Your unpopular music opinions

Da Shins Kelly

karaokeman wrote: »

I'd certainly agree GaGa can sing very well and I've heard some of those acoustic performances, better than Madonna (who I also can't stand).

But its the same as saying Adele can sing very well, it takes more than a great voice to be a great artist.

It takes more than a technically great voice to be be a great artist. But certainly some of the great artists of the past (Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra, Otis Redding, etc.) relied on their voices only, not songwriting skills, which immediately quashes the whole 'you're not a real artist unless you write your own material or play an instrument' argument. That said, there is a lot more to being a great singer than technical ability.

johnROSS

New Muse album is better than the early stuff.

LoonyLovegood

I listen to Nickleback, I actually quite like their latest album. I think the fact that they're universally derided means that they have quite little pressure on them when recording a new album.

All Time Low's new album is also a belter.

karaokeman

Da Shins Kelly wrote: »

It takes more than a technically great voice to be be a great artist. But certainly some of the great artists of the past (Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra, Otis Redding, etc.) relied on their voices only, not songwriting skills, which immediately quashes the whole 'you're not a real artist unless you write your own material or play an instrument' argument. That said, there is a lot more to being a great singer than technical ability.

You don't need to write your own material or play an instrument to be a real artist, but the artists you listed always deliver well in their performances, Lady GaGa may be a good singer but there's nothing interesting in the way she sings her songs, add that to the fact the lyrics are terrible. I'd rate Robbie Williams higher than her any day as a great artist whose more of a performer than a musician/songwriter, anyone whose seen him live knows that this is a guy who sings the words like he means it, even with songs he didn't write.

All in all this is an unpopular opinions thread, so I respect the fact we will not always agree on everything, variety is the spice of life as they always say.

rcaz

karaokeman wrote: »

You don't need to write your own material or play an instrument to be a real artist

I'd argue that yes, you absolutely do. Great singers who don't write their own stuff can be great singers, great interpreters, but they aren't (imo) artists. To be an artist you have to create new art.

old hippy

rcaz wrote: »

I'd argue that yes, you absolutely do. Great singers who don't write their own stuff can be great singers, great interpreters, but they aren't (imo) artists. To be an artist you have to create new art.

Mmm. I see where you're coming from but what about artists who rely on samples and turn the existing piece of art into something different and "new"?

Public Enemy, The Verve and countless others out there...

Rothko

johnROSS wrote: »

New Muse album is better than the early stuff.

I'd probably say that it's better than The Resistance and Showbiz but not as good as the rest of their albums. Supremacy is a great song though.

Birneybau

karaokeman wrote: »

Lady GaGa is average manufactured pop.

People make her out to be a genius, and hype about how she writes her own songs, but the songs she does write are rubbish.

Maybe its because so few pop acts are also songwriters, but there is a difference between writing a good pop song and writing an average one (like Lady GaGa does).

Incidentally it should be also be known that GaGa did not invent anything herself, most of her outfits and poses are a rip-off of everything Madonna did in the 80s. A fangirl who got lucky, I rest my case.

I was in New York for a while and from talking to people heard that she played every little sh!thole in that city for years before she broke through.

I never would have expected unqualified nonsense from you of all people! :eek:

karaokeman

rcaz wrote: »

I'd argue that yes, you absolutely do. Great singers who don't write their own stuff can be great singers, great interpreters, but they aren't (imo) artists. To be an artist you have to create new art.

So what about performance art?

There is more to creating art in music than whether you wrote the lyrics or the instrumentation to the songs.

Elvis is regarded as a great artist, because whilst he didn't write any of his own material, his showmanship and delivery were just as significant in making his shows the theatrical spectacles they were. He was not the sole creator of his art but his shows were the collaborated effort of the people who wrote his material and the performance of himself and his band in delivering those externally-penned pieces.

Its the same way if you go to see a really well orchestrated Shakespearean play, Shakespeare obviously was the author but the whole package in a performance is his writing, and the input of the cast, the stage design etc, but you wouldn't say it was an art entirely put together by Shakespeare.

kunst nugget

karaokeman wrote: »

So what about performance art?

Performance art is a conceptual branch of modern art. What's that got to do with Elvis?

karaokeman wrote: »

Its the same way if you go to see a really well orchestrated Shakespearean play, Shakespeare obviously was the author but the whole package in a performance is his writing, and the input of the cast, the stage design etc, but you wouldn't say it was an art entirely put together by Shakespeare.

But no matter how good the play is, it is still just an interpretation of Shakespeare's work.

Da Shins Kelly

rcaz wrote: »

I'd argue that yes, you absolutely do. Great singers who don't write their own stuff can be great singers, great interpreters, but they aren't (imo) artists. To be an artist you have to create new art.

Don't agree with that at all. Art can absolutely come about through interpretation. Billie Holiday didn't write her songs, but who else could have sung Strange Fruit the way she did? Strange Fruit is a work of art not only because of the lyrics, but because of the person who sang it.

By your logic, Shakespeare wasn't an artist. None of his plays are original, they're reinterpretations of already existing plays mainly from Greece. Still, Shakespeare's works are arguably the greatest artistic accomplishments we have, at the very least in the English-speaking world. It's not about just "creating", it's also about giving pieces a new lease of life and interpreting them in a way that cannot be replicated and is completely timeless. That is art. And anyway, barely anything is 100% "original".

And as has already been mentioned, the importance of sampling in hip hop is huge. Are you going to say that the majority of people making good hip hop music are not artists because they've sampled? It's about a connection between the old and the new. Does that mean that it's not really an art form?

cloptrop

Shins in all fairness if somebody drew the mona lisa by copying it from the real one it wouldnt be art itd be just good colorinng in .
If the words and music are the same its just good colouring in .
If the music is changed or the words its an interpretation .
Its not art . Hip hop you could argue is original art kinda how people make art out of recycled stuff nowadays . Yer man off icarly spencer does it .
Its art.

rcaz

Sampling is a difficult one. I've talked this one out a lot with friends and thought about my own ideas on it (even wrote an essay about it in college last year, which was cool).

Sampling can have loads of different uses... Hip hop takes the beat, or a guitar loop, or the bassline, or whatever other section, and uses that as a platform for the lyrics. The producers who sample heavily are building up the base for the MCs to rap on. Especially considering how much hip hop is politically or socially motivated, those MCs had a really important message to get across, and the music is just a platform for those messages. Take Public Enemy's Fight The Power, with all its samples of James Brown grunting and things... Sampling 70s funk like that is making a huge political statement before the MC even says a word. The split second you hear that immediately recognisable "Huh!" from Mr. Brown, you're thinking, "1970s, black arts movement, black power, racism, funk, rioting". It's such a powerful way of building the message. It was never about crafting sophisticated music or showing off how well-crafted they could make their tunes. It was about standing up and getting yourself heard. And that's what real art is, expressing what really makes you angry, or happy, or sad, or excited... There were so many problems that needed addressing, and hip hop grabbed you by the head and shoved your face in those problems, nobody could ignore it when guys like Chuck D were telling you.

But then you have bands like Daft Punk, who are fantastic producers, and just steal other people's songs to show how well they can remix and produce them. That isn't art at all, it's engineering.

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger? **** that...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3AKrwna2C8

I love hip hop, and I love sampling, but it needs to be done honestly and originally for it to be any good, in my eyes anyway...

jimjim23

i hate kings of leon apart from their first album,
i like john denver and think simply red had a couple of good songs even tho the guy is a plank.
cannot listen to the radio as i hate nearly everything that somes on.
think kasabian and muse are pretty crap too

Da Shins Kelly

rcaz wrote: »

It's such a powerful way of building the message. It was never about crafting sophisticated music or showing off how well-crafted they could make their tunes. It was about standing up and getting yourself heard. And that's what real art is, expressing what really makes you angry, or happy, or sad, or excited...

As you say, real art is expressing what makes you sad or happy or angry, etc., so I don't really understand how you can then say that an interpretation cannot be considered art. If someone is taking a song written by someone else and putting their own stamp on it, using it as a way to express something within themselves or something in the bigger picture of society, singing it in a new way and in a way that will probably never be effectively replicated, how is that not art? How is Strange Fruit not art? Billie Holiday used Strange Fruit as a way to get across a message about lynching and continuing racism in the Deep South. Even if she didn't write it herself, the song would not be the same if she hadn't sang it. It took a coming together of different forces to make it art. She's not the only artist involved in its creation, but it is her voice that makes it what it is and makes it the definitive version (the only version, in my opinion).

It really is like saying Shakespeare wasn't an artist because his ideas were not all his own.

cloptrop

She is just a part of somebody elses art though . Its like calling the paintbrush an artist.

Sinfonia

cloptrop wrote: »

She is just a part of somebody elses art though . Its like calling the paintbrush an artist.

No it's not, because the paintbrush doesn't move autonomously.

Conception (composition) and execution (performance) function separately, although they may come from the same person.
The composition of a piece of music is an idea that exists in the mind - in some cases it may be transferred to paper. But the score is not 'music', as it contains no sonic properties - these are realised in performance (be it for the purposes of a live show or recording).

rcaz

Da Shins Kelly wrote: »

How is Strange Fruit not art?

It is, but that alone doesn't necessarily make Billie Holiday an artist. She was an incredible singer, for sure, but that's different to the creator-artist I always have in mind when I think of what I consider proper 'art'.

That's all a very special case though, Billie Holiday worked in a tradition based around borrowing and cover versions, that's how jazz worked at her time.
What about Tom Jones' Delilah, is that art on the same level as Strange Fruit?

cloptrop

Sinfonia wrote: »

cloptrop wrote: »

She is just a part of somebody elses art though . Its like calling the paintbrush an artist.

No it's not, because the paintbrush doesn't move autonomously.

Conception (composition) and execution (performance) function separately, although they may come from the same person.
The composition of a piece of music is an idea that exists in the mind - in some cases it may be transferred to paper. But the score is not 'music', as it contains no sonic properties - these are realised in performance (be it for the purposes of a live show or recording).

Big words dont make you right . Billie would have sang it like her boss ( producer) told her to . Making herno more an artist than the fella who sells paint brushes or the paint brush itself . She is a singer thats all.

Sinfonia

rcaz wrote: »

It is, but that alone doesn't necessarily make Billie Holiday an artist. She was an incredible singer, for sure, but that's different to the creator-artist I always have in mind when I think of what I consider proper 'art'.

That's all a very special case though, Billie Holiday worked in a tradition based around borrowing and cover versions, that's how jazz worked at her time.

To what category does she belong then?
If Ashkenazy, Brendel and Barenboim each play the same Beethoven sonata (all differently I might add), is Beethoven the only 'artist' in the picture? What we have left of Beethoven's music is not music at all, but a visual representation of it; for the purposes of actually creating sound, these interpreters (and others like them) are all we have.
If the performers are those who create the sound, are they not artists? How would you describe them?

rcaz wrote:

What about Tom Jones' Delilah, is that art on the same level as Strange Fruit?

What are you getting at with this one!

cloptrop wrote: »

Big words dont make you right . Billie would have sang it like her boss ( producer) told her to . Making herno more an artist than the fella who sells paint brushes or the paint brush itself . She is a singer thats all.

If anything, the voice (or other instrument) is equivalent to the paintbrush. If Michelangelo painted the way he was instructed by his teachers and those who commissioned works from him, does that make him any less an artist? He certainly wasn't the 'paintbrush' if he was holding one.

flyswatter

If you take Billie Holiday for example, she is an artist as her voice (which is singular to her) fills out the song after it's written and ultimately produces the end result.

cloptrop

Without the songwriter there is no billie holiday . No product no art .
She is just a singer / performer not an artist .
Is mikey graham from boyzone an artist . What about jedward are they artists ?

flyswatter

cloptrop wrote: »

Without the songwriter there is no billie holiday . No product no art .

Without her the art doesn't become that level of art in its end form.

Sinfonia

cloptrop wrote: »

Without the songwriter there is no billie holiday . No product no art .
She is just a singer / performer not an artist .
Is mikey graham from boyzone an artist . What about jedward are they artists ?

Without the production of sound there is no (musical) art either.

cloptrop

flyswatter wrote: »

cloptrop wrote: »

Without the songwriter there is no billie holiday . No product no art .

Without her the art doesn't become that level of art in its end form.

Singers are alot more common than you seem to think

NegativeCreep

Music loses it's appeal when you analyse is so much. If it sounds good, listen to it and if not, don't. Who cares who wrote it or anything else?

Sinfonia

NegativeCreep wrote: »

Music loses it's appeal when you analyse is so much. If it sounds good, listen to it and if not, don't. Who cares who wrote it or anything else?

A lot of people..?

NegativeCreep

Sinfonia wrote: »

NegativeCreep wrote: »

Music loses it's appeal when you analyse is so much. If it sounds good, listen to it and if not, don't. Who cares who wrote it or anything else?

A lot of people..?

Yeah but why? As long as it sounds good to you, thats all that matters.

Sinfonia

NegativeCreep wrote: »

Yeah but why? As long as it sounds good to you, thats all that matters.

That's all that matters to some, and that's fine.

Some others (musicologists, music analysts, philosophers, cultural theorists, historians, physicists, biologists, psychologists etc. etc. etc. etc.) are interested in music for reasons further than just the experience of listening to it.

Da Shins Kelly

rcaz wrote: »

It is, but that alone doesn't necessarily make Billie Holiday an artist. She was an incredible singer, for sure, but that's different to the creator-artist I always have in mind when I think of what I consider proper 'art'.

That's all a very special case though, Billie Holiday worked in a tradition based around borrowing and cover versions, that's how jazz worked at her time.
What about Tom Jones' Delilah, is that art on the same level as Strange Fruit?

Well, that's a pretty narrow idea of what art can be.
And, no on what earth is Tom Jones' Delilah on the same level as Strange Fruit?

And this talk of Billie Holiday singing it "the way her boss told her to" is utterly laughable. If you knew anything about Billie Holiday's career, you'd know that was utter bollocks. From the phrasing, to mimicking the sounds of musical instruments, her vocal style changed the face of popular singing. Pretty much every pop vocalist who has come after her owes something to her. So comparing her to the likes of whoever from Boyzone is a bit silly, in fairness.

Also, I don't think this is "over-analysing" or whatever. I think it's an interesting discussion!