Billie

[thirdform]

Which is not to say that critics mistaking the actually popular hasn't produced some amazing results. ABC - The Lexicon of Love is a great classic pop record, but in part because it was kept alive by the critics.

 

[IdleRich]

Suspended hasn't sold her to himself. Gus doesn't like music. He's surveying the contemporary landscape.

Commendable but depressing position. I guess someone has to do it but I'm glad it's not me.

 

[pattycakes_]

i mean even the way you hear fully grown adults talk about their pets (and on the flipside the sometimes flippant ways i've heard same people talk about how much they HATE and detest children)

and this general focus on calling certain things and people "wholesome"

Which will ultimately lead us to a level of hell even Dante didn't know about, the one where everything is totally fucking boring.

 

[IdleRich]

Pop culture has always been paedophilic, human biology is wired to find 16 year old girls attractive lol, just the way it is.

Literally half the songs written in the 50s were called "Sixteen Candles" or "Teenage Queen" or whatever

Yeah things like this

Well, she was just seventeen
You know what I mean
And the way she looked
Was way beyond compare

So creepy. I mean some might find it slightly mitigated by the fact that The Beatles themselves were also seventeen and their audience was too.

In fact, the pop industry was made by teenagers for teenagers... the idea that it would grow to be seen as culturally important and that ancient wizened old men in their 30s and 40s would be listening to it, taking it seriously and even analysing its meaning would have seemed crazy to most people at that time. So we do have to be a bit careful when we describe songs about young people as all paedo stuff.

 

[IdleRich]

The first generation where the infantilization process has been fully realized. Look at how all the big fashion brands are selling repackaged high couture versions of the sneakers and clothes we all wanted when we were kids. 500$ sneakers didn't exist in the 90s (afaik) Look at all the fancy burger and fry joints. Adult swim etc.

You mean when you go to a posh restaurant and some trendy chef has reimagined either kid's food, or possibly some kind of basic adult food like, er, steak and kidney pie, but with every ingredient really posh so they can justify charging twenty quid for something you can get in Greggs for two.
That's interesting cos they are two very similar but slightly different things - children's food for adults, basic food made posh - which presumably have different cultural meanings. I mean to say that the first thing seems infantilising but the second maybe is something else.

So for example that Balienciaga (is it?) version of an Ikea bag that costs £2000 - it's not making childhood acceptable but it's very similar to what you're talking about there with high couture versions of kiddie clothes.

 

[sus]

So creepy. I mean some might find it slightly mitigated by the fact that The Beatles themselves were also seventeen and their audience was too.

Point partially ceded, but the Beatles were all in their 20s when that song was written; "Sixteen Candles" was written by a 27 y/o; etc. But agree that they were generally pretty young, and were playing for young people. But uh, so is Billie Eilish, so...

 

[pattycakes_]

You mean when you go to a posh restaurant and some trendy chef has reimagined either kid's food, or possibly some kind of basic adult food like, er, steak and kidney pie, but with every ingredient really posh so they can justify charging twenty quid for something you can get in Greggs for two.
That's interesting cos they are two very similar but slightly different things - children's food for adults, basic food made posh - which presumably have different cultural meanings. I mean to say that the first thing seems infantilising but the second maybe is something else.

Infantilizing: The burger joints you get where the bun is some fancy brioche and there's heirloom tomatoes and Scandinavian gherkins and blue cheese, selection of beef patties from Argentina, Brasil, Japan etc, and the restaurant is semi up market looking, but with little presentational flares tapping into your inner child by way of graffiti style writing and 90s pop culture references in the item names etc. Boiled down, it's basically McDonald's Plus™.

The other thing you're talking about is a bit more what Hestor Blumenthal and that whole generation of lauded celeb chefs have been up to for a bit longer than the burger thing's been around, where he's taken peasant food and raised it to luxury dining and served it on a sheet of slate in lush surroundings and you're supposed to be wowed by how quirky an idea that is. Not to mention all the remixing he did like bacon flavored ice cream etc.

Different to the burgers, but still on a similarly childish delusional plane where the creativity is fairly banal and imo demeaning to you as a customer.

Having said that, I've happily eaten both styles and enjoyed it. But I think what @suspended is getting at there is something which acts as a telling yardstick for where a fair section of millennial and adjacent culture is at.

Now to figure out how to connect this to Billie Eilish

 

[sus]

I've just started assuming that the reason no one the board can connect with music of such powerful emotional weight, as music of powerful emotional weight, and instead has to go on rants about pedophilia and cultural structure, is because they're all autistic

 

[IdleRich]

And in fairness a lot of songs that were sung by young people about young people for young people were of course written by older people. So if you have a fully grown adult writing a song from the perspective of a teenager lusting after a teenager.... well, is that dubious or not? I would say that... well, it can be can't it.

 

[IdleRich]

Infantilizing: The burger joints you get where the bun is some fancy brioche and there's heirloom tomatoes and Scandinavian gherkins and blue cheese, selection of beef patties from Argentina, Brasil, Japan etc, and the restaurant is semi up market looking, but with little presentational flares tapping into your inner child by way of graffiti style writing and 90s pop culture references in the item names etc. Boiled down, it's basically McDonald's Plus™.

The other thing you're talking about is a bit more what Hestor Blumenthal and that whole generation of lauded celeb chefs have been up to for a bit longer than the burger thing's been around, where he's taken peasant food and raised it to luxury dining and served it on a sheet of slate in lush surroundings and you're supposed to be wowed by how quirky an idea that is. Not to mention all the remixing he did like bacon flavored ice cream etc.

Different to the burgers, but still on a similarly childish delusional plane where the creativity is fairly banal and imo demeaning to you as a customer.

Having said that, I've happily eaten both styles and enjoyed it. But I think what @suspended is getting at there is something which acts as a telling yardstick for where a fair section of millennial and adjacent culture is at.

I'm not as certain as you are that the second thing is quite the same... but I'm not certain you're wrong either.
I agree that these things certainly have an appeal. I've actually not eaten them as much as I would like to but when I read a review of some sort of "elevated" version of basic grub I often think "ooh I would like to go there and try that". Come to think of it, part of the reason is cos I do eat this food at home, for instance it's not uncommon for me to eat beans on toast (if I see baked beans for sale that is, they are not in every supermarket), and if I do, there is every chance I put in some pepper and then I think maybe I'll put in some other spices such as tabasco and then you think "I'll put some cheese on" and instead of cheddar like when you were a kid you find you've got some roquefort in the fridge so you use that, so basically you end up with something like an elevated beans on toast, so if you read that Heston has done the same but more so with special bread and special beans etc then of course it's gonna sound a bit interesting.

 

[forclosure]

that's what it's going for isn't it? that's what that songs trying to do on an affective level.

if it is then i haven't noticed

that whooping owl melody in the middle of the hook hasn't worked its magic on me i suppose

 

[forclosure]

Like, obviously, marketting execs want Harry Styles to be more popular than Gucci Mane. Pop music is teenybopper music, yes, but it's also marketted in such a way that it is also supposed to be pleasing to your mothers.

And in the UK this is undoubtedly the case. But worldwide, Alkaline and Thug are more popular than Styles or Eilish. And this is interesting. Even in the early 10s lex luger type trap beats, and autotune proliferated in such a way that noone really remembers ST Vincent anymore. Music moves much faster than Gus' interest in it, much faster than any of our interests really.

faster than anybodies this is why in a funny way nobody takes music journalism seriously but journalists are at best our "curators" now

 

[forclosure]

Which is not to say that critics mistaking the actually popular hasn't produced some amazing results. ABC - The Lexicon of Love is a great classic pop record, but in part because it was kept alive by the critics.

and that was when the phrase "critics darling/favourite" used to mean something (if it ever did)

 

[forclosure]

I've just started assuming that the reason no one the board can connect with music of such powerful emotional weight, as music of powerful emotional weight, and instead has to go on rants about pedophilia and cultural structure, is because they're all autistic

i mean is it really that weighty? also that kind of statement regarding autistic people is dangerous to make cause it keeps up the perception that they're all these flat emotionless machines going

maybe the song just doesn't work and isn't as emotionally powerful as you might think it is if it is for you then power to you for others its might just elicit an "it's alright i suppose"

You know what song i think is awful that ALOT of people feel has alot of pwerful emotional weight inna it? Aerosmith's I Don't wanna miss a thing

 

[pattycakes_]

So for example that Balienciaga (is it?) version of an Ikea bag that costs £2000 - it's not making childhood acceptable but it's very similar to what you're talking about there with high couture versions of kiddie clothes.

Idk the bag in question, but yeah similar vein of creative logic. Balenciaga is a good label to exemplify this stuff. I feel like there's this sense of elevated consciousness being subtly communicated throughout so much of mainstream western pop culture now. Fashion labels, music videos, social media presence. It's all very knowing. The way it all blurs together and breaks the 4th wall and reaches into your subconscious. Kanye is a good example, the way he's got his fingers in all those zeitgeisty pies, with the fashion and the music etc. Label collabs Nike x Prada etc. It's like they ran out of ideas so now all that's left to do is quirky/novelty shit to catch the short attention span of an ever shifting/evolving generation.

Which kind of ties it back into Billie via @linebaugh's ear candy sfx music.

 

[sus]

You know what song i think is awful that ALOT of people feel has alot of pwerful emotional weight inna it? Aerosmith's I Don't wanna miss a thing

Hey, the chorus has pathos, no question

This Ellen Willis quote on "pop optimism" seems relevant

Pop [optimism] -- loosely defined as the selective appreciation of whatever is vital and expressive in mass culture -- did more than simply suggest that life in a rich, capitalist consumption-obsessed society had its pleasures; the crucial claim was that those pleasures had some connection with genuine human feelings, needs, and values and were not -- as both conservative and radical modernists assumed -- mere alienated distraction.

 

[linebaugh]

I've just started assuming that the reason no one the board can connect with music of such powerful emotional weight, as music of powerful emotional weight, and instead has to go on rants about pedophilia and cultural structure, is because they're all autistic

I think youre the second person to ever post a billie eillish thread. the other was a person who got banned for I shit you not literally being a pedophile.

 

[linebaugh]

that being said this thread is solid so far I dont see any reason to complain

 

[IdleRich]

I think youre the second person to ever post a billie eillish thread. the other was a person who got banned for I shit you not literally being a pedophile.

I thought that I remembered that and I wondered if this was the same thread at first and then I thought maybe I imagined that. Glad to know that I am not going mad.

 

[linebaugh]

I'm ambivalent on Eilish personally I dont think the music is bad per se but its got too much of what I was describing in my landmark sfx post- she sings like someone who formed their conception of 'good singing' entirely through watching teenage girls with ukuleles do sentimental covers of top 40 rap songs on youtube.