>INTERVIEWER: You’ve allegedly changed your mind on certain albums you’ve reviewed. While I’ve seen your scores change slightly, have there been some albums you’ve done a complete 180 on?
>SCARUFFI: I keep hearing this, but which albums are you talking about? Slight changes in the ratings happen all the time because i need to balance one band’s ratings with all the others, but i can’t remember a major recording where i changed my mind (“garbage” to “masterpiece” or viceversa). I certainly changed my mind on the degree of influence, e.g. i never imagined that Black Sabbath or Radiohead would become so influential (i still don’t particularly like either, btw). Unfortunately, it happens only for the very famous albums that people ask me to re-listen and re-listen (often with the result that i get more and more convinced of my initial opinion, eg Revolver, one of the worst albums i’ve ever heard no matter how many times i re-listen to it).
Scaruffi rated Revolver a 5/10. He's rated dozens if not hundreds of albums with a lesser score, so either he's lying here for the click bait of him disliking The Beatles or he's been lying on his site.
Landon Stewart
>not liking Revolver He's not wrong though.
Jaxon Hall
>(i can’t even tell a C note from an E) Why do people listen to his opinions again?
Gabriel Flores
"I wish that people prompted me to re-listen to obscure recordings by obscure musicians, and that’s probably where i would change my mind. It is unlikely that i have not listened carefully to a wildly popular piece of music: i heard it more than once even if i didn’t want to. Very likely that i only listened once to a piece of music that nobody talked about, and so the chances that i screwed up are much higher."
Gabriel Wood
i think 2 max 3 times are enough to judge an album. I personally think only one listen is not enough, because the first listen can be negatively influenced by too much factors like your mood or the fact you don't know the genres, etc.
Brody Bailey
One of my most significant sources of new music is stuff I didn't like the first time. This happens pretty regularly.
Aaron Allen
Scaruffi is a decent historian but a shit critic. In his Radiohead review, he managed to shit on Radiohead, Bowie, Pink Floyd, Michael Jackson, Fleetwood Mac, U2 and Beatles (again), all in one sentence. He's just a contrarian who can't stand anything that's actually listenable to average people
Cooper Moore
He calls The Rolling Stones the greatest rock and roll band of all time and has a Bruce Springsteen album in his best albums ever list.
I think Scaruffi is something of a contrarian but not the extent people on here say he is.
Benjamin Bennett
It's always the Radiohead fans who have beef with Scaruffi
Eli Johnson
Idk, ignoring the Beatles' influence despite the number of artists that have called them an inspiration makes him a pretty big contrarian
Ayden Edwards
Artists aren't the brightest ppl you know? i could careless what crappy band inspires them. just the end product
Tyler Long
>(not true, by the way)
Nathaniel Reed
>who can't stand anything that's actually listenable to average people why is this a bad thing?
Charles Mitchell
It's also untrue
Robert Jones
yes but i was wondering why it's bad to (generally) dislike things that the unwashed masses parrot as masterpieces
Robert Bennett
uhh, it makes you a pretentious hipster contrarian?
David Lopez
>the unwashed masses >this faggot thinks he's some high-brow intellectual some bands bridge the gap between accessibility and quality
Kevin Scott
nice buzzwords
scaruffi has always been preoccupied with discovering and praising novel/original/avant-garde/experimental music
he doesn't give the beatles and radiohead 5/10s simply because being a contrarian makes him feel good. he does, however, take into account the type of person (generally) who praises albums like ok computer and revolver when approaching said artists
these people are (generally) plebeians with limited knowledge of experimental music history which is why they say OKC or Revolver are good "experimental" albums
you can go ahead and reply with the usual buzzwords or you can admit that this is a logical argument when it comes to making assumptions about bands that ignorant people hail as 'original' and 'experimental'
there is absolutely nothing wrong with liking either of the aforementioned bands/albums. scaruffi also stresses this point. but you people still don't understand how scaruffi rates music
Juan Young
Same. The first and second listen are often very different (for obvious reasons - you already know the basic structure of the song)
Anthony Jones
Well yeah that's all corporate music
Dylan Bennett
yes some do, what point are you trying to make?
Connor Flores
>Revolver, one of the worst albums i’ve ever heard >gave it a 5/10
Tomorrow Never Knows and A Day in the Life are genuinely experimental tracks for pop records. You can go ahead and post >for pop records and go off about how Scaruffi is talking about the wider world of art as a whole in his reviews but in that case he's hypocritical. The Beats and tons of blues musicians were making songs about drugs and prostitution before Lou Reed ever picked up a guitar. Captain Beefheart's called the James Joyce of music for Trout Mask Replica. Well, guess what? The real James Joyce did it half a century before Beefheart did.
Some of Scaruffi's critiques are blatantly false. Towards the end of his essay he says The Beatles started doing folk-rock after Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead had already started making that kind of music. Dylan's brand of folk-rock was really blues rock, at least for the electric trilogy (but that's a common mistake people make anyway, so I'll give Scaruffi a pass on that) and The Beatles had already experimented with folk rock on Beatles For Sale before the Grateful Dead had even formed.
Hunter Martin
>shit on Pink Floyd, Michael Jackson, Fleetwood Mac >shit critic pick one
Jose Murphy
And I ask this sincerely, at the end of the Beatles essay Scaruffi says the Beatles, "unlike Jagger and Zappa they had no impact on the sexual revolution". Lennon released an album cover with his dick and his girlfriend's tits hanging out. What did Zappa do that was comparable?
Alexander Ortiz
He does not ignore the Beatles' influence, he just says their music isn't as great or original as 99% of rock critics seem to believe, and he's absolutely right about that.
Hunter Bell
He has a whole paragraph about how they weren't influential.
>They were influential, yes, but on the customs - in the strictest sense of the word. Their influence, for better or for worse, on the great phenomena of the 60s does not amount to much. Unlike Bob Dylan, they did not stir social revolts; unlike the Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead they did not foster the hippie movement; unlike Jim Morrison & Jimi Hendrix they did not further the myth of LSD; unlike Jagger & Zappa they had no impact on the sexual revolution. Indeed the Beatles were icons of the customs that embodied the opposite: the desire to contain all that was happening. In their songs there is no Vietnam, there is no politics, there are no kids rioting in the streets, there is no sexual promiscuity, there are no drugs, there is no violence. In the world of the Beatles the social order of the 40s & the 50s still reigns. At best they were influential on the secret dreams of young girls, and on the haircuts of young nerdy boys.
The Beatles didn't heighten the myth of LSD? Then what the fuck are Tomorrow Never Knows, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds and A Day in the Life (I'd like to turn you on).
The Beatles just copied their brand of folk-rock from Dylan & the Dead? I already covered this in but if anything when they went full on into folk-rock w Rubber Soul they were as influenced by The Byrds as they were by Dylan.
They had no influence on the sexual revolution? Again, Lennon literally had his dick out on an album cover, though I'll concede that Jagger's libido wins him out on that regard.
He even says there are no drugs in their songs. The band that has a song that's called LSD in acronyms & a lyric of "I'd like to turn you on" had no drugs in their songs.
Fuck, I don't even think The Beatles have any perfect albums. All of them feel kinda unfocused & when they're not unfocused they just get boring in the middle. Scaruffi's just factually wrong with these critiques.
Austin Wood
>no violence You better run for your life if you can, little girl Hide your head in the sand little girl Catch you with another man That's the end ah little girl
Bang! Bang! Maxwell's silver hammer Came down upon her head Bang! Bang! Maxwell's silver hammer Made sure that she was dead
Again, these critiques of their songs by Scaruffi are objectively wrong and it's easily provable.
Gavin Long
I don't really understand his criteria. He clearly doesn't mind commercial music, but he only seems to like it if it's targeted at adults, whereas he tends to shit on anything that can be marketed to younger people and then finds excuses such as the audience's lack of experience and knowledge for why those bands are popular (and therefore bad). But I'm sure those arguments can be brought up for bands he likes as well, it's just that most people that read his reviews can't do that because they're young and don't have the knowledge or don't know what was really going on at that time. He really does seem like an old man shunning things young people like
Christian Phillips
>With his girlfriends tits hanging out
Ain't nothing sexy about Yoko naked. Disgusting.
Jeremiah King
>one of the worst albums I've ever heard he has a ton of albums rated under 5/10, how could he say that? also, not a beatles fan at all but no album with "she said, she said" on it is one of the worst albums ever
Luis Morales
He changed Laughing Stock from 9 to 7.
Liam Bennett
Really? Makes sense because I couldn't believe he didn't give it at least an 8.
Noah Barnes
he never have Laughing Stock a 9
unless you have proof otherwise
Ian Price
the only album that he ever gave a 9 and then lowered was some Talking Heads album. besides that he has never changed a 9 to something lower, although he has lowered 9.5s to regular 9s and vice versa
Colton Cooper
there's this pretense of objectivity and an academic approach to Scaruffi's reviews but his writing is so fucking sloppy and shallow so much of the time, and its basically to be expected with the gargantuan nature of his database that he's built on his own but it still doesnt excuse him.
Jaxon Powell
>(often with the result that i get more and more convinced of my initial opinion, eg Revolver, one of the worst albums i’ve ever heard no matter how many times i re-listen to it). Absolutely based
Luke Brown
nvm it was an 8.
Carson Morgan
>The Beats and tons of blues musicians were making songs about drugs and prostitution before Lou Reed ever picked up a guitar. you seem to think that scaruffi thinks TVU is good because they were the first to make songs about drugs/prosties
which blues musicians sounded like john cale's instrumentation on the first couple TVU albums? >Captain Beefheart's called the James Joyce of music for Trout Mask Replica. Well, guess what? The real James Joyce did it half a century before Beefheart did. lol you are a fucking idiot
Connor Walker
Exactly, he pretends to be objective but he's definitely not. You can tell there's a lot of emotion in his writing, otherwise he wouldn't be whining about Beatles in every other article. It seems like there's a lot of "I don't like it so let me explain why I'm right and everyone else is wrong"
Xavier James
More Songs About Buildings and Food isn't the only one, Ummagumma by Pink Floyd also went from 9 to 7.5 (and used to be in his top 10 albums of all time). I think he initially overrated it because numerous rock critics he respected had it all over their top lists.
Jace Adams
>I don’t really care to be told how many times the song uses the “C” note, but i do care to hear how that sequence of chords has been used since the 1950s in so many songs Holy shit, what a hack
Parker Jackson
he has literally never claimed to be objective I don't know why people think this
> I think that objective histories are not only boring, but also devoid of semantics. The history (of music, art, cinema, etc etc) that I like is the history of "alternative" (not influenced by marketing) art. While it is a gross approximation, it has become customary to separate "mainstream" music and "alternative" music. If you do what I did (listen to the music without being conditioned by marketing and sales), it is very unlikely that you will end up selecting the musicians who topped the charts, very likely that you will be impressed with countless obscure recordings that were twenty years ahead of their time even though nobody heard them. Fans of mainstream music will claim that it all boils down to personal taste. I beg to disagree. There is an absolute factor that bestows a form of primacy on alternative music.
there was another quote where he calls his criticism "the most subjective history of rock music ever written" but I can't find it.
Joshua Clark
>scaruffi says it's fake, it must be fake
you dumb faggot, when i was 15 i listened to bitches brew and hated it. now at 19 it's my favorite album at the moment
Zachary Thompson
>forcing yourself to listen to trash over and over because you think you don't get it
When that trash is as fucked as this, I really want to get it
Not blues musicians but arr musicians had already done it. Scaruffi attacks the Beatles for doing what had already been done and just bringing it to pop, which is exactly what Cale and Reed did in TVU.
Chase Long
>lol you are a fucking idiot Very astute argument. Show me any rock artist who released a track like Tomorrow Never Knows. If Scaruffi valued innovation like he claims to he'd acknowledge that track.
Blake Scott
how can someone be a contrarian? contrarian to what? music is subjective you idiot
Christopher Long
contrarian, as in "contrary to popular opinion or belief"
Lucas Gray
bowie had like two great albums in 1977 and that's it, acknowledged by scaruffi too. pink floyd same with the first albums, dark side is extremely overrated and "safe" like everyone who listen to prog and deepened into 70s rock can confirm. jackson is commercial garbage, corporate disco. fleetwood had a decent record in 1977, nothing more. u2 is commercial and corporate music, not that different from stuff like oasis, etc.
Ryder Rogers
>but arr musicians had already done it. link? very interested in listening to stuff that sounds like venus in furs before it came out
