrow Never Knows” is his idea (you can hear what that one sounded like in an earlier stage on the Anthology collection – http://tinyurl.com/qc53rez).
–
This is… okay, let’s say it nicely… a myth. Lennon loved “Yesterday” and co-wrote “Michelle.” He detested “Helter Skelter” (or at least that’s the way he always told it after the band broke up) and seems not to have thought much of “Blackbird.”
There’s no documented case of Lennon and McCartney vetoing each other’s contributions to albums (maybe exactly one – I can’t remember, but it may have happened to Lennon’s “What’s the New Mary Jane”) (poor George Harrison’s attempts to contribute are another story). Or, if by “edit” you mean changing songs rather than throwing them out, the documented examples there are minor things like, in “I Saw Her Standing There”, replacing “never been a beauty queen” with “if you no what I mean.”
– The refrain is the weak point in “Ballad of the Thin Man,” but the verses are magnificent.
The opening of “Buckets of Rain” on the other hand is a perfectly good little lyric – comic exaggeration of how much he’s been crying to hide how miserable he really is. But even if they weren’t, that song is such an unobtrusive throwaway that to single it out for negative criticism just looks like ill intent (which, hey, it is).
“Buckets of Rain” is actually one of my favorite Dylan songs. That lyric is a clunker, but it’s a lovely tune, and I like his singing on it.
By “edit” I mean work together on, not just veto. I figured Paul was involved in Tomorrow Never Knows (the studio trickery again). And I didn’t say John was infallible; he seems to have benefited from collaboration too. Imagine is dreadful, and certainly shows that Lennon could write a song almost as bad as the worst of McCartney. (Whether I hate Imagine or Yesterday more is hard to say…)
But part of it was probably that they just got older too; pop perfromers run out of inspiration and ideas. It happens.
All artists (including us critics!) run out of ideas. Then they either come up with new ones, or repeat themselves, or try something they aren’t any good at. The Beatles ran out of ideas after A Hard Day’s Night and then reinvented themselves several times.
McCartney has actually never repeated himself much, and he didn’t get stuck trying to do things he couldn’t until the ’80s (as Lester Bangs’ grudgingly admitted, you could call him a wuss for Band on the Run but you couldn’t say he was washed up).
His problem after the Beatles isn’t lack of inspiration, but a sort of defensive self deprecation – “So, I know I got kind of pretentious in the ’60s, but we all know that really this music is all just supposed to be silly love songs [a masterpiece on its own terms, of course], right?” I think the deepest cause may be ambivalence about the gender role revolution that was so closely tied up with the concurrent revolution in popular music. But Wings is great on its own terms in any case.
Also: It’s easy to make fun of the chorus of “Just Like a Woman,” but Woody Allen would kill to have written “her fog, her amphetamine, and her pearls” (and he might not know enough to kill to have written “tonight as I stand inside the rain,” but he should).
Then again, Dylan might kill to have written, “You know what I like most about masturbation? It’s the cuddling afterwards.” I wonder if the two diminutive Jewish egomaniacs ever met; I guess WA’s career in New York nightclubs started a few years after Dylan’s.
I think Band on the Run sounds fairly washed up. Having new ideas doesn’t matter much if they’re bad.
“her fog, her amphetamine, and her pearls” is one of those moment where Dylan’s singing makes the lyrics worse, I think.
If the ideas are genuinely new and genuinely bad, that’s not being washed up, that’s talent plus bad taste. But Band on the Run is new and good.
Dylan’s singing basically always makes the lyrics better, at least until he actually ruined his voice in 1976 after Desire.
Good lord…you think silly love songs is a masterpiece. How I hate that song…
Get with it! – everybody thinks that one’s a masterpiece now.
Stupid everybody…
Well yeah, it took them about 35 years.
(More precisely it took the critics about 35 years.)
Oh, and I overstated the Beatles’ lack of originality. They were obviously hugely influential in white rock in lots of ways, including use of the studio. I think they get credited with everything because they were so popular, and claims that they created sophistication in rock is silly (imo), but they were quite important.
I didn’t say they created sophistication in rock. I said the opinion makers blamed them for it.
They did do it better than everybody else, though. (Which is why they got the blame.)
Oops, missed the adjective – “hugely influential in white rock” – just got to hold on to the qualifications to the end, huh?
Hah; well, mainly in white rock. they were so big that lots of poeple picked up on them obviously (Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder were both listening, I’m sure.)
The idea that musical talent is the ability to come up with something new sounds nonsensical to me. Yo Yo Ma is an obvious contradiction there. His talent is execution and interpretation, not strictly creation perse.
Nobody ever accused Yo Yo Ma of being a composer.
Though performers are expected to come up with original interpretations, as you half said.
Yes, but even composers don’t come up with anything strictly *new*, necessarily. They’re all just remixing, sampling whoever came before. None of the people you talked about are any different. Queue the obligatory Octavia Butler quote, “There is nothing new under the sun…”
The Beatles’ earlier stuff is a perfect example of this. Basically everything before Revolver was successful because they found a catchy chord progression that just always turns into an earworm. If you actually look at the sheet music for it (which I have, and I’ve played those songs), they’re the most boring pieces of music since the cello part of Pachelbel’s Canon.
Yes, originality consists of how you use preexisting material. Your point?
If there were “a catchy chord progression that just always turns into an earworm” then everybody who wanted to would have exactly as many hits as the Beatles.
“If the ideas are genuinely new and genuinely bad, that’s not being washed up, that’s talent plus bad taste.”
There are no new ideas. All the most “innovative” composers or musicians I can think of explicitly play or sample very old genres, or at least, genres that harken back to an older time, so to speak. The Punch Brothers, the Yoshida Brothers, CloZee, Goran Bregovic…none of them did anything new. That’s what made them so brilliant.
There’s a fun GB Shaw essay where he argues that Mozart was great because he was so unoriginal (as opposed to Haydn, who was more original but less great.)
Shaw believed in progress in the arts in a straightforward way though….
Yeah, okay, you’re riding a hobby horse that has nothing to do with what I’m saying, so you just keep doing that.
Also, you do know that that half of the epigram isn’t Olivia Butler’s, yes?
Octavia, not Olivia!
“If there were “a catchy chord progression that just always turns into an earworm” then everybody who wanted to would have exactly as many hits as the Beatles.”
Everybody either writes the music they wanna hear or the music they wanna sell. The Beatles wrote really catchy, earwormy tunes. But even earworms get boring and old. Some people just get over them faster and don’t like them because they are uninteresting. “Fancy” and almost all of Katy Perry’s output are good examples.
(Sorry, I’m writing this hurriedly, be back in an hour or so)
Oh crap…I should have known it was Octavia…sorry, total brain fart on my part.
Nevermind…I’m just not reading.
@Petar
Don’t worry, you wrote “Octavia.” “Olivia” was my mistake.
If you’re saying that earworms are necessarily uninteresting, that of course isn’t true.
@Noah
How do you figure? He all but explicitly said that Mozart is better than Beethoven or Wagner.
It seems to me that what Shaw did believe in was the eventual obsolescence of works of art, with some being able to continue to hold interest longer than others.
I’m sure he thought that things could go backwards too…but he said he was better than Shakespeare because more time had passed, he knew more, was more liberal, etc. The Mozart/Haydn argument also suggests that over time things get perfected….
Well, the poor man had to find some rationale for not just shooting himself when contemplating the competition.
Hah; there’s a lovely little Shaw short puppet play from late in his career which has Shaw and Shakespeare as punch and judy men hitting each other with sticks.
Yup! The penultimate lines just make me want to give Bernard a hug, though. (“For a moment suffer / my glimmering light to shine.”)
Ok I’m back.
@Graham (and Noah, for that matter)
I kinda jumped the gun with my complaint earlier, so let’s start from my actual problem, starting with two questions; what are your criteria for what makes a musician/his music great and/or innovative? And Graham, is your list of favorite musicians the same as your list of best/most innovative/most technically proficient musicians?
1. Innovations by definition can’t be according to any criteria. It’s an innovation when it hasn’t been done before.
2. No, my list of favorite musicians is not the same as my list of best musicians.
Ok, kudos on point 2.
On point 1, here’s my problem; the term “innovation” is largely meaningless when applied to music. You can’t invent new emotions to express, or sounds to utter, or even fundamentally new instruments. Music is all about remixing and interpretation and perspective, and you can’t invent your own perspective, you can only apply it. So if “innovation” is the creation of new music that nobody has heard before, that’s impossible, because all music is remixed. If innovation is merely the creation of new specific patterns and hooks, then that’s not particularly meaningful or interesting. A single hook doesn’t fundamentally change anything about contemporary music.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, talking about music in terms of “innovation” makes no sense to me, as a listener or as a musician. You can be technically proficient and evocative, and you can introduce people to something they haven’t necessarily heard before, but you can’t invent anything. Neither can McCartney, or West, or Swift.
Oh that poor “fundamentally” in front of “new instruments,” carrying the weight of a world on its shoulders.
More broadly what you’re saying here is nonsense, and I’ve got a pretty good guess as to why you’re saying it, and not too long ago this is the point where I would start breathing fire at you, but I realize that now I just don’t care much. I guess the death of the author really is itself finally mostly dead.
“I’ve got a pretty good guess as to why you’re saying it.”
Graham, all of your guesses as to why people say what they do are extremely stupid. You guessed that I put down Huffington Post/MSNBC-type liberals because I’m a moderate; that I criticized Quentin Tarrantino because I’m jealous of him; and that I wrote, “I’m just a little hurt and disappointed in Graham” because I’m a sincere admirer of your posts. You guessed that Jones said a Spiegelman quote may have referred to historically ignorant Europeans because Jones has issues with Europeans to which he will never admit. You guessed that Noah criticizes Bob Dylan and the Beatles because of Freudian daddy issues. I’ll refrain from guessing why you frequently say stupid things.
Argh; and I thought we’d de-escalated…I guess we’ll see if I need to close the thread. assume good faith, if you can all, etc.
Yeah, and I was right about all those things (especially about you being a fan – like I said about something else in this conversation, you have to like something to really hate it).
No, no, let’s all just take a breath and relax with a timeless musical masterpiece.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ap87QgZKTNw
“you have to like something to really hate it)”
I don’t think that’s exactly true. You need to have some investment to really hate something, but that doesn’t need to be love. Especially with something like the Beatles, you could be invested in them because they’re so ubiquitous, and you therefore have to deal with them. Or you could love other things that you feel the Beatles unfairly obscure. Or you could love the genre of rock and feel the Beatles betray it (as you say of some Beatles are.) And so forth…there are a lot of ways to care that don’t involve “really” liking something.
“Yeah, and I was right about all those things”
That’s interesting. I didn’t realize you claimed the ability to read minds over the Internet. That explains a lot actually.
Just imagine if “Silly Love Songs” was on the soundtrack of a Tarantino film–perhaps a zombie-movie pastiche about the Indian genocide. Best movie ever!
@Petar Duric
I somehow continue to be genuinely surprised by how people who are constantly reading artists’ get huffy when somebody does it to them.
@Jack
See, now this is something I got wrong; you people are way less hip than I guessed. These days getting snooty about “Silly Love Songs” means you’re the lame one.
General:
Reflecting on my earlier comment, using pop music as a barometer, I think I can pinpoint the year the death of the author died in 2010, when Kanye West was flagellating himself into making My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and M.I.A. delivered her divine critique of Lady Gaga (“people say we’re similar, that we both mix all these things in the pot and spit them out differently, but she spits it out exactly the same! None of her music’s reflective of how weird she wants to be or thinks she is. She models herself on Grace Jones and Madonna, but the music sounds like 20-year-old Ibiza music, you know?”).
Not that the author is coming back, s/he’s still dead, but now the murderer’s dead too.
Lady Gaga is a better performance artist than musician. I still like the meat dress.
As a performance artist Lady Gaga is a popularizer of things that sucked in the first place.
She’s an annoyingly talented melodist, though.
Nah, I like feminist performance art (or at least some of it.) It’s fun and bizarre to see that rejiggered for pop.
Her music isn’t any good though. It’s a shame.
I wish her music weren’t any good.
@Graham
“I somehow continue to be genuinely surprised by how people who are constantly reading artists’ get huffy when somebody does it to them.”
I’m not sure exactly what you mean by this sentence. I don’t see an object anywhere, so what are you saying?
It was supposed to be “reading artists’ minds” – since I was using your phrase, I figured I didn’t need to post a correction. Guess not.
I’m curious as to when you thought I was reading an artist’s mind…so when did you think I was reading an artist’s mind?
That’s what art criticism is. Presumably you’ve actually done some art criticism somewhere in one of the comment sections on this blog.
And then, of course, you presumed to read my mind in your very first post here.
Okay; I think we’ve probably gone well past diminishing returns here, so I’m goign to close it down. Thanks for commenting all.