Unpopular Music Opinions

Reader mode
I don't think I've ever heard anyone gushing about Mike Patton being the GOAT of male vocals.

(And anyone who does is Wrong, given some of the competitors for the title.)
 
Growling to me is like the Bayreuth Bark: it's fine if that is really the effect you want, but a lot of people who think they want it actually don't and are using it to cover for lack of vocal strength.

Or trying to drive their voice through the floor of their real range. Looking at you, Herr Lindemann.
 
Jack MacKenzie said:
That sounds like someone with an insufficiently powerful voice for their chosen genre.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It isn't really about vocal power per se, but rather working well within the sonic context. You can amplify a clean acoustic guitar however much as you want, it's still going to sound out-of-place next to blast-beats. Your clean voice may be powerful, but it is not going to have the effect of a growl regardless, and in styles that demand the effect of a growl, that is insufficient.

grommile said:
Or powerful, confident, and bombastic.

Like, Rob Halford is More Metal Than You, and Bruce Dickinson is probably More Metal Than You, and they can both. fucking.

SING.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
For the sake of clarity, I must stress that I am talking about Death metal in particular, not Metal nor indeed music in general.

I don't deny that Halford or Dickinson work in their chosen style, I just don't think there is a one-size fits all when it comes to vocals. If you think soaring, melodic, trad-metal vocals would outdo rhythmic, roaring, growls in soundscapes like this or this, then I'd disagree rather strongly. For that matter I don't think Death growls would fare all that well in an Iron Maiden song, or really anything less violent sounding than Thrash metal. Without heavy distortion to cover up the raspier parts of the voice, it doesn't really work.

Jack MacKenzie said:
Growling to me is like the Bayreuth Bark: it's fine if that is really the effect you want, but a lot of people who think they want it actually don't and are using it to cover for lack of vocal strength.

Or trying to drive their voice through the floor of their real range. Looking at you, Herr Lindemann.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I can't really think of any occurrence of this happening. I think we may be talking past each other. I am, as is probably obvious, looking at this from an Extreme metal point of view. Understandably, people in Extreme metal tend to employ extreme vocal techniques because they like the sound and think the effect contributes to the overall musical picture. I don't really have any point of reference for what growling would entail outside of an Extreme metal context.
For example, I can't think of anything I've heard from Rammstein that sounds growly. If anything I would say Lindemann's vocals have that sort of detached quality to them, where they don't fully blend into the music.

I'd probably expand your view on growling/Bayreuth Barking to just about everything in music. All musical elements should be chosen with care for their particular effect on the musical whole; chosen with care to best fulfil the aesthetic goals of the music.
 
Snakes and Arrows is, like, a top five Rush album at the bare minimum.

Oh, I'm sorry, do you disagree because you host a classic rock radio station? Fucking fight me.
 
Admitting to liking "videogame music" and being super proud of it is actually turbo cringe. It gives off the exact same energy as people who talk about how much they like -intelligent rappers-.
 
FortePlus said:
Admitting to liking "videogame music" and being super proud of it is actually turbo cringe.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Indeed, but mostly because to the extent "videogame music" was ever a meaningful term, it ceased to be so when iD Software hired Trent Reznor to record a full-length industrial dark ambient album as the soundtrack for Quake.
 
I would say the problem is less enjoying a specific genre of music (and scoring a particular sequence in a film, video game etc is enough of a specialist skill that it probably does count as a distinct genre) and more believing that the fact you enjoy said genre makes you somehow intellectually superior to other people.

And I'd like to think that "bragging about liking things that you think make you look sophisticated and intellectual is for posers" is not an unpopular opinion.
 
grommile said:
Indeed, but mostly because to the extent "videogame music" was ever a meaningful term, it ceased to be so when iD Software hired Trent Reznor to record a full-length industrial dark ambient album as the soundtrack for Quake.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It goes the other way too, there are plenty of artists taking ideas from classic electronic 'video game music' sounds (chiptune, etc.) and making more conventional songs with them. Playboi Carti's work is a pretty obvious example, and Ab-Soul nearly 10 years ago put out a single that sampled the Bastion soundtrack (which is itself not exactly stereotypical 'video game music'). And in the indie scene, you also have Xiu Xiu producing parts of the album Dear God, I Hate Myself on a Nintendo DS as well as some very 'video gamey' iPad-produced tracks on Gorillaz's The Fall.

'Classic' video game music is in turn probably hard to distinguish from contemporary electronic trends. There are loads of tracks on Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works 85-92 that sound like they could have come from a video game, for example.
Jake said:
(and scoring a particular sequence in a film, video game etc is enough of a specialist skill that it probably does count as a distinct genre)
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

There's a few different styles of video game soundtrack, really, which each overlap with other areas. Your 'traditional' ones are often just catchy electronic loops, sometimes using metal as a foundation, while the bigger budget and more 'professional' games have shifted towards more conventional film score-style soundtracking, which tends to be more atmospheric and less catchy. I think an interesting case study of this might be how FlyByNo's work for Amplitude Studios (Endless Space, Endless Legend + its DLC, Dungeon of the Endless, Endless Space 2, Humankind) has shifted over time. There might be something similar to be said about Darren Korb's work for Supergiant as well; as much as Hades has some pretty distinctive cues and moments, its soundtrack feels a lot more tuned for being in the background compared to Bastion's.
 
Last edited:
Jake said:
And I'd like to think that "bragging about liking things that you think make you look sophisticated and intellectual is for posers" is not an unpopular opinion.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
For the comparison given, I find the two energies very, very different even though the Venn diagrams involved may in fact be a circle.

The video game music one is just incoherent, while the "intelligent rap" one makes me think of the kind of racism that makes me want to go listen to Skunk Anansie's "Intellectualize My Blackness" a few more times.

Not that I need an external reason to listen to Skunk Anansie, of course :)
 
FortePlus said:
Admitting to liking "videogame music" and being super proud of it is actually turbo cringe. It gives off the exact same energy as people who talk about how much they like -intelligent rappers-.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
When you say super proud, do you mean bragging about it? Video game music is one of my favorite genres, but you won't see me blabbering about it for hours on end.
 
The video game one (note the emphasis on being 'proud' of that taste) sorta stems, stereotypically, from the idea of being a 'gamer' making up so much of your identity that it has to define all the media you consume and are interested in, rather than just being, like, your primary hobby or something.

The 'intelligent rappers' thing, on the other hand, is a mix of casual racism, boomer/Redditcore-style nostalgia and frankly a lot of ignorance of hip-hop as a musical genre and a broader culture. It's still quite common and widespread, unfortunately.

The main overlap between the two (and the reason it's not unusual for someone to qualify for both) is demographic: the stereotypical offender in either case is a sheltered youngish (Millennial or Zoomer) white dude.
 
Tundra Sniper said:
When you say super proud, do you mean bragging about it?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Bragging with a sort of self righteous snark, ala "you plebs will never understand the EMOTIONS" or some other goofy thing. Like shit you don't need to say out loud. There's also the whole Dunning-Kruger effect where like, people think they know what music is and have deep tastes...but they don't. I balk at trying to hold extended discussion even though I have like a billion pieces of soundtrack music (these days Steam is the GOAT for me) precisely because things get weird; it's not just music, it's stuff from a videogame, oh this is stuff I can jam to outside of the game - as if that distinction needs to be made? I dunno how to explain it, this sort of Napoleon complex that comes up unprompted, and that I didn't realize I was sort of trapped in myself until a few years ago.

Some take it to the next level and whine about "music these days !!!" and it's also painful to see.

CallMeIsmail said:
The main overlap between the two (and the reason it's not unusual for someone to qualify for both) is demographic: the stereotypical offender in either case is a sheltered youngish (Millennial or Zoomer) white dude.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Yeah pretty much. They have very loud and either dumb or bland takes, and these happen to be high volume. Obviously these are not the sole offenders, but it's the reason I don't discuss music much on the interwebs if at all.
 
FortePlus said:
Bragging with a sort of self righteous snark, ala "you plebs will never understand the EMOTIONS" or some other goofy thing. Like shit you don't need to say out loud. There's also the whole Dunning-Kruger effect where like, people think they know what music is and have deep tastes...but they don't. I balk at trying to hold extended discussion even though I have like a billion pieces of soundtrack music (these days Steam is the GOAT for me) precisely because things get weird; it's not just music, it's stuff from a videogame, oh this is stuff I can jam to outside of the game - as if that distinction needs to be made? I dunno how to explain it, this sort of Napoleon complex that comes up unprompted, and that I didn't realize I was sort of trapped in myself until a few years ago.

Some take it to the next level and whine about "music these days !!!" and it's also painful to see.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Ah okay. It is bothersome when people act condescending about certain types of music.
 
Tundra Sniper said:
Ah okay. It is bothersome when people act condescending about certain types of music.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
In general yes, but I can deal with the self-proclaimed "metalheads" passing judgement by just sighing and exiting the chat. They don't actively make me cringe like Gamers™ is the difference.
 
I guess my unpopular opinion on music is that I like it when video game music stands out instead of blending into the background.

The Nier: Automata soundtrack and quite a few of the Soulsborne boss battle themes come to mind.
 
Reveen said:
Snakes and Arrows is, like, a top five Rush album at the bare minimum.

Oh, I'm sorry, do you disagree because you host a classic rock radio station? Fucking fight me.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I think 5 is pushing it only because having to pick 2 albums for a top 5 after Hemispheres/Moving Pictures/Permanent Waves is really hard but I think Rush's last couple records are way overhated compared to their definite slump in the mid 80s/90s, I think it's just hard to dislodge their first decade run from taking all the air out of the conversation (even if I think 2112 is VASTLY overrated).

Very powerful take tho so tons of respect tbh.
 
FortePlus said:
Admitting to liking "videogame music"
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Unpopular videogame music opinions, speaking of:

Project Wingman has better music than any of the Ace Combat games.

Frank Klepacki reached his apex at Red Alert. Also many of the remakes for the remastered C&C are actually worse than their originals.

Though I cannot defend this take in any way, since even I think many of the bits of ME2 are better (Grunt's and Tali's loyalty mission themes, The End Run), I would still prefer to listen to Vimire Ride over any other in-game track from Mass Effect. (M4 Part 2 doesn't count, it's credits music.)

Regular unpopular music opinions, which I suspect are more unpopular because nobody gives a shit than anything else:

I really wanted to like Tinashe back when she first started getting mainstream radioplay in 2014 but it felt like every single one of her songs came with an awful guest verse from some male rapper that just took it out back and murdered it with a whole butcher's block of knives.
 
CallMeIsmail said:
"I believe in G-O-D/Don't believe in T-H-O-T" , from Masked Wolf's 'Astronaut in the Ocean', has got to be the worst line in any rap song I've ever heard. I've heard anti-vax bars that were less embarrassing than this.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It's been a while but if that's the worst bar you remember you've been eating good lol. Off the top of my head there's the Rick Ross date rape bars and Lil Wayne's incredibly, deeply unfortunate Emmett Till bar.
 
If Halloween wants to get dominant as a holiday it's going to need more than the approximately single cd of good music it has.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Back
Top