Where do you get your ideas for blog post topic?
Ever since I was about eleven, I was very intrigued with reviewers, whether it was one from IGN or Roger Ebert. When I was in seventh grade I was a gamer, and when I looked up something I thought looked interesting I sometimes ignored an internet page's review if the website's critics were displeased. If I were to waste my money on such product, I would wind up disappointed and look up the review again, then notice it truly had all the problems that the site warned. Because of this trust, many dissed me with the "well that's just their opinion" statement, but I kept that trust and after reading reviews for games like Bioshock I found the latest and truly greatest gaming software. I later started getting into movies as a hobby and after spending my time in the theater I would have deep opinions about the film's qualities and look at professional reviewer's writings and final scores to compare my feelings, and the similarities In opinion I often found gave me a trust in these writers as well. Now that I'm so heavily invested In music, I read articles by allmusic.com, the Rolling Stone, among others, and many seem too, quite literally, know what the "greatest" artists and albums of all time are. You will always see The Beatles as the greatest rock band of all time, and Hendrix for the genre defining guitarist as fact over personal opinion. As much the statement "Well it's just their opinion" ticks me off, that underlying hypocrisy is at least on paper, just.
However, the "In your opinion" label is ironically only half true, when I read reviews, they are full of opinions but with biases are out of the picture. This makes it hard for many to understand why reviews are helpful because of the bias towards an artist, no one will care if a new single is stripped down or unoriginal, if its catchy and has adds, it will sell. The bias most effects consumers who single out every other artist that is of a different genre that theirs. I've heard completely unprofessional of this is gay, thats gay, this is so emo(often times when it has nothing to do with the genre) oh my god get it away from me. Professional reviews can't have such unhelpful bias. Actually, as much as I say an album is good, or a movie is bad, the reality is if a product is moving the industry forward, even if it's not well known, or if it is just another malfunction in the repetitive, commercialism machine, encouraging artists to a if it ain't broke don't bother to fix it motto. I love reading these reviews and other writings of the history of music, and I wanted to see what it would be like to step in the shoes of this kind of writing, and I feel it has lead me down a more mature road as a consumer.
How do the things you read influence what you write about or how you write it?
Since I have gotten so many amazing suggestions from sites like the Rolling Stone and allmusic.com, that music I was suggested, which ranged from 60's psychedelic, rap during it's golden age, and for the most part hard rock, is essentially the base for my interest, and the kinds of album's I review. I've read and listened to so many of these reviews that I have the formula in terms of structure, how to properly criticize, and so on. The structure has been the easy part for me, though when I started blogging I tried spewing all the information I could onto the post in an attempt to feel more like a movie review, this worked against me as I made the first entire paragraph dedicated to the history of the band and went on and on for the next two or three paragraphs. Considering movies have more dimensions, both literally and figuratively, than an album that will usually last less than an hour, the structure was messy and simply rambled. I switched too a two or three paragraph style for music reviews, to which I was very pleased, the posts got to the point much more effectively, my writing improved and had less mistakes to worry about. I once again compared my writing to professional reviewers, and I really felt like I was getting somewhere by, similar to professional, finding a balance between writing about the album/ band's history and what the album is like.
Criticizing is also major, but what makes a good album? It's all about comparison, does it keep up with the standards of it's time(the best, not what happens to be popular)? Then that leads to the question, what are good and bad qualities, a question that should leave listeners, and critics, amateur and professional alike bickering without end. Negative qualities should range from repetition, cliche, bland, silly lyrics that don't fit the mood, etc. Look at Nickelback, they are highly repetitive, if you hear one song off All the Right Reasons, you've heard them all, and I've only listened to Something In Your Mouth once off the highly bashed Dark Horse album, it takes the sex cliche of rock music and horribly exaggerates it to an annoying extent. This is only made worse by the over saturation of incredibly similar artists like Daughtry and 3 Doors down, increasing similarities between artists is a reality that I have seen bring down the final score of many mainstream artists.
So if that is saturation, what about innovation? Many indie bands can qualify here and none more so than The White Stripes. The album Elephant was filled to the brim with such innovation, it had this very smooth texture wrapped around traditional blues guitar and vocals with new electric techniques like awesome whammy pedal usage and cool fake bass. It gets more complicated with other genres, so if "Without Me" by Eminem and Soulja Boy's "Crank That" could be described as fun rap songs, what makes Crank That so widely hated by critics and much of the public. Crank That doesn't feel like it has much thought put into it, the steel drum element is unique, but it doesn't capture any sort of party or dance vibe this rapper strives for, and the lyrics from "off in this oh/ superman that ho/ im jockin' on you" just get more disgustingly with every attempted listen. "Without Me" might be too obscene for some, but the song flows perfectly with the minimalistic beat along with Eminem's long running verses that never at one point lose consistency, that and the song strikes a perfect parallel between his style and his list of controversies. Simply put, does a song alone or part of an album work?
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