In above mentioned thread, I was accused of not liking pop music and threadshitting. I enjoy plenty of pop music, and even said I love the Jackson 5 in my first post in the thread (Jamerson is an amazing bassist, and he’s all over those records).
I was arguing whether record sales are a good metric of how great a particular work of art is or whether it’s a judge of how good its marketing is, and responding to people who were arguing that it was a good metric and marketing didn’t have much to do with it. That may be a hijack, because sales volume has pretty much nothing to do with whether you can enjoy a work. I don’t see it as a threadshit.
I agree with the OP. All he was arguing concerned the relations between marketing and artistic value, he never once denigrated pop music per se. There were others in the thread who downright did that, so maybe the mods conflated their stances with that of @scabpicker.
Every musician who wants to break out in the scene(whatever genre) wants to hits. Wants to appeal to the masses. If not, why are they doing it?
Self enjoyment? Well they don’t need marketing or agents or gigs or the consumer.
All they need is a room and their music.
I suspect even Billy Ray Cyrus was happy Achey Breaky Heart was popular for awhile.
Does it matter, though?
If you like a tune, you just like a tune. It’s often hard for people to know why they do.
MJ was certainly a hot mess, personally.
It wasn’t all marketing that made him appeal to the masses.
Like I said in the thread the music is exceedingly danceable and clever.
I, particularly found his singing voice questionable.
It was an hijack that was ruining an interesting discussion. Not every discussion needs to have tangentially related “opinions”. If it’s an interesting topic, a new thread can easily be started.
Well, it’s good that I didn’t say that. I liked his work with the ensemble, I’m not that enthused by his solo work. I still listen to the Jackson 5 to this day despite what he apparently did as an adult.
But, regardless…I don’t think you full-on “threadshit” there, but I do think (and it sounds like you might agree) your posts about “Jackson was successful due to intense marketing” was off-topic.
Yeah, any discussion of sales = good is a tangent in that thread, but Cafe Society is often allowed to branch out like that. If I had been told to take the hijack elsewhere, I would have probably dropped it. If someone else had started a different thread for it, I’d probably participate. If I hadn’t been specifically accused of threadshitting when I was generally responding to others who were discussing the subject with me, I wouldn’t have opened this thread.
And even those milquetoast comments on Jackson’s solo career were made in response to the discussion of sales = good. I’m not going to try to re-litigate that here, because that’s probably a subject for the original thread or a separate thread entirely.
I think it’s fair to push back on the unstated assumption that the music is good and the only reason one might avoid it is the creator’s personal issues. The praise for his work is triggering to those of us who detest it. I tried to refrain from commenting, but just couldn’t help myself.
I was/am triggered by a very popular entertainment medium.
Apparently it’s best to stay out of those threads if you are so triggered.
If you just want to explore why or express your views why something is only great because of whatever reason, I see no reason why you shouldn’t be able to.
Just because it’s very popular doesn’t necessarily make it great.
Any medium or artistic pursuit.
I too, thought cafe society was less touchy about veering into other discussion on topics.
It doesn’t matter if it’s “good”. People can like crappy things. If you like something, can you still listen to it still if the creator is a creep? Can you separate the creator from the creation?
