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Thanks all! Just listened to Chocolate and Cheese. Literally my first ever exposure to Ween and I was struggling to find something to latch onto and then I realized, Ween is like an indie girlfriend I had in the 90s who would make me mixtapes of whatever hipster / indie / offbeat music she was into. Made me nostalgic! Some songs were good, some missed for me -- like any mixtape from the 90s. Good stuff.
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Aug 5, 2021 03:23
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regulargonzalez posted:Thanks all! Just listened to Chocolate and Cheese. Literally my first ever exposure to Ween and I was struggling to find something to latch onto and then I realized, Ween is like an indie girlfriend I had in the 90s who would make me mixtapes of whatever hipster / indie / offbeat music she was into. Made me nostalgic! That's pretty much how it goes. Every song on every album is different. Some albums are bit more focused towards a "sound", like Quebec and The Mollusk and The Pod, but even something like White Pepper goes from a standard rock song to psychedelic song to a poppy (anti-)love song to a Jimmy Buffet pastiche to a Motorhead pastiche to a weird instrumental. There's gonna be a song or so on every album that doesn't click at first, but it might later.
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Aug 5, 2021 12:32
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what song is the motorhead pastiche
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Aug 5, 2021 14:34
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Kvlt! posted:what song is the motorhead pastiche Stroker Ace?
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Aug 5, 2021 14:36
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BigFactory posted:Stroker Ace? Yep. "It's Gonna Be A Long Night" from Quebec is even more on-the-nose as a Motorhead pastiche, and I call it the best Motorhead song.
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Aug 5, 2021 14:41
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regulargonzalez posted:E: also, what about Pulp -- I listened to This Is Hardcore and the impression I got was a sarcastic David Bowie. Is that the gist? I like This is Hardcore but to echo everyone else definitely check out Different Class. I got into them through hearing Like a Friend https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oP84AsBX2yA on Venture Bros. On one of the commentaries they said something like, if you get nothing else out of this show listen to Pulp. I went straight to Different Class and it’s been in heavy rotation every since. Common People as a single is a good representation of the album and a great song.
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Aug 8, 2021 03:30
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Johnny Winter and Edgar Winter?
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Aug 9, 2021 23:29
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For Edgar Winter They Only Come Out At Night and White Trash
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Aug 10, 2021 02:44
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For Johnny, Johnny Winter and Second Winter (his second and third albums respectively)
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Aug 10, 2021 12:17
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I only got into pop in the early 2010s with Ke$ha and Lady Gaga. Can people tell me what to look at for Brittany Spears, and what exactly made her so big? She was a little before my time, so I don't fully understand the hype. My only real exposure to her is Toxic, which is a phenomenal pop hit and dance.
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Aug 11, 2021 08:54
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It was not my scene, but pretty sure the video for "Baby One More Time" pushed her into stardom at lightspeed. 1999 and that video was playing on MTV 24/7. Combine it with the romance between her at JT and it was arguably a sensation created for MTV by MTV. She had a solid amount of singles from the albums before "Toxic", a formidable amount of videos and a starring role in a movie. She was everywhere.
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Aug 11, 2021 15:06
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Blue Labrador posted:I only got into pop in the early 2010s with Ke$ha and Lady Gaga. Can people tell me what to look at for Brittany Spears, and what exactly made her so big? She was a little before my time, so I don't fully understand the hype. My only real exposure to her is Toxic, which is a phenomenal pop hit and dance. The Essential Britney Spears is the only Best Of compilation I saw with "Lucky" on it, so it is objectively the best one. It's two discs, two hours, and really all you need to understand her, musically. I'd watch some music videos, since Baby One More Time and Oops I Did It Again and even Lucky were seemingly omnipresent in the 90's and early 00's. It's gonna be a difficult thing to "get", I think. While I wasn't a fan, necessarily, her songs, her pictures and her videos were everywhere at the time, along with Backstreet Boys, N*Sync, and Christina Aguilera. Comparable to, I guess, Billie Eilish, but even greater, since it was still the early days of the internet, and the freedom of streaming music wasn't diluting the power of mainstream music at the time. You'd turn on a radio or TV and Spears was probably playing. For even greater context, I remember when "Toxic" came out, and there were news reports for days talking about it. If it's too sexual, or if it's good that it's sexual. Britney's back, Britney isn't back, Britney's crazy, Britney's never been gone, etc. Everyone had an opinion about that song. Then she and Kevin Federline's relationship was in the news and gossip column every single day for forever. She was always more than her music. As soon as she had her first hit, she belonged to public discussion. She couldn't sneeze without people discussing it, either praising her for the greatest sneeze in the world, or demonizing her for sneezing.
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Aug 11, 2021 15:28
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As a latecomer, I do have to admit I really liked the music she was making at around the same time as Kesha and Gaga... for the most part. Like, I liked I Wanna Go and 'Til The World Ends and Hold It Against Me and Gimme More and Circus and Womanizer and so forth. I haven't listened to the albums they're from, but I still like them. But don't listen to the will.i.am collab she did.
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Aug 11, 2021 15:32
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I think trying to "get" pop stars of previous eras is almost entirely missing the point. Pop stars, either intentionally or by luck, tap into a specific zeitgeist of that moment. What made David Cassidy or Leif Garrett the "it" boys of the 70s? Tiffany in the 80s? Hanson in the 90s? There's no objective answer, any more than trying to objectively explain fidget spinners or slap bracelets. Listen to the music, if you like it great, if not move on. Don't try to inject deeper meaning into a sexualized teen girl singing shallow ditties. regulargonzalez fucked around with this message at 15:48 on Aug 11, 2021 |
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Aug 11, 2021 15:44
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Junpei posted:As a latecomer, I do have to admit I really liked the music she was making at around the same time as Kesha and Gaga... for the most part. Womanizer is a fuckin jam
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Aug 11, 2021 16:09
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What everyone has said is spot on. It wasn’t so much Britney’s music — it was about her, her relationship with Timberlake, the drama, etc.
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Aug 11, 2021 16:47
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Gotcha, thanks for giving info everyone. I was curious if there was something especially unique about her sound production or choreography or something like that, but it's still an interesting slice of pop-culture history that she was the media star before the internet became super mainstream. I'll check her out more, but I'm glad to know there's not anything technique-wise or macro-culturally I'm missing out on.
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Aug 11, 2021 16:53
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Blue Labrador posted:Gotcha, thanks for giving info everyone. I was curious if there was something especially unique about her sound production or choreography or something like that, but it's still an interesting slice of pop-culture history that she was the media star before the internet became super mainstream. I'll check her out more, but I'm glad to know there's not anything technique-wise or macro-culturally I'm missing out on. There are video essays that break down some of her songs and why they are so catchy, if that intrigues you. "Toxic" gets a lot of them, cuz I guess there's a lot of weird stuff theory-wise about it. Here's one from 12tone, which is a great music theory channel to subscribe to. She did have access to the best sound production and choreography, too. Like most pop idols, the concerts were huge spectacles. Just cuz her audience was mainly pre-teen/teen girls doesn't mean the concerts weren't events. But yeah, so much of it was marketing. Unlike, say Jessica Simpson, Spears had actual hits that worked and stayed in the zeitgeist. We're still talking about "Toxic" almost two decades later, and I can't name a single Jessica Simpson song except for like two covers she did.
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Aug 11, 2021 17:05
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Blue Labrador posted:Gotcha, thanks for giving info everyone. I was curious if there was something especially unique about her sound production or choreography or something like that, but it's still an interesting slice of pop-culture history that she was the media star before the internet became super mainstream. I'll check her out more, but I'm glad to know there's not anything technique-wise or macro-culturally I'm missing out on. I think she was one of the first big stars that Max Martin wrote songs for and he's one of the most dominant pop songwriting figures of the past 20 years, so that might interest you as much as Britney herself.
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Aug 11, 2021 17:11
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The thing about Britney isn't just that she was big, though. It's that she was so much bigger than all of the other pretty similar pop stars who emerged around the same time. Jessica Simpson, Christina Aguilera, Shakira and a dozen others no one remembers were all doing the same thing but they just never had the same degree of success. There's some luck involved in that for sure, but there's probably something interesting to discover if you dig into that. Was it just Max Martin's songwriting, or was there something else?
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Aug 11, 2021 17:20
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I thought it was his production more than his songwriting which... wasn't all that great considering he's Swedish and thus his English grasp isn't that great (see: the whole debacle about Hit Me Baby One More Time being about masochism/abuse when he meant "hit me on the phone")
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Aug 11, 2021 17:35
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Junpei posted:I thought it was his production more than his songwriting which... wasn't all that great considering he's Swedish and thus his English grasp isn't that great (see: the whole debacle about Hit Me Baby One More Time being about masochism/abuse when he meant "hit me on the phone") Songwriting is also about melody and arrangement. Pop music lyrics are secondary anyway.
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Aug 11, 2021 17:49
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Max Martin did work for Backstreet Boys before Spears, I think.
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Aug 11, 2021 20:03
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A few studios wrote a lot of songs and shopped them around to various singers/agents “back in the day.” It’s always interesting to see who passed up on songs that went on to become hits for someone else.
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Aug 11, 2021 20:50
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I want to say thanks again for the Ween recommendations. Just listened to The Mollusk and I really wish I was back in the 90s, back in college, with other pretentious sophomores I could get nice and navel-gazey with while dissecting the album and the band. I don't even know if it's good, but it's great.
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Aug 14, 2021 06:48
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Lenny Kravitz?
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Aug 16, 2021 19:17
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Junpei posted:Lenny Kravitz? Mama Said
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Aug 16, 2021 19:22
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quote:American singer Lenny Kravitz has released 11 studio albums, one greatest hits compilation album, four box set compilation albums, two extended plays, 58 singles, and eight video albums, including three live albums. Someone out there has all four box sets and loving loves Lenny Kravitz.
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Aug 16, 2021 19:46
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Lenny Kravitz is such a weird phenomenon to me, I think about this a lot. Everybody knows he exists, he shows up in movies, commercials, but I can't remember the last time I heard anything about his music. Maybe he played a super bowl? Nobody ever talks about his music, at least nobody I know or any of the radio I listen to. But at the same time, EVERYBODY knows who he is. He's like that guy who is at every party or gathering, nobody knows who invited him or when he showed up, but there he is, every time, and everyone is ok with it. Except it's pop culture instead of your friends circle. It's probably mostly my pop culture myopia, though.
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Aug 16, 2021 20:15
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I saw Lenny kravitz in concert once. He opened for the stones. It was fine. Mostly forgettable.
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Aug 16, 2021 20:26
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My very first concert was Aerosmith with Lenny Kravitz opening. I have never met a fan of his.
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Aug 16, 2021 20:29
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Okay I looked up the big singles I hope some of these ring bells -A cover of American Woman by The Guess Who -Are You Gonna Go My Way -Fly Away
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Aug 16, 2021 20:31
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Henchman of Santa posted:My very first concert was Aerosmith with Lenny Kravitz opening. I have never met a fan of his. Lenny kravitz:Gen X’er::kings of leon:millennial Junpei posted:Okay I looked up the big singles I hope some of these ring bells Those are definitely 3 big singles by Lenny Kravitz. I don’t think Fly Away has a verse, it’s just chorus over and over again and then an outro BigFactory fucked around with this message at 20:36 on Aug 16, 2021 |
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Aug 16, 2021 20:33
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I can't believe he's not as big/interesting as I thought he'd be. I mean, I don't recall anyone else in the mid to late 90s who was doing the retro 60s and 70s garage rock kind of style. Like, sure, you had the White Stripes and the Strokes but that came after the turn of the millennium.
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Aug 16, 2021 20:38
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It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over was a big single
HenryJLittlefinger fucked around with this message at 21:04 on Aug 16, 2021 |
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Aug 16, 2021 20:59
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Junpei posted:I can't believe he's not as big/interesting as I thought he'd be. I mean, I don't recall anyone else in the mid to late 90s who was doing the retro 60s and 70s garage rock kind of style. Like, sure, you had the White Stripes and the Strokes but that came after the turn of the millennium. I think he was way more on the 70s corporate rock end of the spectrum than 60s or 70s garage rock. And then just turned into guitar centric pop.
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Aug 16, 2021 21:09
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I have a Lenny Kravitz album, somewhere. 5 - the highly original name for his (wait for it) fifth studio album, in 1998. I find his songs pretty repetitive, if often quite good. I feel like his stuff could be really great if he wrote (or had written for him) more complex, interesting songs. "Guitar centric pop" fits, I guess. The only other thing I know about Lenny Kravitz is a snippet I remember from some music journalist complaining about the White Stripes about 20 years ago. According to this long-forgotten journalist, Lenny Kravitz's drummer, Cindy Blackman Santana, is a much better drummer than Meg White. A quick look at a few wikipedia pages suggests this journalist was probably correct, but given the difference in age and experience between those two women, it's not really a fair comparison.
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Aug 17, 2021 01:11
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Certainly a much better rockstar name, that's for sure.
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Aug 17, 2021 03:00
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ExecuDork posted:I have a Lenny Kravitz album, somewhere. 5 - the highly original name for his (wait for it) fifth studio album, in 1998. I mean, yeah - Meg White doesn't have Neil Peart's technical chops. She doesn't have Janet Weiss's technical chops. For what The White Stripes were and what they were trying to do that is utterly beside the point. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9oQsKRyihEA It would be like complaining that AC/DC's guitar riffs are less complex than Yngwie Malsteem's. Well poo poo, guess Thunderstruck sucks now regulargonzalez fucked around with this message at 05:28 on Aug 17, 2021 |
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Aug 17, 2021 05:26
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"Are You Gonna Go My Way" is still burned in my brain. that song was on heavy radio rotation back in the day. I mean, it's not a bad tune, but my god...after the 500th time. Kravitz is pretty much "generic rock musician" in song and style.
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Aug 17, 2021 05:45
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