Me neither :/

In retrospective I just say The Beatles are truly the best example to get across what I mean.

Let's speculate: an alien being oblivious to all human culture, lands tomorrow in any given city and is given to listen "Strawberry Fields Forever" followed by "Poker Face". Does anyone here think that we would behold the former as the vastly superior piece to the latter. What if we add Mozart's "Requiem"? (well an alien probably would not understand music the same way we do)

The thing is without all the cultural back load, and the time and place, and the dreadful influence on other bands no one would class The Beatles as the creme de la creme or the perennial "Best band of All Time". It's pop music, it "sold out before you even heard their names", so to speak. But I'm beign to cryptic.

What I say is either art is a category and quality is first and foremost a subjective judgment of value (and a personal one at that), or art is the judgment of value by itself and somethings are art and others merely entertainment. You can't do both. And I'm certainly a bigger fan of the former, witch is why the responses to the original review sparked my interest.

It's a bunch of guys pissed off that all the mainstream today is crap compared to the golden age of Pop, being pissed off that someone thinks the golden age of Pop is crap compared to the old art music (or Classical).

PS: I define Pop not as a genre but as all recorded music intended to be sold in any commercial manner.

I honestly don't get your point entirely. Are you trying to insinuate somehow there are not varying levels of quality in music?

Fact of the matter is, some music is good, and some isn't. Pop in the 60s wasn't great but it was better.

As for Beatles vs Gaga. Beatles took risks, Gaga does not. The argument from my end boils entirely down to that. As for classical music, classical music isn't always better but has an amazing potential to be better for the fact it isn't built off the concept of taking 5-10 seconds of melody, and looping them in chambers. BOTH Beatles era AND Gaga's era did their piece in disintegrating the integrity of music. Mozart isn't even the best example. Look into what late 1800s, early 1900s composers were doing. Guys like Stravinsky, Bartok, etc. The sheer amount of craftsmanship, and effort blows EVERYTHING in these pop eras out of the water.

In terms of melodic complexity, music has definitely got significantly simpler from these eras. Jazz, and Classical which are the most complex forms of music have faded away from the mainstream, and only pop up occasionally as a supplement. As somebody who knows this music I have heavily criticized both acts(Gaga, and Beatles), and if your point is that I have the right to, then I agree.

However, if your point is that "If you criticize one you can't criticize the other" then I can't agree. Beatles, and Gaga are different things, and Beatles is significantly better. Overrated, but better. There are things you've never heard of that are significantly better than both. Take Koenji Hyakkei for example. They're somewhat well known in the prog, and Japanophile crowd but generally not really. I'd dare say there more interesting than Gaga, Mozart, and the Beatles. Beatles are more interesting than Gaga, and Mozart... etc.

There is no idiocy, or hypocrisy in assuming one is better than the other just because they are "different things" at all.

Lets say we're talking about movies, and the Beatles is The Godfather(good, yet massively overrated), Mozart is Citizen Kane(Good, outdated, yet architypical), and Lady Gaga is Airbud(Cheesy, fun, and simple. Aimed only at it's target audience.).

You can say that you like the Godfather better than Citizen Kane, you can even say you like Airbud better than the Godfather if you really hate the Godfather. However, it does not make the mass consensus hypocrites to think Citizen Kane, and Godfather are generally better movies than Airbud. Nor does it make one a hypocrite for liking something like I don't know, Sin City(Great movie, technical masterpiece, not necessarily hugely significant, or influential from a historical viewpoint, Koenji Hyakkei) better than all of them.

Just as film, it's up to you to discern, and it's not idiocy or hypocrisy for liking one thing, and saying another is better no matter what it is. It's just a matter of opinion. Just as any artform, there are varying levels of quality that must be acknowledged(reason we have movie critics), and those are up to a measure of interpretation(also why we have critics).

For that fact I still a tad offensive to hint at 'mass idiocy' when your original topic came up. Especially when your point lacked any validity or direction.

You missed my point.

Music criticism is ALWAYS based on subjective terms. Of course, as objectively as possible one can say that the "Eroica" is miles above whatever is on Top 40 (or anything from The Beatles). And it is. That's something I readily state in my OP.

All I was saying is that it's disingenuous to bash your random top 40 pop star in favour of a more "critically acclaimed" pop group while snickering at the proposal that if your gonna have standarts you might as well go all the way. The bar was set much, much higher then the Beatles.

A valid analogy is proposing that The Godfather is indeed a better movie than Airbud (never seen it) while responding to the claim that anything by Kubrick or Tarkovsky blows it out of the water (Godfather that is, and they do) by back tracking, claiming your opponent is a snob, etc, etc...

I mean Michael Bay certainly does not have the same goal as any given "serious" director, yet one still judges both by the same standards. There is a market that wants these kind of movies, just fun and entertainment, and many even subjectively prefer them to the "art films". Yet noone cries when Michael Bay isn't talked in the same breath as a Sergio Leone or someone like that. Yet the statment that The Beatles are no where near your "top" composers did cause quite a ruckus.

Anyways, coherence is for the stale of mind. The thoughts I had when I wrote the OP aren't as fresh, if not fully metamorphosed into something else, by now. Just trying to get some discussion going.

My point is that it isn't. There's gradients of quality, and everyone puts what they listen to where they want to. Nothing disingenuous about it.

I think The Beatles are a great band that made great music, but I just think they're kind of soulless. I don't think this because they made popular music, but because their music doesn't really mean anything to me. For me to really like a musician and for them to be one of my favorite artists, they have to really connect with me. Maybe there were just too many good musicians in the band and their different messages/souls sort of canceled each other out and got muddled. I just don't see any message in their music. I feel like I don't know any of the Beatles any better by listening to their music. Of course, this is a very personal opinion, but an opinion nonetheless. On the other hand, I feel like soul is definitely in John and George's solo work.

Maybe it's something about musicians working in a collaborative effort that just turns me off. Now that I think about it my favorite musicians are usually solo artists. Their ultimate message and personality is just more clear to me.

Lists like that could be found about other bands as well, and frankly, that particular list is just cold facts which one may or may not use to back up their opinion. I still haven't heard anyone, besides Lennon, claim The Beatles as the second coming of christ or anything.

The one thing that keeps lurking in the back of my head while skimming through this thread is the fact that the only reason why Lady Gaga is the subject of comparisation with The Beatles is that it's 2011 and not 2001. Or 1991.

I hate ranking music in superiority.

What about effort?

who are you to judge the effort though? sure as a listener, you can choose not to listen to certain artists because you feel they don't put forth enough effort but you aren't in their shoes and know exactly what effort is being put forth.

You can get a vague idea by listening. I mean, obviously Bela Bartok put more effort into his pieces than Britney Spears. Not to say simple music is bad, I just feel people who have the balls to perform, and craft, very deep multilayered music at commercial risk(which obviously denotes more modern times than Bartok) deserve a bit of a pat on the back, and special distinction.

I know what you mean but I don't put one artist over the other. They are both performers. Sure, one is more complex than the other but at the end of the day they still provide music for the masses.

True, but some are better than others. I mean, just as any art form, though, what makes one better is interpretable. But some are better than others. I mean there will always be Scorsese/Zappas for Uwe Bolls/Vanilla Ices. Then again, there's ones that are a matter of preference like as if you compared Tim Burton to Vinchenzo Natali(one of my favorite directors, very underrated). You may like one, you may like both, you may like neither but that's really an issue of the kind of movie you like, not the quality of director.

like I mentioned earlier it all falls back to the individual listener/viewer to decide for themselves whether they put the ones that are "better" over others. I just don't feel like there is a need to is all.

It took Def Leppard 3 years to record their Hysteria album.
It took the Sex Pistols a couple of weeks to knock out Never Mind the Bollocks.

Which of those would you say was culturally more significant?

Well, one could argue that Never Mind the Bollocks obviously was a culmination of the Sex Pistol's career up to that point word of development/achievement, and therefore, exhausted what little they had to them.

Time doesn't always mean effort. Maybe those 3 years were spent trying to dumb it down for a mainstream audience(This is Def Leppard we're talking about). Considering how big of a name Def Leppard is, the effort may not have been spent in quality, but in palpability.

Besides, just because the Sex Pistols work was culturally significant it was largely due to timing, and one could argue was riding on the wave of the efforts of punk as a collective to get noticed. One could also argue there are many more effortful works that deserve more recognition.

And do not forget that effort doesn't equal efficiency. The reason why it takes longer for A to record an album than B may as well be that they simply aren't very well equipped and skilled to nail it during a given time period.

That sounds kind of weird coming from a Zorn and Sun Ra fan. I love them both but each has certainly recorded albums in the amount of time it takes to eat breakfast. The amount of effort put in and the quality of the finished product don't always have a one to one correlation.

Both John Zorn, and Sun Ra are EXTREMELY hard working musicians. They both run their own operations, write their own material(which includes often hand written notation. Sun Ra's material was often improvised often meticulously pre-written. Watching videos on Spillane's creation often proves sometimes Zorn utilizes extremely complex procedures to write material), promoted their own material, and both had to assemble a massive catalog of A-class musicians, and improvisers to pull off their works. It may be distributed over a larger number of pieces for both, but - in the end - I don't think you can criticize either for being a slouch.

Especially Sun Ra, who took so much dedication to his music that he and his band often hand assembled records for sale before shows. Why? He was doing it entirely without the influence, or funding, of any group which might interrupt his creative process. Sun Ra poured his heart, and soul into his music 24/7. It was his life, and I doubt there were many moments in the day where he wasn't at least contemplating what he wanted to do with his music.

You know it's interesting because I chose Def Leppard's Hysteria album for a reason. I expected it to get treated like mid 80s fluff and dismissed and you did exactly that.
Even though that album contains some of the most complex & intricate recording techniques & a use of technology totally unheard of on rock albums at the time. In fact it's commercial success wasn't guaranteed at all. They'd been away for 4 years which was a lifetime in the 80s when bands put out albums every year. And there was no assurances people would go for this new sound either.

So in Def Leppard's case time certainly did mean effort. The record sold something like 10 million copies. So it's ground breaking and it sold well commercially, which is the music industry is pretty rare.

It basically covers all your criteria for a worthwhile album, and yet it isn't.

You've totally missed my point here. I wasn't saying I think either is a slouch. I was pointing out that they've both released albums that took very little time to write and record but are nevertheless great music. The point being that things are not made great simply by the amount of effort put into them.

I don't think I missed the point. I don't think you're reading between the lines with mine.

My point was time =/= effort. The effort was there, it just wasn't spent entirely in production. Where as Britney Spears is somebody who can casually go to the studio for a few hours here, and there, and have a pop album by the end of the year. The rest of the time she can be spent doing **** all. It's why people like Britney Spears have somewhat limited repertoire on what she can do.

Sure, Zorn may bring somebody like Fred Frith in studio, and hammer out a studio record in one 1 hour take, but that doesn't stop the fact that they're both probably working on three or four projects simultaneously, and neither does it mean that it isn't the culmination of effort put into developing themselves as musicians. Which they are both breaching heavy inspiration from.

The fact they CAN produce that quality of work the way they do comes from the fact they spent the effort developing themselves as musicians. Ask Britney Spears to come into the studio for an hour, and produce something, she'd most likely be completely lost. Where as, Ask her to compose a massive conceptual album, she'd be lost as well. Because, she obviously spends less effort developing herself as a musician.

Here's the thing though: I think you're wrong about how much effort goes into a Britney Spears album. For one thing, something like that is undoubtedly a massive team effort involving very highly trained session musicians, producers, engineers, etc. And when it comes to Britney Spears herself, I have no doubt that she has spent vast amounts of time developing her singing voice and probably spends massive amounts of time in the studio getting the absolutely perfect end product. And yet, nevertheless, at the end of the day her albums still suck.

The point is a ton of effort doesn't make something great, and a lesser amount of effort doesn't make something bad.

Ok, then I could say I can measure things on a combination of focused effort, and controlled creative vision. The production of a Britney Spears CD wouldn't be reliant on a controlled creative vision because of it's necessity to rely on formula, and the focused effort is split among many sources who are skilled but are trained to treat their job like factory work.

Whether it's effort or not, there are still factors that denote quality in comparing works of art.

pop music is consumerist label
 

Enough with the labels. " Music fans" in the know have an obnoxious penchant for throwing around names of artists they consider "relevant" because they mearly like their music. Without knowing squat about where the music comes from and why it sounds like it does. It takes years of examination to arrive at a knowledgable opinion about music. If one was to call "pop" musin Blues, one would get an argument from said "music fans". Consider these elements of our western pop music...syncopation, call and response, the percussive method of performance, and GROOVE. These appropriated elements are all used quite freely in "POP" music. ALL the genetic markers of BLUES. Remember...there is a difference between quotation and thievery.

This is a music forum filled with people well used to all the pros and cons of pop music. Accept that we know where you're coming from and move on, cause we've heard five million and one persons complain about pop music. Talk about the music you like or bitch about music that isn't pop, cause we've heard this.

I like music.

Your username makes this plain. :)

Only a little. lol

Don't act like it's possible for any popular music to be bad, fools. That's just illogical.