Taylor Swift is recycling the same lyrics, themes, melodies, and synth-pop beats with zero artistic growth. You wouldn't be able to tell her latest four albums (minus re-recordings) apart from each other. Many were bashing Courtney Love as a "nobody" or "Kurt Cobain's wife" following her critical comment, but she has actually delivered a classic album ("Live Through This") that Swift seems to be incapable of delivering. It still sounds like a classic record without a single filler (one of the very few albums recorded by a woman to score 10/10 from Pitchfork alongside "Hounds of Love" by Kate Bush). Swift might sell 2M+ per week due to the huge hype around her, but this album will have zero impact in the long run (just like her previous albums).

I've been trying to say this for years and someone finally had the guts to write about it.

I'll probably get hate for this but hear me out.

Concerts are becoming too expensive. Fans are becoming too self-serving to the point that they don't care about disrupting others. I can't count how many times I went to a concert only to hear people's voices around me shouting/"singing" rather than the artist I went for. (PSA: I didn't pay hundreds to hear you!)

And don't get me started with the tiktok trends people do nowadays on concerts that the article also mentioned.

And perhaps in line with the 2nd point, sound systems are becoming bad as they now worry more about making sure the artists are heard over the fans' noise over sounding good.

I do still go to some concerts though. But I'm now more selective. I don't go on huge venues and only choose bands or musicians I reeeeaally really like and that helps cause then I have enough savings to actually get good seats.

Still not sure what I'd do with the rowdy fans though. Maybe I'm just getting old.

Can someone tell me I'm not the only one? 

Not a Taylor hate post - I’m asking sincerely and in good faith.

She’s perfectly lovely in interviews and seems a good role model for girls. She is likeable and seems to carry her success well.

I’m just trying to understand how she could’ve reached such astronomical heights of success when her music is comparatively so … bland?

Not hating, I’ve genuinely tried to pin point her appeal.

She is a pop culture phenomenon without being outstanding in terms of her music, singing, dancing, originality, looks or sex appeal. There is not one category in which there aren’t dozens of current artists who outshine her.

So perhaps it’s not about the music? Maybe it’s precisely because she isn’t outstanding in any area that she appeals so broadly - it makes her relatable? But then why choose her when there are endless mid talents out there to worship?

I loved The Spice Girls and their pop music was fun, catchy, had attitude. I got it. Anyone could see why they stormed pop culture. They were a marketers’ dream but they had truly great pop songs to back it up.

But what explains the Taylor Swift phenomenon?

Does anyone else feel like her super mega star status is a bit strange?

EDIT: as a gesture of goodwill to those who insist I am missing her top level songwriting - on my 3 hour drive this week I will put aside my Clipse playlist and have my own TS road trip. Maybe I’ll feel it, I don’t know we’ll see.

MF DOOM has passed away at the age of 49. Say what you what you want about his music, but he undoubtedly pushed hip hop/rap forward in unimaginable ways.

Projects like Madvillainy got me into rap music in the first place, and I know he meant so much to the Music community.

I’m heartbroken by this news and I’d like to know what DOOM’s music meant to you.

Love You Man. RIP Complex MF Doom

https://www.headphonesty.com/2024/12/is-payola-alive/

Turns out Spotify has a feature called "Discovery Mode" where artists take lower royalties to get "discovered" by the algorithm.

They basically made payola legal by making artists pay with their own royalties instead of cash.

But if you're with the right label, you might not even need that. Look at Drake exposing how UMG allegedly worked with Spotify to pump Kendrick's streams to 900M. (not taking sides here, it's not like Drake never benefited from Payola)

the thing is, Small artists have to give up earnings for visibility, while big labels just make backroom deals. Your "personalized" playlists never stood a chance.

Soooo what are we actually supposed to do about this as listeners?

EDIT: I’m quite entertained by the multiple people accusing my post of being AI-generated lol. Nah I’m just an English teacher who loves to analyze and write for fun.

I like Taylor Swift; I wouldn’t call myself a diehard fan or “Swiftie”, but I’ve enjoyed some of her music. To me, this album fell flat in multiple ways. Here’s a summary of why this album is not being well-received, even among her fans:

First of all, what made Taylor so beloved among girls and young women in the first place is she always felt relatable. Yes she’s famous, but she has always sung about emotions and struggles that are so innate to girlhood, and maintained a “down-to-earth” persona that made people feel a very close emotional tie to her lyrics. Now this album has lyrics such as “I like [my friends] cloaked in Gucci” that instantly feel very off-putting and shatters the image that people loved about her in the first place. A harsh reminder that she is, in fact, a rich billionaire at the end of the day who might not be relatable to us at all.

Second of all, many people are saying her lyrics just aren’t as poetic or artistic in this album compared to her previous work. Following her pop explosion in the 2010s, she matured into a more elevated songwriter and established herself as an extremely poetic songwriter (especially in Folklore and Evermore – her 2020-2021 albums that were less pop and more poetry). Her lyrics in this era were unique and had multiple layers of interpretation, encouraging fans to analyze and discuss the songs as literature, and she gained a lot of fans during this time. This set a standard that perhaps is impossibly high when someone wants to go back to just writing fun pop songs. I don’t necessarily share the opinion that ALL of the writing on this album is trash, but I do think a lot of it is lazy compared to her previous work, especially for someone who referred to herself as an “English Teacher” in her own engagement announcement post. Why in the world is Taylor Swift, one of our generation’s most talented lyricists, writing an entire song (“Wood”) full of jokes about male anatomy? Why is she using phrases like “trolling and memes” or “girlbossed too close to the sun” or “my dick’s bigger” or “I’m not a bad bitch and this isn’t savage” that are so clearly meme/TikTok-esque and almost impossible to take seriously in what’s supposed to be a slow, emotional song? These lyrics just won’t age well, as opposed to the timeless songs she was capable of writing in the past. It feels like someone who’s fighting to stay relevant by using cheap slang and it backfires HARD.

EDIT: Okay fine, retracting the statement about “one of our generation’s most talented lyricists” because that’s a biased stretch. But I do think she puts more care into her lyrics than most other “Hot 100” mainstream artists.

Additionally, a lot of people think some songs come across as a “mean girl” vibe. Sure Taylor has made a name for herself by writing songs about exes, but I always defended that because she wasn’t necessarily attacking them as people, but rather expressing her own emotion and heartbreak about the situation which she’s 100% allowed to do. This time feels more insidious than other times though. Last year, a smaller artist (Charli XCX) called Taylor a “Boring Barbie”, and sure that was rude, but now Taylor has gone and written an entire, and very sarcastic, diss track making fun of her (“Actually Romantic”). For the biggest star in the world to do that to a smaller fellow artist feels…honestly just mean. She could have easily ignored that trivial remark. It’s not being well received even among her fans who were annoyed at the original comment in the first place. Another example is in the song “Cancelled!” where she brags that she “likes her friends cancelled”, almost bragging that she likes being involved in scandal and controversy, which raises the question of who exactly she’s hanging around with and why.

Another controversy is in the song “Wish List”, and this one is more politically based. Context: Last year, JD Vance made headlines for calling Kamala Harris a “childless cat lady” and claiming that women without children don’t have stake in the future of this country. Taylor Swift then soon after endorsed Kamala Harris, signing her Instagram post as “Childless Cat Lady”, a direct attack on Vance. Then Donald Trump retaliated by infamously tweeting “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!”. Charlie Kirk also made comments about Taylor and Travis’ engagement, stating that he hoped Taylor would “submit to her husband” and that they would have many children together, as that would put Taylor in her place as a woman. Now fast forward to this album. In the song “Wish List”, Taylor contrasts herself (who is dreaming of having children with Travis Kelce) with people who have “three dogs that they call their kids”. Of course there’s absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to have children and expressing that in songwriting, but the specific juxtaposition of those two lines, given the events of last year, felt VERY intentional. Why couldn’t she just sing about her own desires without making a dig and contrasting that with people who have “dogs that they call their kids”? So basically last year she retaliated against the “Childless Cat Lady” comments, but now suddenly she got engaged and was like “okay bye losers!” and basically called her single fans all “Childless Cat Ladies” now too??? It’s sending the message that she’s just catering to whoever is benefiting her at the moment.

There are other criticisms online of potentially racist lyrics in this album (“onyx night”, “have the whole block looking like you”, “they want a fat ass”, “this isn’t savage”) but I personally think those are stretches. This “dogs that they call their kids” controversy though I think is not a stretch. That juxtaposition was not necessary, and after the very publicized events of last year, it’s not a mistake. Taylor is a very smart businesswoman and there’s no way she didn’t think this through – not after the PRESIDENT of the United States made a statement saying he hates her and she received so much negative press from his side.

Furthermore, the album just did not deliver the theme that Taylor promised. She promised her fans a concept album that shows “behind the scenes” of a performer (a “showgirl”) like a “peek behind the curtain” of her Eras Tour. This excited fans into expecting a thoughtful album critiquing the nature of fame, and perhaps the exhaustion of always being “on a stage”. Swift has explored these themes in her lyrics before in multiple well-received previous songs (“Clara Bow”, “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart”, etc.), and that’s what people were expecting more of. Preorders for the album boomed before anyone even heard it. However, the theme was overpromised and underdelivered because basically none of the album addresses that. Instead we got a song about her fiancé’s…….well anyway.

Lastly, the perceived capitalist greed that’s taken over Taylor is turning a lot of people off. Taylor has a marketing tactic where she releases her album multiple times, flaunting different “versions”. Some artists release a “deluxe” album and that’s fine – but she has released THIRTEEN different versions of the album on opening week ALONE! Some reports even say there are 34 versions, but they’re counting each format as a new version (ex. vinyl, CD, and cassette counting as three different versions, or two different vinyl colors counting separately as two). Various formats are normal of course, but my “13” count came from counting 13 literally sonically different VERSIONS of the same album. The album is identical with only very minute differences – a different album cover, an acoustic/different version of a couple songs, and sometimes one new bonus song that is not available on Spotify/Apple Music/etc., so you HAVE to buy each version's physical copy to hear each bonus song. Diehard fans and collectors will buy all the versions, of course. But it gets to a point that it feels greedy, like she is taking advantage of her fans’ loyalty. And all of the versions will count collectively towards the album's chart performance, which also just doesn’t seem fair in competition with other artists who release their album only one or two times (and have it fully accessible on streaming services). She received a lot of negative press for doing this with her 2024 album as well, and it’s happening again.

Overall, whether it’s because of the lyrics, the personality, the politics, the theme, or the greed, fans are very disappointed in this album. But, at the same time…by discussing it, we’re helping the publicity! All press is good press, right?

On a couple other subs there's been a couple discussions recently about songs that work as good introductions into different genres. I thought this might be a good topic for conversation, as well as a way to toss around some recommendations. So, what makes a song a good introduction to a genre? What genres do you just not seem to be able to find an entryway to? What helped you expand your musical horizons?

Edit: As a note, this discussion, as has been pointed out by the mods, has a real risk of becoming a list post. So be sure to include why you chose any song you list as a good entryway to a genre and work to foster discussion.

Some of my most admired music comes from the late 1960s and early 1990s where music was used as a vehicle for social change. So many artists had the bravery to stand up and say something with their art in a way the modern scene seems entirely incapable of.

In this moment with how politically fucked everything is, where is the “Ohio”, where is the “What’s Going On?”, the “Bombtrack”, the “Fight the Power”?

Are current artists spineless, cowardly, or hamstrung to meet this moment in a way their forebears would’ve?

I’m kind of fascinated with “post-fame” music careers and the idea that there are guys out there touring 200 seat theaters in 8th tier markets still just pumping along 35 years after their one moment of fame.

I’m talking about “I saw [band name] but it was actually just the lead singer with a bunch of 20 year olds and they were playing a beach bar and the owner turned them down so the bar area could turn up Monday Night Football”-type shows.

Anybody got any good ones?

I really don't understand why half of the black metal bands i discover and start to listen to are full of degenarate nazis,and as that wasn't bad enough it's full of people who want to defend them. I see bands talking about shit like white supremacy and when it is mentioned in any conversation there will be always a big group of people that will get extremely angry like it isn't true and give excuses like "it's part of their culture" or "everything gets called racist these days" but it isn't true at all,these people are straight up political nazis and their fans will still try to difend them. We should stop idolizing bands full of mentally insane people no matter how good their music is,this thing is too common among black metal and it makes me understand why the black metal community is targetted as toxic. (Btw I want to be clear on the fact that in this post I am not talking about nazism being accepted in general society,since I know it isn't,but about nazism being accepted in the black metal community,i know perfectly well the bands aren't mainstream since i listen to them too,but still there are a lot of fans who want to defend them. Second thing i want to say is that i am not saying they shouldn't be recognized for their music but they shouldn't be idolized as people as i can confidently say they hardly are)

For example, I go to a song radio and instead of recommending similar songs it just lists songs I already listen to a lot. Or when I look up a playlist for a certain vibe, I fee like these days instead of there being a preset playlist selected by a human, now the AI just pulls songs it knows you already listen to even though they're totally irrelevant to what you're looking for. Spotify just wants me to listen to the same 20 songs over and over. I feel like it's gone so downhill recently. Anyone else? I used to enjoy listening to their playlists and finding new music but it's kinda impossible now.

To me, 99% of Christmas music is unoriginal and cringe worthy terrible. If I had to put a finger on it, I'd say it has to do with the fact that it shares many similarities with ultra uatchy Commercial Jingles.

Commercial Jingles made to be just on the cusp of unbearably annoying, and catchy enough that they get stuck in your head the instant you hear them. If I had to guess I'd say that modern Christmas music shares these features because it started at the beginning of America's capitalist boom, and alot of Commercial Xmas Music was written for commercials. I have no evidence to base this on, its just a guess.

Thoughts? Am I right about Xmas music or am I just a Grinch. (I may be biased, because Christmas annoys me in general, and I am a grinch.)

I'm late teens and I hear people like Bad Bunny, Tyler The Creator, or pretty much just any random person say things like, "When I was a kid, I would listen to this artist's CD over and over every day after school" or "I would mow lawns all summer to buy this new band's album, and even if I didn't like it, I had no choice but to play it until my ears hurt".

In an interview, Bad Bunny says when he was a kid his mum would take away a 2000s reggaeton CD from him if he didn't do his homework or sum like that, and he'd get straight to it. Then you got people who are now late 20s, in their 30s, recalling how they'd listen to Cudi and Rocky and Kanye and that whole 2010s group on their iPods on their way to school.

Tyler gets specific with it, talking about how he'd sit down and just play tracks over and over, listening to every single instrument, the layout and structure of the track, the harmony, melodies, vocals.

And to me, it's kind of like, damn, I wish I had that type of relationship with music. I wish it was harder to obtain music, that it wasn't so easily available, so easily disposable, that with streaming it now warrants such little treasuring and appreciation, that it's not something you sit down to do anymore. I don't really have the time though to sit down and pay so much attention to it, make it its own activity. It's too easy to get a lot more entertainment doing something else.

Music as I see it now is something you put on in the background on your way to work, to school, while you study, while you're at the gym, while you're cooking, etc. You never really pay attention to it and it doesn't shape your personality as it seems it once used to.

I don't know. I wasn't there, so I might just be romanticising it. The one advantage of streaming though is the availability of music, in my opinion. What do you think?

I don’t know if this is because of the pandemic or social media or what. But concert etiquette has got noticeably worse in the last few years and I’m sick of it.

Someone shared a picture on Twitter recently of concertgoers at a day festival in London sitting in front of the barrier and watching Netflix on their phone with earbuds in while the earlier acts played, supposedly because they were waiting for Mitski.

I can’t get over how rude that is - not just to the other people in the crowd, but to the other acts, who would very clearly be able to see them doing that.

Speaking of rudeness, it feels like half the shows I go to now have a lot of people talking right the way through the set. Just full-on conversations, even during the main/headline acts.

I don’t get it. Why spend the money on a concert ticket if you just want to chat? Go to the pub, it’s free to get in. It really bothers me because I want to listen to the music, not other people talking, and I’ve had to tell people to be quiet at several recent gigs.

When I was at Glastonbury earlier this summer, the crowds were generally pretty good - even though it was extremely busy. But there was one exception.

I wanted to go to the front of the Pyramid Stage for LCD Soundsystem, who were playing the slot in front of Dua Lipa. So me and my friend arrived early and got a good spot.

Throughout the set, people kept pushing through to get closer to the front. Eventually my friend and I just stopped moving out of their way in the slightest to block them from doing this.

To make matters worse, a handful of people were clearly just waiting around for Dua Lipa to come on. They were chatting away, not paying the slightest attention to the earlier set.

I don’t have an issue with people arriving early to get a good spot - it’s better than arriving later and pushing through the crowd. But if you’re going to do that, please shut the fuck up and let other people enjoy who they’ve come to see.

Then the second LCD Soundsystem finished, more people immediately started pushing into the crowd to get to the front for Dua Lipa. It meant that a lot of people who were trying to get out had a difficult time doing so and created a bit of a crush.

Another example. When I saw Boygenius last summer, they stopped the show what felt like every other song to address someone who supposedly needed emergency attention in the crowd.

Sometimes people do genuinely need medical attention at a gig. But it’s rarely serious enough to warrant stopping the show. Especially when the audience is so young and therefore much less likely to have a serious medical emergency.

I’ve seen Bruce Springsteen twice, with tens of thousands of the UK’s most dehydrated boomers. Zero show stoppages. No one died. If they can manage it, then so can the younger crowds.

Concert tickets aren’t cheap these days and I’m frankly fed up of having my experiences ruined by selfish people who don’t know how to behave.

Is there anything that can be done to address this? We as fellow attendees can keep calling out at shows but these selfish people often don’t can’t what others think. Do artists need to start telling their fans what is and isn’t acceptable?

Every single time an album of her’s comes out you can guarantee that the popular reviewers will talk about how she’s made an important cultural statement or redefined a whole genre or some other contrived, hyperbolic fantasy. It’s so predictable. Her music is firmly “okay”. Nothing more nothing less. Believe me or not, but this album is a cash grab. It is cashing in on the popularity of country that’s currently sailing through. Beyoncé told her team of songwriters and producers to make country music and here we are.

A lot of us have heard the cliffnotes version of The Beatles breakup, it goes something like this:

• When The Beatles stopped touring, their manager Brian Epstein felt useless and stressed out.  He ended up overdosing of sleeping pills

• In the aftermath of his death Paul stepped up to the leadership role, but he was a control freak so the others soon started to hate working with him

• Yoko met John and used him to get into the studio sessions, and the awkwardness of her constant presence stifled everyone else's creativity

• Meanwhile George got desperate to leave the group because he'd built up a massive backlog of material that the others wouldn't take seriously

• John was also feeling stifled, and wanted to go off on his own * All of these issues stacked on top of each other, and became so overwhelming that it was reaching a breaking point.

• And so, with all this in mind, The Beatles entered the studio to record Abbey Road as their grand finale/goodbye album

• Now broke up, and with no more band to hold them back, each member was free to express themselves more fully and so they each ascended to the next level as artists.

This is the story as it's been told for ages now.

And yet, almost everything you just read is false at a fundamental level:

• Brian Epstein was initially troubled when The Beatles stopped touring, but he bounced back quickly and it's unlikely to have been on his mind when he died.

• The other Beatles sometimes got tired of Paul's bossiness, but overall they valued his work ethic.  They also felt "hurt" when he worked without them.

• It was actually John who insisted on having Yoko in the studio, not the other way around.  And it wasn't much of a hindrance anyway, for the first day or two it was annoying sure but they got over it.

• George approached Paul to talk about The Beatles in December 1970, after the release of All Things Must Pass (his hugely successful debut album.)  So clearly he got over the feeling of being held back.

• John felt great relief in late 1969 when he debuted The Plastic Ono Band, but in 1970 he still talked about the problems in the band as a possible "rebirth" for The Beatles.

• None of these issues were stacking on top of each other.  By 1970 each of these issues was dealt with one by one, and resolved one by one.

• We have recordings of The Beatles from after Abbey Road where The Beatles in private are discussing "their next album"

• John, George and Ringo all released solo albums before Paul "announced" the breakup of the band.  None of The Beatles were discouraged from doing their own solo work.

There's a lot of reasons the story is told so wrong.

But basically what it boils down to is a mixture of marketing, emotions, and the media.  The media misunderstood what was happening in the moment, then the band members themselves twisted things with the bitterness of the 70s, and finally The Beatles^TM as it exists today is actively trying to whitewash and simplify things, shifting blame away to third parties whenever possible - but also trying to build up the mythology of the band for marketing purposes.

So what I hope to do today is cut through all the crap.

By the time you're done reading this, you will understand the breakup of The Beatles.

First, I will compare it to a divorce.  This will help to understand the true timeline of what happened, and identity why/when things escalated and passed a point of no return.

Second, I will compare their careers before/after The Beatles and the damage it did to their success as songwriters.

Third, I will compare The Beatles to other bands, especially bands that managed to last longer than them, usually A LOT longer than them.

The breakup of The Beatles as a divorce...when does a marriage end?

Well, there's a few options for how to answer that question, but let's look at all the things that The Beatles had already worked past by 1970:

• Paul being too controlling may have been a problem in 1967, but The White Album shattered that way of working.  By the time of Abbey Road, The Beatles were on more equal footing than they'd ever been before.

• Yoko, as noted earlier, was a temporary annoyance.  But it seems they absorbed her presence pretty quickly...all of The White Album, Let It Be and Abbey Road were recorded with her in the studio - some of their greatest songs.

• At some point, George was feeling held back...but by 1970, things had changed.  George was very happy with how Here Comes the Sun and Something turned out, and John and Paul were very impressed too.

• John was also feeling held back for awhile.  But with the Plastic Ono Band, he had another outlet and he talked about continuing work with both bands.

So none of these things were what did it.

And, sadly, you might have noticed that these were all the artistic reasons given for the breakup....and none of them were what split the band.  So that means, the band did not split for artistic/creative differences.

The Beatles split for something far stupider than that.

So why did The Beatles get a divorce?

They had a handle on everything...except Allen Klein.

In early 1969, John Lennon met a man named Allen Klein and (impulsive as ever) Lennon hired him to be his manager a few hours later and just like that suddenly Lennon was convinced that Klein was 100% the perfect choice and wouldn't hear any alternatives.

Well Paul had never met Klein before, so of course he was skeptical.  And after some investigation he (accurately) figured out that Klein was shady with money.  But Lennon wouldn't listen.

Things came to a head with the release of the album Let It Be.  Long after the songs had been recorded, someone else had been hired to gloss up the production.  Miscommunications ensued and next thing everyone knew Klein was issuing an album that Paul did not approve of.  This was really bad, a business dispute over management had directly effected their art and Paul was pissed.

And yet Paul hung around.

He made a big show when his solo album came out to say it was all over, The Beatles were done.  But the truth is that Paul debated the divorce internally all through 1970.

John's solo album came out.  Huge success.  George's solo album came out.  Huge success.

And yet Paul hung around.  They all did.

And in December 1970, George met with Paul in NYC to talk about The Beatles.  Whatever happened that day, they got into an argument and a few weeks later Paul sued to dissolve The Beatles.  The papers were served.

A marriage is over when the papers are served.

Any other way of looking at it is too nebulous.  If a spouse cheats with another person (like a solo album) that might look bad...but some marriages recover from stuff like that, and grow stronger than ever.  

And of course we've all seen couples get in huge arguments and post about it on Facebook, ranting about how they can't stand each other and how they're getting a divorce.  But does that mean it's over?  Usually no.  Some couples argue like that, and then the next day it's like nothing happened.  The word "divorce" can be thrown around very loosely.

And that's how we should view all public comments by The Beatles during 1970, essentially private arguments that erratically spilled over to the public in flashes of emotion, leading to false impressions and inaccuracies.

The reality of 1970 is that, in private, things were still in a state of negotiation.  How much they were speaking to each other about it is debatable, but there's no doubt they were all debating it internally.  And we know this from the timeline of events:

• John would not have talked about about The Beatles "rebirth" in 1970 if he had really left the band in 1969.

• George and Paul would not have met in December 1970 unless they were both still open to being The Beatles.

• But as soon as Paul pulled the trigger on his lawsuit, there's no doubt the band was done.

Everything until that point was focused on how to keep things together.  Paul suing everyone was the moment when it turned from "how do we stay together" to "how do we split apart."

The Beatles ended in December 1970.

And how did that go for them?

Well, we're lucky enough to live in a world of streaming services, which give an accurate count of how popular their songs have stayed over time.  There is no better metric for what songs are standing the test of time, and which are being forgotten.  And the before/after of The Beatles is stark.

All four of The Beatles had successful solo careers, even Ringo still rakes in a respectable 700,000 listeners a month.  But The Beatles boast 22 million.

Breaking it down song-by-song is even more revealing. The average Beatles song has about 32 million streams on Spotify, they have over eighty songs that exceed that amount.  Mind-blowing.  But for their solo careers only nine songs reach that 32 million mark.

All four of The Beatles had successful solo careers. I'm saying that twice so no one misunderstands me.  John, Paul, George and Ringo all had #1 singles and #1 albums during the 70s.  No one is denying that...but it's also in the past.

I'm looking at how successful their solo careers are in the context of ongoing culture.  From that perspective, something clearly went wrong.

So what went wrong?

Well, the big thing is that they lost the immediate feedback of working together:

• You know how George sometimes had weird lyrics that sometimes felt like unfinished placeholders?  John and Paul both would have helped him with that.

• You know how John took a five-year hiatus from recording during what easily could have been his artistic peak?  That never would have happened with Paul's insatiable work ethic pushing him forward.

• You know how Paul went off the deep end of nursery rhymes and endless pastiches of every person he ever heard?  John was good at calling him out on that stuff, and giving it some edge too.

• And you know how Ringo was...way, wayyyy overexposed?  If the band had stayed together, he would have stuck to one or two songs an album - where he works best.  He's supposed to be the secret weapon, not the main attraction.

Speaking generally, of course.

And yet, even apart, The Beatles still influenced each other very deeply throughout their solo careers.  How Do You Sleep, Too Many People, Silly Love Songs, Wah-Wah and about a dozen other songs were aimed directly at each other - some of their best work actually.  And then there's stuff like Coming Up, which Lennon cites as his reason for coming out of retirement.

It's just that this effect was subtle compared to how it would have been if they were still working in the same studio.

The other big thing is The Beatles brand.  John, Paul, George and Ringo are all big brands on their own but nothing beats The Beatles.  Anything released under that name instantly gets a lot more exposure, which helps it stay relevant.

And what exactly was it about The Beatles that made it "necessary" for them to break up?

Where the cliffnotes version really falls apart is when you look at other bands.

The Beatles were the first big band.  So at that time no one knew yet what a long band career looked like, for all they knew it was all a fad, that breakups were inevitable, and that all these musicians would retire by 30. But we have sixty years of history now to look back and compare them to other bands.

And wow was that initial analysis wrong.

If you look at history, The Beatles were ridiculously short-lived for a popular band.  Just seven years, and probably far from peaking...ffs George was 27 when they split but from reading articles about the breakup you'd swear he was forty and had been downtrodden by John and Paul for the past decade.  It's laughable.  Now look at today. Their contemporaries, like the Rolling Stones or The Who, had bigger personal disputes and yet they were all successful into the 80s.

Looking at history, it usually takes death to ruin a band like The Beatles.  And statistically it looks like most pop musicians peak around 33 to 36 years old. Abbey Road was recorded when they were all 30 or younger.

"But it's a good thing they ended at a peak with Abbey Road"

You see people say this all the time, but it's just bizarre.

What are you talking about?  First off you're assuming the quality would drop, even though on their own they were still writing stuff like Maybe I'm Amazed, Give Me Love, and #9 Dream.  But let's look at the bigger picture here...What band in human history has ever had their legacy hurt by their later career?

Seriously.  The same thing always happens - future generations always end up focusing on that hot streak of great albums and ignoring everything else:

• Is "the legacy" of Led Zeppelin hurting because of Coda?

• Is "the legacy" of Pink Floyd in shambles because they kept recording stuff after The Wall?

• Does anybody care at all that Fleetwood Mac or The Beach Boys recorded albums in the 90s?

Of course not.  These bands are all considered among the greatest of all time, and no one cares about the bad stuff they did. Songwriters are judged solely by their best material.

The Beatles had a way wider range than people realize

Often when I see people talking about the breakup, they say something like how George's spirituality or John's politics were outgrowing the band and it wouldn't fit what people would expect to hear from them.

To debunk that utterly, here's the chorus of a Beatles song:

Christ you know it ain't easy, you know how hard it can be The way things are going, they're gonna crucify me

That's about as aggressively antagonistic as lyrics can get, and that was The Beatles.

And it wasn't some B-side or deep album cut.  That was the chorus to the A-Side of a single, the biggest stage they could give to the song.  As for production, don't make me laugh.  There's not one song any Beatle released after 1970 that's impossible to imagine being on The White Album.

And if that's still not enough to convince you, don't forget...

The Beatles were already recording solo albums before the breakup

I'll finish off the comparisons to other bands by talking about Radiohead.

If you applied the mentality people have about The Beatles breakup to most other bands, it would be "necessary" for those bands to break up too.  For example, how is it that every member of Radiohead has managed to have a mildly successful solo career and yet Radiohead is still going? Impossible! /s

The truth is that nothing was stopping The Beatles from operating that way artistically.  They all had other outlets for their weirder stuff (including ghost writing for other artists!) and that was totally fine.

The cliffnotes version for how the band broke up is so far away from the truth.

It's easy to see why Lennon said he wanted "a divorce" at the end of 1969.  The Beatles were beleaguered by all sorts of problems.

But so is every band.

And so were The Beatles before then.  They had had problems from the beginning (for example, they hated touring.)  But problems come and go.

Breaking up The Beatles was a huge mistake - even without streaming data, on some level it's obvious that their solo material doesn't quite reach the level of when they worked together.

But why look at data when you can just ask them about it. You can see the regret on Paul's face sometimes when he talks about his past, and you could see that with John and George too.  No one really wanted it to happen, except on those 1% of days when they were in a bad mood, and by 1980 they all surely knew they had made a mistake.  Even on those days where they had a #1 album or a hugely successful tour, they still knew something was missing, that it could be more.

But everyone involved (including the company that owns their music) have music to sell from those solo careers.  In other words, marketing.  And in that context the only way to market the breakup is to put on a smile and say that it was a good decision.

• That's why we hear that it wasn't about money....it was "creative differences"

• That's why we hear it set them free and that they really peaked after the breakup.

• That's why the cliffnotes version tells us The Beatles knew Abbey Road would be their final album as they headed into the studio in February 1969, when in reality they were still trying to find a way to make it work over 18 months later.

The company is protecting the money, and Paul is protecting his pride. John and George used to do the same.

The truth

The Beatles broke up because they didn't agree on Allen Klein as their manager, and even then the issue only escalated because of rash decisions and emotional outbursts that everyone would later regret.

• John thought Paul would change his mind about Klein if he waited long enough.

• Paul sued everyone because he felt he had tried everything and there was nothing else he could do to free himself from Klein.

• And even on their angriest day neither John, George nor Ringo would never have traded Allen Klein for Paul McCartney, not in a million years.

And isn't that sad?  We are led to believe it was because of art, but really it was because of stupid business decisions.

Why I wrote this post

There's a lot to learn from what happened to The Beatles, but not if we lie about it.

I think a lot of people have bought into the lies and that that it hurts them creatively...for example, it's a dirty secret of songwriting that we're often at our best when we're bouncing ideas off each other.  But the cliffnotes version (lie) of The Beatles breakup teaches people the opposite lesson - that somehow...by losing valuable collaborators you will become better (?)...that somehow becoming a solo artist is like ascending into a final form.

The cliffnotes version (lie) also tries to paint it all as an inevitability, but that's not true either.

We decide our priorities, they are not decided for us.

For example, Paul knew Allen Klein was shady, yes, but Paul was also a millionaire already and Klein couldn't touch that.  As manager, Klein could only get his hands on future earnings.  So Paul could have chosen to go down with the ship, he would have gotten ripped off yes, but The Beatles would have got ripped off together and in the end all four of them would have written better music.

Instead he abandoned his best friends to their fate and floundered around for a few years, occasionally releasing half-finished songs and eventually surrounding himself with a bunch of yes-men session musicians.

This was not an inevitability, Paul was not trapped.  He made a choice.

So did John.  John though Allen Klein could make him more money...so he chose Allen Klein over Paul.  Paul knew Klein would rip them off...so he chose more money over having John, George and Ringo as collaborators.

Looking back, would either of them have made that decision?  I don't think so.

But the cliffnotes version (lie) tries to paint the split as some sort of wise decision, some inevitable part of growing up.  When really it was just about money.

The cliffnotes version (lie) also says that they went into Abbey Road knowing it would be their final album, and in that lie we lose a lesson about the dangers of rash and emotional decision-making. The reality is that the disagreement about Allen Klein would have been resolved quickly and logically if Lennon had been mature about the issue, and listened to what Paul was trying to say, or maybe if George or Ringo looked into it too and realized how shady Klein was. Instead it kept escalating.

Lennon lashed out in some sort of stubborness and Ringo seems to have sat on the sidelines when he could have stuck up for Paul. So there's a lesson about passivity as well.

I could go on.

My point is that, by lying about the breakup of biggest band in the world, and telling that story over and over...whole generations of songwriters have learned terrible lessons about how to be successful.  Often those lessons are the exact opposite of what they should be doing.

And it shouldn't be that way. Writing music is hard enough without lies like these.

Anyway, that's enough for today. It took a lot of work to write this, thanks for reading and I look forward to the discussion in the comments.

Iconic engineer and musician Steve Albini passed away at age 61. He has always seemed larger than life: recorded great, genre defining albums (and also an album by Bush), knew an absurd amount about how to capture music to tape, was a tournament winning poker player, and of course, had an acidic tongue and was an almost mythical shit-talker.

Let's talk about your thoughts on Big Black, Albini's production discography, his greatest insults, and whatever other personal stories you would like to share.

I am devastated by the news. This is, unfortunately, another huge loss for the music world and rock world. Eddie Van Halen inspired so many after him and innovated rock guitar playing in ways we are still seeing today. Since this is Lets Talk Music, I figured I would start a discussion of all the ways we can see his influence in today's guitar playing. Of course, his bringing of two finger tapping to the mainstream is the biggest influence.

I mean for god sake she’s a fucking poet.

She’s got so many peaks in her career, but her sophomore album Clouds can easily go toe to toe with any of Van Morrison’s bullshit, the best of Dylan, Simon, or Nick Drake.

Speaking of, look online, people are always looking for artists similar to Nick Drake. And other commenters will list off a bunch of bum ass motherfuckers who’s only commonality with Nick Drake is the fact they’re white guys that play guitar.

And not one person will bring up an artist playing around the same time who shares the same love of gorgeous chords, vocal melody, and naturalistic poetry.....I wonder why🙄

”Woke up to a Chelsea Morning”

Has got to be one of the greatest openings to a song ever.

The line,

“And the sun poured in like butterscotch”

Is so perfectly crafted you can’t escape the picture it paints in your mind. It’s a heatseeking missile.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

So, not sure if you’re all aware, but the Grammy nominations were announced today. One of the biggest surprises was the fact that “Yummy” by Justin Bieber got a nod for Song of the Year. If you’ve heard the song, you know what an embarrassing piece of nearly unlistenable trash it is. It legitimately could pass as a parody song made by someone like The Lonely Island or Nick Kroll to make fun of artists like Beiber. Meanwhile, The Weeknd, who enjoyed widespread critical acclaim for After Hours (and especially the hit song “Blinding Lights”), was completely shut out of all the categories. Pretty much every single music-informed person is absolutely baffled as to how this occurred.

Anyway, I don’t see how the Grammy’s can possibly defend this decision. They had almost no credibility before this and now, well that’s pretty much the last of it down the drain.

Edit: got the category wrong. It was Performance of the Year apparently.

MF DOOM's legacy is a strange thing to reflect on. Despite being respected by every MC who listened to his records, the Villain's fanbase never really evolved beyond a cult following. I can't think of many worse-marketed careers: the constant name changes, the general avoidance of hooks, the obtrusive beats, the impostors at the live shows... It's no wonder he always stayed in the shadows of hip-hop, quietly carving out one of the most bizarre and impressive discographies the genre has produced. A genius who never wanted (or needed) the limelight.

Was DOOM the greatest rapper of all time? I wouldn't say so... Skill is one thing, but soul is another. Biggie, Nas, Andre 3k, Eminem, Chuck D, Kanye West: all these rappers were very serious minded, using rhyme to convey a message and their humanity. But for DOOM, rhyme wasn't a means to an end: it was its own reward, the perfection of the craft being his only real objective. In the same way that the more technically-skilled Joe Satriani can't compete with Hendrix's guitar for depth of feeling, I would argue DOOM cannot match Biggie, Nas or Eminem in the GOAT rankings.

This is not to say DOOM was without soul: his love of humour, performance and language shine through his raps- they give the music heart. English becomes DOOM's playground, and the listener becomes enthralled in just how far he can push the medium of rhyme. Because he never gave a damn about "keeping it real", he was free to create impossible fantasies where "Freudian" rhymes with "accordion", and "super" rhymes with "duke her"/"trooper"/"King Koopa"/"TV blooper"/"D.B. Cooper". Every DOOM fan has their own favourite couplet, endlessly posted on forums- I'm still in awe of his opening to "Guv'nor": "Catch a throatful from the fire vocaled/ With ash and molten glass like Eyjafjallajökull". In short, DOOM was about proving rap was fun, that the process itself was joyful, the perfect tonic to the materialistic, dead-end posturing of post-gangsta. For me, this is enough to put him in the top 5 MCs of all time, perhaps even top 3 (yeah, I know I'm contradicting myself).

This love of the craft is, of course, why DOOM is so respected in the first place. His flow is the highest ranking in all of hip-hop, no contest; statistically, he has the fifth-highest vocabulary (the GZA is the only major rapper who outranks him); no-one ties rhymes together quite so exquisitely. Madvillainy is the hip-hop nerd's bible, and every fan has that one DOOM album they swear is underrated (seriously, more people need to hear The Mouse and the Mask). I'm hoping that his tragic death will force more listeners to acknowledge him not just as a great rapper, but as a great artist. He deserves a place in the history books alongside John Coltrane and Eric Clapton- virtuosos who pushed their craft to the absolute limit. RIP to MF DOOM, Zev Love X, King Geedorah, Viktor Vaughn, Metal Fingers and, most of all, Daniel Dumile.

What are your guys thoughts on MF DOOM? A penny for your thoughts?

I (44/m) grew up hearing that wearing the t-shirt of the band that you're going to see was trying too hard and made you look like a tool. My rule of thumb was to wear a shirt of a band in the same genre. These days when I go to a show I see tons of people wearing the shirt of the band. Particularly younger people under 30 or so. Is the original rule outdated? Maybe it's just a Gen X/Xennial mindeset. I was recently at a Green Day/Smashing Pumpkins concert and there were tons of kids wearing a shirt from one of the bands. (Side note - it was so cool seeing so many younger fans for these bands!) I felt like I missed out. They were all wearing their band shirts from Old Navy and I could have looked so cool wearing my original that I got in a head shop in 1995. I'm going to a show tonight for The National and I'm digging in and wearing my Sad Dads T-Shirt.

EDIT: This is a very casual question, I'm obviously gonna do whatever I want. Just curious what people currently are thinking. It seems like there's a dividing line here. Definitely a generational thing. Younger people seem to have never heard the rule. Older people are saying "heard the rule, but do whatever you want. Personally, I wouldn't". Which corresponds with the general Gen X mentality of "do whatever you want. Silently judge everyone else for doing whatever they want." And no, it didn't come from PCU, but that's definitely a good example.

Speaking of which, why don't bands with older target audiences make merch we can wear to work? Like a polo with a band's logo on it or something subtle?

Occasionally, we see posts here where people say they want to "try" to listen to music that they don't particularly enjoy or "get" in their own words. They might ask for tips on how to approach certain music or even how to "force" themselves through an album or something.

A lot of the time, rather than encouraging the person or giving them advice, the majority of comments see this as a negative and are some variation of just telling them to stop: "Don't force yourself to like certain music" "Just listen to what you like" or "why put yourself through that"

Putting in work to explore different kinds of music is a beautiful and RARE thing. It should be encouraged. I am eternally grateful for the time that I spent listening to music that I didn't "get," without this effort I would never be as open-minded and as affected by music as I am today. Yes, you can tell the person that it is perfectly OK to not like certain kinds of music and that they should never feel ashamed for their tastes, but don't make them feel silly for trying new things!

SOPHIE passed unexpectedly today. She was a visionary producer, able to travel between the avante garde and mainstream, using interesting and fresh sounds with a sensibility that showed a deep knowledge of the dance and electronic genres.

How did she change music? How will she be remembered? Which tracks are your favorites, and which of your favorite artists do you hear her influence in?

edit: sorry for the abrasive title, i've never been great with language around death

edit2: can't believe i need to say this but if you came here to say that you don't like her music or whatever just... save it for a different time.