DocMcCoy"Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,913 Posts
Junior said:
Given it another listen through and am feeling it more the second time around. In fact I'd say the middle part of the album is genuinely strong and will get a fair bit of love round these parts.
Also, I know that a) Petridis has to create a certain amount of copy and b) it's the Guardian but was it really worth spending that much of the review talking about the sexual imagery in one song? Would they prefer he write about some homosexual experience or express his misery about the plight of homeless children in a ham fisted fashion? It's pop RnB, that's what it is and what it does.
It's the schoolboy error of paying too much attention to the lyrics that's often made by so-called "rock" critics; fine when you're reviewing Leonard Cohen, not so important when you're writing about Justin Timberlake. Any writer with space to fill and the inclination to highlight wince-inducing lyrics on modern r&b records - even outstanding ones - doesn't exactly have to work hard at it. The drug metaphors in Pusher Love Girl are equally strained and cheesy, but perhaps not as easy to make fun of.
Given it another listen through and am feeling it more the second time around. In fact I'd say the middle part of the album is genuinely strong and will get a fair bit of love round these parts.
Also, I know that a) Petridis has to create a certain amount of copy and b) it's the Guardian but was it really worth spending that much of the review talking about the sexual imagery in one song? Would they prefer he write about some homosexual experience or express his misery about the plight of homeless children in a ham fisted fashion? It's pop RnB, that's what it is and what it does.
It's the schoolboy error of paying too much attention to the lyrics that's often made by so-called "rock" critics; fine when you're reviewing Leonard Cohen, not so important when you're writing about Justin Timberlake. Any writer with space to fill and the inclination to highlight wince-inducing lyrics on modern r&b records - even outstanding ones - doesn't exactly have to work hard at it. The drug metaphors in Pusher Love Girl are equally strained and cheesy, but perhaps not as easy to make fun of.
Yes thanks Doc, exactly what was nagging at me. I've had a good moan before about my frustration that a paper with such a heavy arts focus and an interest in "the new" seems to have no interest in expanding its music reviewer expertise outside the traditional NME bracket (although it's obviously a far more tailored site the leap in Pitchfork's rap/rnb reviews has been fantastic since they brought in some reviewers with a genuine interest in the scene) so mark this down as another pet peeve poked.
i have come around on this "suit and tie" business, it's sort of catchy and not-offensive (read quasi-adult oriented)...the fact that his press people have managed help this mouseketeer attain a veneer of credibility is also fairly impressive. what happened to all the rest of the dudes in that boyband he was in, are they even playing county fairs and the like?
DocMcCoy"Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,913 Posts
rootlesscosmo said:
I feel like Tlake is taken more srsly on the other side of the pond.
That's not a judgment; just an observation.
I don't think that's especially true, although Brits generally aren't quite so sniffy about quote-unquote pop music as some Americans seem to be. It might also be the case here that, for obvious reasons, our judgement of a performer isn't going to be coloured by whether or not they served as a Mouseketeer. It strikes me that all the Dick In A Box goofing-off, funny as it is, might even be a defence mechanism against all those rock-snobs ready to slam him if he looks like he's getting above himself.
This, too, is an observation rather than a judgement.
Are we still living in 2000, when it was all about the first week and most people still had not discovered Napster?
Yup, that's when JT was at his peak.
You want to know the big arts story this week?
The "Veronica Mars" Kickstarter project. They've raised in excess of three million bucks by going to those who care, the fans, as opposed to JT, who's positively living in the past, believing that saturation marketing will convince all of us who don't care to. Huh? You're just pissing us off!
Meanwhile, I'm here to tell you sexy never left, but cool is back. Manufactured is trouble. Hubris is fatal. Hell, when the "New York Times" writes articles about the Taylor Swift backlash, about her bad Q ratings, you know that it's over.
Taylor Swift? You haven't got enough publicity? You're appearing in "Vanity Fair"? WHY? So we can make fun of you? Taking on comediennes is like having a guitar battle with Clapton, even Gary Clark, Jr., you just can't win.
Yup, Taylor's pissed at Amy Poehler and Tina Fey for making fun of her at the Golden Globes. Don't know that? You're lucky. "Vanity Fair" spammed the media and every non-thinking news outlet reproduced it.
Want some advice Taylor?
STFU!
You don't see Carrie Underwood trying to cross over, splashed all over the media. No, she stays in her own little backwater, therefore the country people protect her. Who's going to protect Taylor Swift?
And who exactly is going to protect Justin Timberlake?
Last I checked, his core audience has babies. Thank god tickets are sold digitally, because none of his fans could leave home to line up. As to whether they can get babysitters for the gig... Well, people only go to one show a year, and Justin Timberlake, whose last tour, before you grew pubes, didn't sell out, bought insurance this time, he's going out with Jay-Z, because he's afraid, very afraid. Not as afraid as Miley Cyrus, who's tabloid fodder and has lost her music career, but still scared.
Can't you see it? The desperation? What if I'm not big enough?
Want to know today's underground music story?
Prince at SXSW!
He didn't promote it, everybody else did!
That's how you want to do it today.
But that just doesn't fit in with your world domination, conquer all philosophy. You want to dun everybody into submission. You think if you're Gene Simmons and you screw thousands of girls, people will care. The only people who care about Mr. Simmons are the ones who in declining numbers go to Kiss shows. The rest of us have no problem ignoring him.
You see in the old world it was top down. Get the big kahunas to write about you so the little people will find out.
But now it's positively reversed. The little people build your career. And it happens very slowly. And when we see dinosaurs like Justin Timberlake BEGGING US to pay attention we have the classic twenty first century response. We laugh at him. We feel superior to him. We look down upon him just like the nincompoops on reality TV.
And when his album fails...
OF COURSE IT'S GONNA FAIL!
Come on, even U2's album failed.
If you're a superstar, we don't even want the album, unless we're hard core fans. We want the undeniable single.
Now if you're not a superstar, this rule doesn't apply. Make a ton of music, satiate your fans.
Then again, I'm a Ry Cooder fan, and I've stopped paying attention. I laughed when I heard a song of his on the satellite. Reminded me of him talking about making a new album...
You know Ry. Guitarist extraordinaire who gets tons of ink, but can't sell a record?
Welcome to 2013. When it's not only cult people like Ry Cooder, but stars like Timberlake and Bowie.
They think everybody cares.
But everybody doesn't.
Even "The New Yorker" writes about Bowie.
End result?
A TARNISHING OF THE LEGACY! BECAUSE WE JUST DON'T CARE!
There's a terrible moment midway through Strawberry Bubblegum, where the listener slowly becomes aware that "strawberry bubblegum" appears to be a metaphor for his partner's vagina. Timberlake is a young man recently married, and he's entitled to celebrate that any way he chooses, although you do wonder if the lady wouldn't prefer, say, a bunch of flowers to a song, broadcast to millions, comparing her vagina to a piece of Hubba-Bubba. At least he dishes out something similar to himself: his penis apparently resembles a "blueberry lollipop", which suggests he needs to get a doctor to look at it. That sounds like a symptom of a serious circulation problem.
It's a bold soul that claims this kind of thing doesn't mar their enjoyment of The 20/20 Experience: it's definitely harder to concentrate on the rich inventiveness of the sound when there's a man comparing his wife's vagina to some bubblegum in a falsetto voice over the top of it. Equally, it would be churlish to claim it ruins it. Despite its flaws, The 20/20 Experience is a genuinely adventurous pop album in a world of will-this-do?
I can take some imagery away with me from this, at least.
And hey, the writer buttoning up all the way to the top!
What an awful look. Christ...
DocMcCoy"Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,913 Posts
parallax said:
white_tea said:
J i m s t e r said:
The Gruaniad bleks it with a non-committal 3 stars:
There's a terrible moment midway through Strawberry Bubblegum, where the listener slowly becomes aware that "strawberry bubblegum" appears to be a metaphor for his partner's vagina. Timberlake is a young man recently married, and he's entitled to celebrate that any way he chooses, although you do wonder if the lady wouldn't prefer, say, a bunch of flowers to a song, broadcast to millions, comparing her vagina to a piece of Hubba-Bubba. At least he dishes out something similar to himself: his penis apparently resembles a "blueberry lollipop", which suggests he needs to get a doctor to look at it. That sounds like a symptom of a serious circulation problem.
It's a bold soul that claims this kind of thing doesn't mar their enjoyment of The 20/20 Experience: it's definitely harder to concentrate on the rich inventiveness of the sound when there's a man comparing his wife's vagina to some bubblegum in a falsetto voice over the top of it. Equally, it would be churlish to claim it ruins it. Despite its flaws, The 20/20 Experience is a genuinely adventurous pop album in a world of will-this-do?
I can take some imagery away with me from this, at least.
And hey, the writer buttoning up all the way to the top!
What an awful look. Christ...
Dude used to do a menswear column in the Guardian's Saturday magazine. It was noteworthy for the way he looked so thoroughly ill-at-ease, not only in the photographs, but with the concept itself - how to go about dressing reasonably stylishly if you're a man that doesn't really pay too much attention to fashion. That might have been part of it, of course, but there was a palpable air of bewilderment surrounding the whole enterprise that made it seem less than convincing.
Really not feeling those cardigan necklines on v-neck sweaters either.
It's been all Jack Wolfskin coats, mustard-colour jackets and lederhosen for the Docmeister of later.
DocMcCoy"Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,913 Posts
J i m s t e r said:
It's been all Jack Wolfskin coats, mustard-colour jackets and lederhosen for the Docmeister of later.
Heh.
You literally cannot walk more than a few yards in this city without seeing somebody wearing something with Jack Wolfskin branding on it, especially at this time of the year. It's like the national winter costume of Germany - you see entire families decked out in it. When I first got here, I tried amusing myself by counting how many people I saw wearing the stuff, but it quickly became a hopeless task.
Of course, once upon a time, an unfamiliar continental outdoor/casual brand like Jack Wolfskin might have been appropriated by the lads at the match (Berghaus, Peter Storm, SI, CP Company, etc), or even by hoodlums on the other side of the Atlantic (cf. Polo, Timberland, Nautica, Tommy Hilfiger, North Face), long before being embraced by the masses. Goes to show how differently things work now.
DocMcCoy"Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,913 Posts
But to return to the original topic, some additional reading;
I dig Suit n Tie. It's a lot better than 99% of current pop IMO. One thing that stands out about it is the baritone backup singer. There is something very weird about his singing, he sounds almost intentionally off key? Somehow, it works for me. It's loose and sloppy and relatively loud in the mix, and just so unusual for backup. When does his solo album drop?
Comments
It's the schoolboy error of paying too much attention to the lyrics that's often made by so-called "rock" critics; fine when you're reviewing Leonard Cohen, not so important when you're writing about Justin Timberlake. Any writer with space to fill and the inclination to highlight wince-inducing lyrics on modern r&b records - even outstanding ones - doesn't exactly have to work hard at it. The drug metaphors in Pusher Love Girl are equally strained and cheesy, but perhaps not as easy to make fun of.
Yes thanks Doc, exactly what was nagging at me. I've had a good moan before about my frustration that a paper with such a heavy arts focus and an interest in "the new" seems to have no interest in expanding its music reviewer expertise outside the traditional NME bracket (although it's obviously a far more tailored site the leap in Pitchfork's rap/rnb reviews has been fantastic since they brought in some reviewers with a genuine interest in the scene) so mark this down as another pet peeve poked.
That's not a judgment; just an observation.
I don't think that's especially true, although Brits generally aren't quite so sniffy about quote-unquote pop music as some Americans seem to be. It might also be the case here that, for obvious reasons, our judgement of a performer isn't going to be coloured by whether or not they served as a Mouseketeer. It strikes me that all the Dick In A Box goofing-off, funny as it is, might even be a defence mechanism against all those rock-snobs ready to slam him if he looks like he's getting above himself.
This, too, is an observation rather than a judgement.
sxsw set list... mostly made up of his last two albums.
I can't be arsed
What an awful look. Christ...
Dude used to do a menswear column in the Guardian's Saturday magazine. It was noteworthy for the way he looked so thoroughly ill-at-ease, not only in the photographs, but with the concept itself - how to go about dressing reasonably stylishly if you're a man that doesn't really pay too much attention to fashion. That might have been part of it, of course, but there was a palpable air of bewilderment surrounding the whole enterprise that made it seem less than convincing.
Really not feeling those cardigan necklines on v-neck sweaters either.
Heh.
You literally cannot walk more than a few yards in this city without seeing somebody wearing something with Jack Wolfskin branding on it, especially at this time of the year. It's like the national winter costume of Germany - you see entire families decked out in it. When I first got here, I tried amusing myself by counting how many people I saw wearing the stuff, but it quickly became a hopeless task.
Of course, once upon a time, an unfamiliar continental outdoor/casual brand like Jack Wolfskin might have been appropriated by the lads at the match (Berghaus, Peter Storm, SI, CP Company, etc), or even by hoodlums on the other side of the Atlantic (cf. Polo, Timberland, Nautica, Tommy Hilfiger, North Face), long before being embraced by the masses. Goes to show how differently things work now.
Responding to comments about Caramanica's lukewarm NYT review, ?uesto reveals that Vol. II is on its way later this year.
Also;
This is quite a thoughtful and well-argued piece from Meaghan Garvey for VICE.com's Noisey sub-division.