liebzz wrote:This is very very deep. I took mainstream to mean not Sigur Ros. Or whatever flavor of the day that jumps into the “Albums of…” thread. This is not a judgment on those acts of which there are plenty great ones, but this being a thread where we argue the merits of Born to Run in the same sentence as Born in the USA and Dirt and Nevermind, and perhaps even The Chronic or Eminem. I think the deeper you get into the meaning of the term the less any one band or album applies.
This. All the way, this.
i think trag lost me at the part about crossover appeal. To me, that’s what we’d consider when an indie artist gets mainstream recognition. Or one genre getting popularity in another, ie. Country and Hip-hop, or Walk This Way w/Run DMC. That’s crossover appeal.
i think this is a fair (if overly simplistic) read of what I'm trying to say, but it's also a great argument for why Pretty Hate Machine does not belong here. In my mind, the fluke experience of one NIN song briefly breaking through to a wider audience is not remotely the same thing as Dancing In the Dark enjoying widespread, long-term success across ages and genres of listenership.
Now just imagine Trent Reznor delivering this line:
I wanna change my clothes, my hair, my face
I ain’t nothing but tired, just tired and bored with myself
liebzz wrote:This is very very deep. I took mainstream to mean not Sigur Ros. Or whatever flavor of the day that jumps into the “Albums of…” thread. This is not a judgment on those acts of which there are plenty great ones, but this being a thread where we argue the merits of Born to Run in the same sentence as Born in the USA and Dirt and Nevermind, and perhaps even The Chronic or Eminem. I think the deeper you get into the meaning of the term the less any one band or album applies.
This. All the way, this.
i think trag lost me at the part about crossover appeal. To me, that’s what we’d consider when an indie artist gets mainstream recognition. Or one genre getting popularity in another, ie. Country and Hip-hop, or Walk This Way w/Run DMC. That’s crossover appeal.
i think this is a fair (if overly simplistic) read of what I'm trying to say, but it's also a great argument for why Pretty Hate Machine does not belong here. In my mind, the fluke experience of one NIN song briefly breaking through to a wider audience is not remotely the same thing as Dancing In the Dark enjoying widespread, long-term success across ages and genres of listenership.
Now just imagine Trent Reznor delivering this line:
I wanna change my clothes, my hair, my face
I ain’t nothing but tired, just tired and bored with myself
I just want something
I just want something I can never have
96583UP wrote:i recently bought travel-size packets of metamucil
What immediately shot my eyebrows up with regards to the Eminem thing is that Eminem is the most commercially successful rapper of all time (you can find multiple sources to confirm this); if he's not "mainstream," then no rapper is. And that concept is a hard sell when hip-hop has probably been the main cultural driving force in music of the last 20 years. Immediate dissonance there
Anders wrote:I do not have a «neoliberal assessment of geopolitics», so please stop writing that I do.
dad wrote:I make fun of 80s hair bands a lot, but Def Leppard’s Hysteria is full of bangers.
yes I love it
This album was probably my first musical love. I listen to it surprisingly often for an album I loved when I was six, and it always takes me back to the happiest of places. It's definitely full of bangers. But, I don't think it's perfect -- it does fizzle out a bit in the second half.
Hysteria was the first [cassette] album I owned, Sweet Child o' Mine was my first cassette period. I agree that it trails off in the second half but it is one helluva record, the Classic Albums doc is pretty fantastic.
tragabigzanda wrote:Without the Mainstream Top 40 stats, his general "most commercially successful rapper" would mean nothing to me. He was a commercially palatable white rapper at the peak of his popularity during the final days of the CD's dominance, which coincided with the highest level of tweener consumption to date. Not even remotely surprising that he'd be the "most commercially successful rapper," and in and of itself it means nothing.
It does when the conversation is about whether he qualifies as a "mainstream" artist, in a period where hip-hop is the dominant force in music. It makes no sense that the most popular artist of the most popular genre doesn't qualify as "mainstream." The problem is your definition of "mainstream" is narrow, anecdotal, and hard to measure. The "standard" is not white Boomers, that's just one demographic among many
Anders wrote:I do not have a «neoliberal assessment of geopolitics», so please stop writing that I do.
Additionally, your point about youth-driven commercial success applies to artists of every generation, and it betrays your own biases. You identify Bruce Sprignsteen and Tom Petty as inter-generational successes because that's what your parents' generation listened to, but a huge amount of people under 30 (music fans or otherwise) couldn't name a song by either if you put a gun to their head
Anders wrote:I do not have a «neoliberal assessment of geopolitics», so please stop writing that I do.
Also the young have always been the primary consumer of music in the age of mass media. It was so in the 70s and it is so today. I'm not totally sure how that's relevant. The most popular artists of each generation are buoyed by their appeal to the young and they enter the public consciousness.
Anders wrote:I do not have a «neoliberal assessment of geopolitics», so please stop writing that I do.
liebzz wrote:This is very very deep. I took mainstream to mean not Sigur Ros. Or whatever flavor of the day that jumps into the “Albums of…” thread. This is not a judgment on those acts of which there are plenty great ones, but this being a thread where we argue the merits of Born to Run in the same sentence as Born in the USA and Dirt and Nevermind, and perhaps even The Chronic or Eminem. I think the deeper you get into the meaning of the term the less any one band or album applies.
This. All the way, this.
i think trag lost me at the part about crossover appeal. To me, that’s what we’d consider when an indie artist gets mainstream recognition. Or one genre getting popularity in another, ie. Country and Hip-hop, or Walk This Way w/Run DMC. That’s crossover appeal.
i think this is a fair (if overly simplistic) read of what I'm trying to say, but it's also a great argument for why Pretty Hate Machine does not belong here. In my mind, the fluke experience of one NIN song briefly breaking through to a wider audience is not remotely the same thing as Dancing In the Dark enjoying widespread, long-term success across ages and genres of listenership.
Now just imagine Trent Reznor delivering this line:
I wanna change my clothes, my hair, my face
I ain’t nothing but tired, just tired and bored with myself
I just want something
I just want something I can never have
