I know that I owe you the rest of my analysis of the first movement of the Fifth Symphony of Shostakovich and, believe me, it's coming. But in the meantime I had something I wanted to share. You know how I like to compare things: different performances, different pieces and so on. Today I would like to compare two recent pop artists, both new on the scene and both quite young.
First, Billie Eilish age eighteen, who won all the Grammy awards this year. Ok, not all, just Best New Artist, Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Album of the Year plus one more that I can't locate--Hair of the Year?
Let's listen first. Just to keep things relatively on the same level, here is a live performance by Billie Eilish and her brother:
Uh, moving right along, here is Towa Bird, all by herself (with backing tracks, of course):
Ok, well honestly, the Billie Eilish stuff is pretty hard for me to sit through--without actually contemplating suicide that is! It is hard to achieve that level of profound depressive dreariness without drugs, but she manages it. Sure, there are less desolate songs, but there are probably more desolate ones as well. I remember the depths of black depression when I was eighteen, but it never occurred to me to want others to suffer along with me. But lots of people seem to like this. The Tiny Desk concert has over three and a half million views and other videos of hers have close to a billion views--with a 'b'.
Mind you, Towa Bird is doing pretty good too, for a, what, near-amateur? The clip I posted has a quarter of a million views and she has several others. You might protest that she isn't doing that much and is really just a mediocre guitarist. Not too bad, actually, have a look at this clip, just under 1.2 million views:
So how good a singer is Billie Eilish? A better singer than Towa Bird is a guitarist? Let's hear the argument or the evidence or something. One thing I know for sure is that I actually enjoy Towa Bird's clips and I am incapable of listening to one of Billie Eilish's all the way through.
Is it just me? Let's check out another Billie Eilish song:
Oh yeah, that's nice and cheerful...
I don't actually think that this is Billie Eilish's fault. The Zeitgeist just seems to be Weltschmerz all the way down. Thank god we have Towa Bird as a palate cleanser.
"So how good a singer is Billie Eilish? A better singer than Towa Bird is a guitarist?"
ReplyDeleteYes.
The Towa Bird track is something I would hear in the lobby of a Holiday Inn Express while trying to work the waffle maker. Spend a day in any given music store and you'll encounter a half-dozen guitar players who meet or exceed her skill.
Eilish's music is not cheerful, but what of it? Since when is that a criteria of artistic merit? At its best, her music expresses something true, however unpleasant, about the human experience.
If you want a pallette cleanser, try Kenny G or Michael Bolton. They've won Grammies, toom
You have unerringly picked on two other musicians who have also won Grammy awards that I also can't stand. I suspect from your comment that you are not very familiar with this blog?
ReplyDeleteActually some of my favorite music is what I like to call "tortured Russian modernism" so no, I certainly don't need cheery music. But you think that Eilish is expressing something true, just unpleasant? I guess that's what the Grammy folks thought too. Well, like I said, the Zeitgeist is Weltschmerz all the way down.
I'm very familiar with the blog. I'm a fan, in fact. My comments are based entirely on the opinion you expressed in this entry: you repeatedly fault Eilish for not being "cheerful."
DeleteAs for an argument or evidence for Eilish being a better singer than Bird is a guitarist, I'm not sure what that would entail. It seems like a subjective judgement and I won't try to dress it up as anything else.
I asked for an argument or evidence? But I didn't see any.
ReplyDeleteNow I understand why Ed Sheeran is the top selling artist of all time. I don't see this as a fruitful question arguing whether Iowa Bird is just as bad at guitar as Eilish is at singing. To the winner belongs the spoils but there is another meaning to spoils.
ReplyDeleteThe lowest common denominator is indeed very very low. i think you are piling up more evidence for my field research, which as I noted before indicated that young people regard professionalism as fake. Ergo the more amateur, in the lowest sense of the word, you are you prove you are honestly expressing the emotions that all humanity and in particular teenagers feel.
Ed Sheeran is probably the best LCD we can expect from here on out.
Is it possible to fake Weltschmerz? What a gloomy bunch today's pop artists are. I thought popular music was meant to be fun!
ReplyDeleteYes, Maury, it seems that this does provide grist for your mill!
ReplyDeleteYour comments help me focus on what I'm hearing in these two musicians. Looking at an interview with Eilish's brother, who is the producer and from whom come a lot of the musical ideas, he is undoubtedly creative in his soundscapes. And Towa Bird is fairly basic in her approach. But what I hear in the final product is, on the one hand, pretentious narcissistic dolor, and on the other, considerable joy in the simple act of making music. I know what I prefer!
"But what I hear in the final product is, on the one hand, pretentious narcissistic dolor, and on the other, considerable joy in the simple act of making music. I know what I prefer!"
ReplyDeleteBryan, that's kind of what I would I expect from a self-identified Haydn fan. :)
Quincy Jones relatively recently complained that new recording artists keep sampling the same songs and recycling the same recursive chord loops and that he heard this as a problem of younger musicians wanting to right brain everything as though the left hemisphere of the brain should never even be involved in making music. He was pretty firmly on the side of not assuming you can "right brain" everything about music without thinking through what it is you're doing.
As I've been saying for years, there's a vast era of residually Romantic ideological stuff going on in the arts and even pop stars who "think" they are rejecting stuffy music like classical or jazz are swimming in the sea of cultural, aesthetic and ideological assumptions we've inherited from the proverbial long 19th century about "authenticity" and "expression".
Thanks for your reply. Iowa Bird seems unconvincing as an exponent of "joy in music making" to me and I suspect the other commenters. But assessing artists on their (supposed) mood rather than the artistic output seems like a very steep slippery slope. Maybe a thread on post 1990 pop albums you regard as tending towards artistic excellence and why would be a good way of proceeding here.
ReplyDeleteGuilty as charged, Wenatchee. Good comment on the lingering influence of romanticism.
ReplyDeleteI think I'm with Quincy on that. When I get down to composing, I pretty much roam around the landscape freely, but I have already surveyed the landscape. I really don't understand how pop artists now think that they are giving us authentic expression of their individuality when it is all based on samples of previous songs. Maybe they are driven to it by commercial pressure?
Maury, doesn't Towa Bird seem like she is having a heck of a good time? I think that I am defaulting mostly to how I feel listening to the songs because I just don't see much to analyze.
That sounds like a big job, the post-1990 album thing. The problem for me doing that is that my listening to pop music is so sporadic that I can't do anything like a proper survey. Nine-tenths of the landscape I haven't even seen! But, if you like, I could name a few songs and albums that have caught my attention.
If I could be allowed a bit of indulgence, the 80s were fairly interesting to me in pop with these artists in particular:
Prince, The Police, Talking Heads, David Bowie and The English Beat
I rarely listened to pop music in the 1990s and, after browsing through the Wikipedia article on pop music in the 90s, I can't say I can pick out much. Maybe a song or two by Metallica, Robbie Williams and Shakira.
As for the 2000s, I was aware of Beyoncé, Bjork and Radiohead, I just didn't like them much. I do like Kanye West, but I didn't really discover him until a couple of years ago. Of the divas, I was aware of Rihanna and Katy Perry, but I preferred the look to the music. One song I really liked was Bad Romance by Lady Gaga. She is undoubtedly a fine musician, but I haven't liked her later songs much.
As for the last decade, apart from Kanye, I haven't heard much that interests me. But, bear in mind that when it comes to pop music I am a vile apostate, having sold my soul to the devil in 1970 to become a classical musician! Hey, if it works for the blues...
Personal tastes are impossible to argue with but since you ask no, Iowa Bird does not seem like a good example of joy in music making. Judging from the other comments, I think the view is this is one more talentless hack using the internet like an annoying person at a party. As you note what Billie has going for her is her brother, who is a professional in the music biz. He has cleverly managed and packaged his morose sister. So there is some professionalism in her music, it just isn't by her.
ReplyDeleteAs for pop music history, I understand that you are not an expert on pop music. But it seems to me in the current devolving environment it is best to note artistic excellence in any genre and try to explain to people why it is excellent and to be emulated as opposed to the usual sludge. Your analyses of acknowledged classical masterpieces are well done but are targeted to other classical fans.
It is certainly a target rich environment to slag on these current pop artists but many folks are doing that already. In many cases these pop artists are designed to annoy older generations, if not with their music than their behavior. But it would be useful IMO to compare bad examples with good. The downer vibe was not created by Eilish, it is well worn. I understand that you don't feel confident to select and analyze an entire pop album but maybe a comparison of an Eilish song with an artist who does a better job on a song in a similar vein and why it is better.
That's an interesting and well-conceived challenge you pose, Maury. If I have time, I promise to give it a whirl. What would you think if I compared Eilish to Leonard Cohen, a song like "Darkness"? Or would it have to be someone more contemporary?
ReplyDeleteReading Maury's comment I thought of another Billie: Billie Holiday. She did the downbeat song well, Gloomy Sunday comes to mind. What's the difference? Not entirely sure, but the melodies do go somewhere, they have an interesting shape. And they are memorable, which is surely an essential feature of pop music, yet I find myself unable to recall any of Eilish's song. It was more like bad recitative
ReplyDeleteGood suggestion Steven, you guys certainly have my work planned out for me.
ReplyDeleteBUT MY STRING QUARTET COMES FIRST!
@Steven: Bad whispered recitative!
ReplyDeleteBryan Townsend wrote:
ReplyDelete"...the Zeitgeist is Weltschmerz all the way down." Among you and regulars Maury and Wenatchee (and others)there are enough memorable quips and quotes here to put together in a book ...
I'd like to throw my hat into the confusion ring (Classical vs pop, electric vs acoustic, perfection tech vs rough authenticity, dolor music vs the happy, Balzac vs Proust, Nabokov vs Everybody, et al) ... would you be so kind as to listen to a cut I did recently? It is here on Sound Cloud:
https://soundcloud.com/dex-quire/letting-go
... maybe we're living in the age of the backing track ...?
Thanks in advance and cheers for the great evocative posts ...!
Let's not forget Patsy Cline while we're on the topic of female singers presenting desolate pop ballads. :)
ReplyDeleteI haven't heard a whole lot of Eilish ... what I have heard sounds like there's traces of Portishead, Massive Attack and Bjork but ... with the over-finished production approach of post-Police Sting.
That's nice stuff, Dex. You're just playing the guitar solo? Where did you get the backing tracks?
ReplyDeletePatsy Cline, yes, good suggestion!
Thanks much Bryan ... yes, that's me fingerpicking my Ibanez on a tiny Crate amp; I came across the backing track on YouTube but can't find it; I hope the owners will let me know - I'd like to credit them.
ReplyDeleteRe: I hope I wouldn't be too presumptuous in filing some of your reflections on new music under: We are Old & Wise and Full of Years ... inevitably, looking upon the youth productions today (and their award ceremonies - yikes!), we can't help but condescend -- we see short-cuts where we put in the work; We see mostly emoting where we long to see talent; cliche where we would see novelty. The wheel turns and we can only hope that excellence -- that rare bird -- will descend upon a new generation ...
Would I be completely off-base if I heard a little Jerry Garcia in your playing?
ReplyDeleteYes, we are supposedly old and wise, but we envy the young for their spontaneity. Even though so much of it seems like rather shallow strategies to attract attention. It is such an utterly different musical universe now. I am deeply grateful that I pretty much know what I am up to and I don't concern myself with getting attention. My career plans involve becoming very well known about thirty years after I die, so I don't have to worry about career issues now and can just compose music.
Heh!
Ha! Jerry Garcia - I've never sat down to learn his stuff since first hearing it in 1968 ... but I've always loved his ascending noodling; funny, his name came to my mind when I listened to Letting Go a while back ...(!) I've been influenced by all the greats; just this last year I started using my fingers to pick ... I can't pick consecutive notes (that is, alternate picking with index and middle, up or down the frets) very fast, but I seem to be able to skip or bounce from string to string ...
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of your compositions - I recently met a violinist who would like to play together ... how do I get ahold of your music (guitar and violin)? The link to your publisher seems to be inactive ... Thanks ...
I knew it!
ReplyDeleteThe Vancouver publisher, The Avondale Press, sadly are no longer in business and they transferred their copyrights to the Canadian Music Centre. But I would be happy to email you pdfs of the Four Pieces and I would be delighted if you played any of them. Just send me your email to bryantown@gmail.com
I have other music, not published. There are some individual pieces for violin and guitar and a bunch of transcriptions, mostly of Debussy, Shostakovich and French Baroque. Just let me know your pleasure.
Thank you Bryan, will do ...
ReplyDeleteBen, thanks for the clarification. Actually, it is not so much that I accused her of not being cheerful as I accused her of being profoundly depressing and dreary and in a comment of purveying pretentious, narcissistic dolor. The not being cheerful was just a throwaway line!
ReplyDeleteThe point about competence on the instrument or voice really turned out to be a detour from the more important issue of mood and ambiance. On Maury's suggestion I am planning on doing a post comparing a Billie Eilish song to ones by Billie Holiday, Patsy Cline and Leonard Cohen. Perhaps that will shed some light on the matter.
As you likely know from reading the blog, and thanks, by the way, I believe it is possible to bring some objectivity to the table when discussing aesthetic matters. But you need to discuss the specifics.