>Radiohead, the most hyped and probably the most over-rated band of the decade >They had begun as third-rate disciples of the Smiths >albums such as Pablo Honey (1993) and The Bends (1995) that were cauldrons of Brit-pop cliches >[OK Computer] was a masterpiece of faux avantgarde (of pretending to be avantgarde while playing mellow pop music). >The sound of Kid A (2000) had decomposed and absorbed countless new perfumes, like a carcass in the woods. >Their limit was that they were more form than content, more "hype" than message, more nothing than everything.
>Radiohead's sound has little substance but great sonorous detail. >Airbag is the manifesto of Radiohead's vanity >This tedious litany sets the theme for the rest of the album: >The noisy rave-up Electioneering is a welcome relief after so much sedative. >The track is emblematic of the whole album's pretentious and self-indulgent concept.
>Radiohead move as close to electronica as possible without actually endorsing it. >Their parable crowns a long tradition in British rock music of putting form before content, of concentrating on "sound" to the expense of "music". >When it came out, Kid A was saluted as a masterpiece by the international critics, but a few months later critics who were still willing to define it a "masterpiece" could be packed in a Japanese subcompact car. (kek)
>The problem is that there is precious little to write about Radiohead's songs. >The interest they generate recalls the frenzy surrounding each of Bowie's "masterpieces", works that were manufactured ad hoc (by the greatest rock communicator ever) to induce intellectual excitement (to disorient) in order to hide what little substance the music had. >The following "masterpiece" of possibly the most over-rated band since the Smiths, Amnesiac (Capitol, 2001), turned out to be actually a significant improvement over Kid A's random cliches. >Radiohead started out as innovators of the stalest of styles, Brit-pop.
> Yorke's vocals are so downbeat, lazy and dilated that, coupled with the appropriately melancholy guitar and rhythm, >Here is my theory: Kid A was an half-hearted attempt. The band was afraid of what they were committing to the album.
>On Hail To The Thief (Capitol, 2003) the most over-rated band of the 1990s seems to have exhausted whatever inspiration had blessed Amnesiac. >but little justifies the reputation of the band: most of these songs are simply trivial. >Unfortunately, Radiohead are above-average Brit-poppers but below-average electronic artists: pedestrian pieces such as Backdrifts can be considered innovative only on albums of pop muzak. >The percussive scherzo of Myxomatosis and the neurotic kammerspiel of A Wolf At The Door (which are the highlights of Radiohead's eccentric song format) would hardly be noticed on the albums of really experimental bands such as Mercury Rev or Bardo Pond.
>Without the hype Radiohead's In Rainbows (Radiohead, 2007) would simply be a mediocre attempt at making slightly adventurous classic rock music. >Abandoning their pretenses of innovation and futurism, >This is U2-style arena-rock for the 2000s. >the half-baked hard-rock of Bodysnatchers (reminiscent of pathetic attempts by the Beatles to reinvent themselves in the age of Cream) (always bashing beatles, lmao)
Adrian Carter
>or Faust Arp, a Beatles-esque elegy that has been heard countless times in the history of pop music > are not only inferior material by any standard: they are plain amateurish. >To make matters worse, the album includes a whole set of sub-pop ballads, >to the even more moronic All I Need and House of Cards. >more moronic
>More cliched than ever, The King of Limbs (2011) is mostly a rhythmic affair, >this is mood music made out of pretentious ideas. >But that's still better than no rhythm at all: the slow slow slow piano ballad Codex is simply devoid of real music: it's just somebody strumming a piano and crooning a trite melody. >And Give Up The Ghost it's not even that: just a hippie-style litany repeated over and over again. >The ambition of these songs is often hilarious. Yorke's insipid and narcotized singing certainly does not help rescue the rest. >It is not completely surprising that the results improve dramatically when Yorke does not sing.
>Radiohead's career has been one long bluff and it gets harder and harder for them to disguise it.
How will Radiohead ever recover from something like this??? These are some career-breaking words
There is nothing wrong with his statements. Sup Forums is subconsciously aware of this, yet it hasn't learned how to appreciate a scholar like Scaruffi.
>How will Radiohead ever recover from something like this??? Probably because the band doesn't know or care who Scaruffi is.
Michael Lee
Absolutely 100% correct. Based scaruffi
Jose Collins
He's completely right about everything.
Especially this: >>The percussive scherzo of Myxomatosis and the neurotic kammerspiel of A Wolf At The Door (which are the highlights of Radiohead's eccentric song format) would hardly be noticed on the albums of really experimental bands such as Mercury Rev or Bardo Pond.
What is considered "extraordinary and innovative xDD" by plebiohead fans is an average song on any more experimental band's album.
Kevin Scott
>opinions are facts
nice thread op. doing gods work
Xavier Foster
This man ought to be respected for going against the flow and always writing what he really feels and not what other critics have written in order to look good.
Grayson Cox
Every time he savages overrated British hacks and exposes it as glorified k-pop its so funny
>Blur established themselves among the protagonists, for better or for worse, of Britpop of the 1990s. Together with Oasis, they were the most overrated ensemble of that kind. >Their main merit is that they sang melodic choruses, as millions have been done around the world, when the British record industry promoted that genre around Europe. >These are songs without imagination, all of which simply repeat the stereotypes of rock music (in the best cases the Byrds, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix). >The album Leisure (SBK, 1991) was just another attempt to speculate on tradition, cobbling together songs that are generic imitations of the original models. >Blur were yet another pop group in Britain that had nothing to say but said it in a sophisticated way. >Anticipated by the (more virtuous) Popscene single, the second album Modern Life Is Rubbish (Food, 1992/SBK, 1993) >Parklife (SBK, 1994), which debuted on the top of the British charts, is an almost perverse exercise in retro to the extent of parody, starting with the single Girls And Boys (yet another variation on the motif of I Am The Fly by Wire), quintessence of their (voluntary or not) stupidity farmed by musichall. >David Bowie's screenplays have a strong influence on the album, as Jubilee also demonstrates. >overall it's an album of mediocre songs that are badly played and sung.
>Great Escape (Food, 1995) is (sadly) a faithful photocopy of it >Song 2 is the second Blur song (after Girls And Boys) not to be forgotten after two days. >Damon Albarn squanders the opportunity because he possesses one of Britpop's most pedestrian vocal ranges. >Now that Britpop's big scam is melting like snow in the sun, it turns out that perhaps one of the two most pathetically imitative groups was also one of the few who had some musical talent (singer apart). >Blur became rock musicians, and not mere Britpop icons, with their fifth album >No doubt this album would rank with the boldest efforts from the alternative scene, but there is nothing that countless (lesser-known) bands haven't done (better) before. >To the band's credit, they have dived head down into a field that couldn't be further removed from their roots. >Surprisingly, Blur's guitarist Graham Coxon is a much better songwriter, as displayed on his first solo > the man is not just another whining, alienated, introverted singer songwriter. >Damon Albarn's Everyday Robots (2014) appropriates world-music in the toolbox of the English singer-songwriter, but the results are hardly spectacular: >a melancholy doo-wop litany (Hostiles), a Caribbean-tinged lounge-oriented ballad (Lonely Press Play), a Paul Simon-esque exotic shuffle (Mr Tembo, that perhaps is more reminiscent of Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville),
Francis Bacon wrote that there are four reasons for ignorance:
1. weak and incapable authority misleads people (in rock music, it's the critics, who are too coward to stand up to the powerful music industry) 2. habits (in rock music, it's what the radios play) 3. the lack of general knowledge (in rock music, the audience has hardly any knowledge of the other arts) 4. false wisdom, i.e. people hide their ignorance by pretending to be knowledgeable
And the fourth one is the worst. That is the one that is prevalent in any art whose audience is mainly very young people. They know mostly what is very publicized and marketed in their environment, but often engage in the game of knowing "more" than other young people. The truth is that they only know their idols, and that's precisely why those are their idols. Even when they grow up, they remain mostly ignorant: as you grow up, you stop listening to the music that was around when you were young. Your knowledge crystallizes. What you knew is what you know and, worse, you begin to truly believe that there was nothing else to be known. I found this phenomenon to be widespread among listeners of rock music.
I was lucky enough to grow up with almost no interest in rock music. Therefore I had no idols. When I began listening to rock music, I did it solely on the basis of what sounded interesting. That accounts for the vast majority of my "controversial" opinions. I just wasn't all that interested in finding out what was or was not popular.
I don't understand the individualistic mindset some people have when it comes to reading criticism. You'd never hear of a student of classical music refusing to look at their history textbook for fear of being brainwashed into liking something or other. The entire notion is silly.
You only encounter it in people who listen to pop music. I can only assume it's an overcompensation for an insecurity. Like, they know that the main basis of their preferences is social or other conditioned behavior, and by refusing to read reviews they can push the cognitive dissonance out and will themselves back into believing they're special snowflakes.
tl;dr if you don't read music criticism (and criticism and reviews are separate, as one is corporate-sponsored and the other is academic/scaruffi) you are more ignorant than someone who does.
Reminder that Scaruffi has literally never been wrong
Jayden Flores
does he even review new albums these days
Logan Jenkins
Wow! I'm not that big on radiohead or am trying to refute anything he said but those first two sounds really hard to get into. I guess I need a higher power level to enjoy them.
Christian Rivera
>The genre-hopping Lemonade (Parkwood Entertainment, 2016) was another attempt to promote her to auteur. An industry artifact with no personality, Beyonce swings between the playful reggae of Hold Up and the gospel hymn Freedom via the piano elegy Sandcastles. Best is probably Don't Hurt Yourself, which is quintessential Aretha Franklin. The collaboration with James Blake yields two of the most boring ballads of his career. All the media hype does little to make this album more than a marketing project. In fact, it's even less musical than Beyonce. She's a mediocre singer and an awful songwriter, and no amount of production work can fully hide that. The accompanying video includes spoken-word interludes of poetry by Somali-British poet Warsan Shire.
>Loud (2010) contains her most exuberant dance songs yet, reminiscent of the disco and house eras: Only Girl and especially S&M, produced by Stargate and Sandy Vee; but also another Ester Dean-pened pop-hop ballad, What's My Name.
