Pretentious and arty
"There are very few negative adjectives more brutally crippling than “pretentious”. Very few can whittle away any pleasure from that description, and it’s often the kiss of death word when analyzing anyone’s artistic work.
Think about it. What sort of images does that word conjure up when you hear it? Since music is such a large part of this site, we’ll attack it from that angle. To me, I usually conclude it’s probably something totally devoid of anything fun, first and foremost. Long and meandering songs that don’t really go anywhere, full of lame sociopolitical/interpersonal messages that are of importance to no one except the creator. Something Robert Christgau would definitely drool over. Nothing you could really play in the presence of other people in the fear they would waste no time asking “What’s this shit?”"
Read an interesting article about pretentious and arty music: http://www.popmatters.com/pm/post/168678-pretention/
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Animal Collective
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This is a very pretentious thread.
Read the whole article
It worth it
No it's too pretentious
Never had a problem with pretentious
It's whether something is pretentious and good eg a lot of David Bowie*, or pretentious and not so good, eg a lot of Manic Street Preachers*
*used for example purposes only.**
**pretentiously
The biggest problem with `pretentious` as an adjective for music
is that it's used quite differently by different people, and is often confused with `ambitious` or `high-brow` or `complex` or simply `unfamiliar`.
Exactly
It's usually shorthand for "I don't understand this" or "These people are far more intelligent, imaginative & talented than me".
...or knowing self-deprecation, if you dont take yerself too serious like
^this is how I use the it normally
a thing can't really be pretentious can it?
a person probably can but things just exist and you take away from them whatever you find. i don't know thow.
how now thow
what about fixie bikes?
just wank
shite
I'd say that when people talk about pretentiousness in music
they're not referring to the music itself but to its creators, in which case pretentiousness is a fine adjective to use.
Either that or its a metaphor, in much the same way that music can't actually be `crushing' or `heavy' and yet is regularly described as such.
YASS, QUOTES THAT DIDN'T BREAK THE POST
10 points to me.
i thought robert christgau was really mor wasnt he
idk
christgau was an asshole
but then, going back & re-reading, so was bangs, in a different way. so there you go.
Definition
Attempting to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, culture, etc., than is actually possessed.
They say that like it's a bad thing. Without it, the Manics would've just been a bog-standard heavy rock band.
pretty badly written and confused article tbh
I agree that the word is stupid though
I think there's sort of two types of pretentiousness
And they get conflated.
For example coffee shops; people might call Your Local Artisinal Coffee House pretentious because of how they worship what is 'just coffee'.
But then you could say that Starbucks is the truly pretentious place because they pretend their coffee is good when it's mediocre.
James Murphy spoke in an interview about wanting to write a manifesto supporting pretentiousness. I think pretentiousness is a good thing especially it's born out of the alternative; anti-intellectualism.
Good post
I guess you're comparing the Oscar Wilde, lying-in-the-gutter-but-looking-at-the-stars kind of pretentiousness, that has inspired generations of artists (Morrissey & the Manics to name but a couple), and which is wholly admirable; and the kind of pompous bullshit typified by the likes of Bono or Jack White, posing as right-on & folksy & authentic while evading tax or soundtracking Coke ads or whatever.
It's an interesting discussion especially in Britain where people are suspicious of intellectuals and artists but equally dismissive of people who are a bit thick - like Private Eye, which publishes both Pseuds Corner and Dumb Britain.
Pretentious is often misused, I think.
Your Starbucks example is the perfect example of the word pretentious used properly. As a corporation Starbucks act like their coffee deserves more plaudits than it does, which is the dictionary definition of pretentiousness. Knowing and caring about coffee is, if you wish to attach a negative adjective to it, snobbish - and I say that as both a coffee and music snob.
I'd say, if anything, pretentiousness in music is when someone like Noel Gallagher says how his next album will push the boundaries of music when really it'll just be more of the same. (I only use him as an example as I recently read an old Quietus piece attacking him for bigging up the last Oasis album like it was something experimental).
I agree with this totally.
Noel Gallagher is one of the most pretentious people in music.
I think we should just ban the word "pretentious" outright.
i dont...i like free jazz because it is pretentious.....just like me.
But...free jazz isn't actually pretentious.
It isn't trying to be something that it isn't, which is the meaning of pretentious. Like, if it was some average indie band going on about how much their music was influenced by free jazz, that would be pretentious. But free jazz isn't pretentious.
ugh. good response...i know that, you know that...
but plenty of people i know chuck the pretentious tag at it...
Don't think I've ever used that word.
Don't think I've ever really understood its trVe meaning because people use it so much to dismiss so many different types of things (plenty of which I like). Seems like a cop-out word like 'hipster' or 'boring'.
ARTY, however. I mean, let's just please all agree to never use that word. 'Artsy' too.
it's always broken out
as a way of sort of casting aspersions on the motives of the person who made music. It's like rather than saying 'this music just isn't very good' it's saying 'this music is not very good because the person who made it is an unbearable twat'.
(that's not to suggest people should use it
as it inevitably makes the user look like a fucking moron)
If the first thing someone says when criticising something is that it's pretentious
you can more or less guarantee that any opinion they have is half-baked and not worth listening to. It seems to be the go-to word for anyone too lazy to describe why they didn't enjoy something that was a bit different to what they do like.
I always think of pretentious
as what happens in the gap between outsize ambition and mediocre results. Elvis Costello & The Brodsky Quartet always springs to mind.
Pretentiousness is what happens when people try to restrict access to
or to maintain privilege of critique of anything governed by 'taste'. This is is why there is no such thing as 'inverse snobbery'.
A woman who served me in the Co-op once called me pretentious
cos I was wearing gloves.
pretentiousness
is something known & acknowledged, but can't be verbally defined. You just know what/who IS. I don't know, fist bumps, no socks with a suit, jagger & bono...I've always said I don't know what I like but I sure know what I hate. That's probably pretentious.