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Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
05/14/09
I love Kanye. Love him.
Loved his production work.
Loved College Dropout.
Loved Late Registration.
Loved Graduation.
Plain ol' makes me want to da-ance (and/or get down...if you know what I'm saying...do you? Oh yeah, you do. You do, right?)
Hated 808s, but whatever.
Love that he works with Daft Punk, and has a crazy blog, and worked with Murakami, and incorporates cheesy Sci-Fi.
Love that he takes the uber-ego Rap Star persona and blows it up to crazytown dimensions, yet still does tracks like Big Brother.
Love that he is willing to do something new and different with hip-hop (even when it isn't necessarily new and different for other genres of music and even when it is.)
Love that he actually seems pretty grounded but is willing to be over the top and goofy.
Wait...somebody didn't have to say all that? Oh well, I enjoyed saying it anyway.
05/14/09
you sound like my roommate.
05/14/09
Loved how the dude on American Idol did a better version of his song that he ever could...
05/14/09
@notificating da interwebs_Nick: He sounds like the best roommate ever!
05/14/09
05/14/09
Wait, does that make it +2?
05/14/09
05/14/09
02/08/09
02/07/09
Just wanted to say that.
02/07/09
Or something like that.
02/07/09
02/07/09
02/07/09
02/07/09
02/07/09
02/08/09
02/07/09
02/07/09
02/08/09
02/08/09
and if I want to hear someone sing, I much rather listen to someone who *can* sing and does not need some software to digitally correct stuff in order to make it listenable. If you suck at singing, step aside and try to do something else.
If I want to hear someone sing, Ill listen to Freddy Mercury of queen, or my girl friend!
02/07/09
Cuz from this vantage point it would appear that you most certainly do not.
02/07/09
02/07/09
02/08/09
02/08/09
My issue was with the fact the people feel this is insulting to a genre of music that already has so little discernable talent that it's laughable. When you listen to half of these pop or hiphop stars "singing" live, you can hear just how untalented they actually are, and no level of auto-tuning is helping them.
02/08/09
02/07/09
Well, the key thing to note here, is that even non-diet soda is sugary garbage, devoid of nutritional value. Most pop music is bland, repetitive, heavily formulated and intended to turnover quickly and then make room for the Next Big Thing. Now they jus thave technology to make it happen quicker, and they only need the looks and even less talent. Why is thing surprising in an undustry that almost actively shuns talent by underpaying them and overhyping untalented children?
02/08/09
Well said, but you could have saved yourself a lot of typing by just img srcing Lady Gaga.
;)
02/08/09
02/07/09
If anything 'Graduation' still holds that title.
02/07/09
02/07/09
Or you know like he said...Graduation.
It's a fantastic album. You don't have to like it.
02/08/09
02/09/09
Anyway my point is, I like the way the album sounds, he did a good job with it and he doesnt pretend that he's a vocalist, so whatever. I'll enjoy it because he sounds good, not because he's omfg the greatest singer ever.
It's like money...I really dont care where it came from or how it was made, it's fucking money. If I dont enjoy it, someone else will.
On the opposite end, you have Regina Spector. I know she can sing, she shows it from time to time, but her shit is GAWN OWFUL!
02/07/09
1. Go in some disney movie or something Disney
2. Release a Auto-Tuned Single
3. Then a album
4. Star in show
5. Go on Tour
Now you are instant star. People will follow you around and will flash bright things in your eyes.
02/07/09
Love the obvious lack of skill in any of those steps.
02/07/09
02/07/09
Even more sad is that what he wrote is several paragraphs longer than most recording "artists" write for their own tunes.
As far as I'm concerned, if you or your group don't write the songs and don't play the instruments, you're nothing but a song-and-dance routine.
02/08/09
02/08/09
Oh, heck no. If only one member of the entire band writes everything, that's fine by me. If it ends up being that individual band members contribute a whole song or two to an album, that's okay too. I don't even care if they slip a song in here or there that they just liked so much they had to record it, even though none of them write a note for it. But by and large, it needs to be original work. Without that, there's no consistency, and there's no reason it couldn't be a thousand other people up on stage instead of whoever got randomly selected to be a star-for-now. And in twenty years, it _will_ be a thousand other future-has-beens up on stage instead of "whoever".
@SirNirian:
It's called "brain-itch" tunes. Basically, someone figured out that if you make a tune that's repetetive enough that you can't forget it, a whole generation of kids who think they're listening to something new will buy it up in droves. And it doesn't matter that they'll eventually get sick of thse tunes, because you already have their money, and you have a dozen other groomed routines lined up to take their place when people stop caring about them anymore.
@Xjep:
I've got six albums by The Doors that say otherwise. Sure that's not every album that's been released under that name, but anything that was recorded after Morrison died doesn't really count (and even then they put existing recordings of him reciting his own poetry to music for at least one album).
_Some_ bands and solo acts do write all their own stuff. Most don't, but they're straight-up and honest about the ones that they didn't write, and it's a safe bet that the only reason they're putting it on their album is because they liked it when someone else recorded it first. We call those "covers". That's allowed. But when the most that the solo act or entire band contributed to their _entire_catalogue_ was the "thank yous" section, we call those "posers". You know, just this side of Milli Vanilli.
02/08/09
02/09/09
Sinatra came from a different time. Singers sang, but they generally didn't write their own songs, and music was marketed almost exclusively to adults. I know Sinatra is credited with opening up the youth market to the music industry, but I don't think there was any serious push to have a band or member therof write the songs until The Beatles stopped padding their albums with covers.
Regardless, Sinatra may not have written a note or a word of his songs, but _he_ had final approval on everything he sang. These days, dime-a-dozen pop acts are more of a management thing. A shrewd manager can find a marketable youngster, set them up with a string of "brain-itch" songs, and turn out a pop star that'll keep him/her in the money until the next one comes along. The pop star generally has no ability to survive the business side of things without a manager to take care of damn near everything but the pop star is entirely replaceable. Maybe not at the height of fame, but certainly after a few other new stars have eclipsed the old ones. If you were to name a pop star who has been able to keep a career going for 30 years, I'd ask you what specific reason you had for picking Madonna.
02/09/09
02/10/09
I find Elvis songs to be pretty good, as long as someone else is singing them.