Rainard Jalen

Well, I wasn't trying to be argumentative or anything. You called the band pop/rock. I responded that this term could only really correspond to the tracks they designate as their singles, whereas the main body of their work tends to be in a format that's distinctly non-pop. This isn't in the least contentious. It's a fact. Anybody who's listened to their albums knows it.

That it ended up as an argument seems ridiculous.

Rainard Jalen

That's brilliant, coming from clearly the most smug, unduly self-satisfied person on the boards! Keep up the good work!

Alternatively you might like to well, you know, maybe read a post you respond to rather than contribute some worthless comment about something you don't like in the last three words. Oh well, guess that's asking too much.




Since the topic is Muse, is it just me or is Black Holes & Revs in many ways their best effort?

Urban Hat€monger ?

I don't see how having a few longer more involved album tracks and having slightly shorter poppier songs for radio stops a band being mainstream.

In fact i'd say that template is what nearly all mainstream rock bands have been doing for the past 40 years.

And keep the abuse down to a minimum please.

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Rainard Jalen

I see the difference along these lines:

Standard mainstream rock band: write virtually all songs in a sorta homogenous formulaic format; some have superior hooks to the others; those tracks go on the radio but hypothetically you could imagine hearing almost any of the tracks on the radio in some context.

Band like Muse: write in two different distinct formats; a main format that has no place on the radio at all, and a secondary quite different format that has the hallmarks of being commercially driven.

You are right that lots of bands for the last however many years are of the second category. But then, they're not just pop/rock, they have other facets too. The quintessential pop/rock band, on the other hand, is of the first category.

I agree by the way that Muse are a mainstream band, in the same way that Tool etc are. Their popularity makes that undeniable. What I don't agree with is the idea that "pop/rock" accurately describes their music in general.

Urban Hat€monger ?

I disagree that most of them are in the first category.
In my experience virtually all of them are in the second category. The whole point of an album is that you can expand more than what you could with a single. Why do you think the album became the thing that rock bands concentrated on rather than singles?

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Rainard Jalen

Your quintessential pop/rock band will be trying to maintain a poppy sound throughout the course of an album. Because pop ultimately is the aim of their music. E.g. Beatles, Libertines, Arctic Monkeys, Franz Ferdinand etc.. There's a clear divide between that sort of band, and a band that only seeks a poppy sound at all on three or so tracks.

My divide is between full-fledged pop/rock and something that's only trying to be a half or a quarter pop/rock. Such a division can definitely be identified within the realm of rock music.

Urban Hat€monger ?

I don't see how naming 4 bands changes anything.

You seem to be ignoring my main point. Which is that mainstream bands have been doing that kind of thing for decades.

Muse are doing nothing different to what's been done before & writing stuff that wouldn't be appropriate for a single is hardly a radical concept. They're still a mainstream band , always have been probably always will be whether you like it or not.

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Rainard Jalen

As I said, I agree with you that they're a mainstream band and that doing that is no radical concept, lots of bands do, etc.

All I've been disagreeing with all along is that "pop" is an accurate description of the generality of Muse's music. They're about a quarter pop, the rest is not supposed to be poppy. This contrasts with a band that are trying to be poppy all the way, like those I mentioned and many many others.

Mojo

You know, no one has actually said that overall Muse arent a commercial band?

Rainard Jalen

No, I mean, their commerciality is definitely not in question. You don't have to write full ablums worth of poppy music to be commercial. As I've argued elsewhere, any band both marketed on a massive scale and with a significantly large following is commercial. That could include a metal band like Metallica or Slayer, a prog band like Tool, or any other sort of music that isn't necessarily your average Tom, Dick and Harry's first choice.