Bad opinions [ARCHIVED] • Page 1006

lol ok I mean you can levy these exact criticisms at Post Malone, Drake, MGK, Morgan Wallen, etc etc

 

You can but people don't as often, they're all worse lol

 

I would argue Drake absolutely gets more flack for that but w/e, point acknowledged

 

I get their meanings but when it starts reading like they're applied to anyone people don't like without being able to be more precise with their criticism, it becomes meaningless. Like saying something sounds AI, okay sure but what do you really mean? It doesn't really tell us anything.

 

That’s why I just use wack

 

"Playboi Carti is the Kid A of now" - Anthony Fan Tano lmao what

 

Yeah I think this gets leveled at Benson Boone plenty. I think it's more just the fact than women are dominating pop than actual misogyny.

 

Yeah, like, what guys are even on the same level as a Sabrina or an Olivia, let alone a Taylor? Drake seems like he's cooked. Harry Styles hasn't made an album in three years. Ed Sheeran is definitely past his peak hitmaking days. Guys like Shawn Mendes are clearly not in the same tier. Then you have the so-far-one-hit-wonders like Benson Boone and Shaboozey and Alex Warren, which, we'll see I guess? The biggest male pop chart success stories of the past few years have been crossover guys like Kendrick and Wallen. Maybe Bruno Mars still has the juice, based on the lingering success of that Gaga duet?

(None of this is helped by how stagnant the pop charts have gotten in the era of streaming, of course. We seemingly don't have a "song of the summer" contender for 2025, and a bunch of the songs of LAST summer, are still hanging around the top 20.)

 

And even just from that list, Mendes, Sheeran, and Mars have all had the same criticisms leveled at them.

 

I kind of just think it's par for the course with pop music these days.

 

I’m just complaining/echoing but if any male artist of the last decade, imo, sounds calculated and manufactured it’s Ed Sheeran. I’ve never listened to a full album, and maybe I’m just being ignorant, but after his first or second record I feel like I couldn’t describe to an alien what Ed Sheeran music sounds like because there isn’t an underlying unique personality to it.
To tie it into the overall point, I’ve never heard him get criticized for it - he seems charming and likable (like his female contemporaries) but immune to commercial criticism.

 

I mean, Ed Sheeran absolutely gets criticized for what we're talking about and much more. Dude is one of the very few artists that Pitchfork will still bring the knives out for, and his Metacritic scores are all in the 60s.

 

this is how i feel about most pop music and i will be honest this is all i need from a pop song

 

he deserves it more than just about anyone else, too. truly dreadful, humiliating music. never need to hear him rap over an acoustic guitar again

 

I think he's a fine enough coffee house balladeer who has made a lot of egregiously bad music because he wasn't any good at most of the other things he tried to do in his career. I do like "Castle on the Hill" though.

 

"Castle on the Hill" and "Thinking Out Loud" are pretty terrific songs, but it's easy to lose sight of them in "Shape of You" trash.

 

Ed Sheeran was good live. Dive is a fuckin banger. His rap shit is so embarrassing though.

 

I recently revisited Taylor Swift’s album reputation for the first time in a while, and I completely forgot that it has a song where Ed Sheeran raps a verse, lol. I was like, what the fuck is this???

 

I remember listening to Divide for the first time and being surprised at both how much I loved some of the songs and how much I hated some of the others. Wildly inconsistent album. “Shape of You,” truly one of the worst songs of its era.

 

But still, like, Pitchfork gave Divide a 2.8. It’s not THAT bad. It’s just the pop album they knew they could get away with annihilating.

Meanwhile, stuff like Miley Cyrus’s Endless Summer Vacation, one of the most boring pop albums I have ever heard in my life, scores a 6.2.

 

Sort of re your point above, but also not, people say that it’s worse to be boring than to be outright bad…disagree!

 

For the record, I'd also argue that the Ed Sheeran album has more good songs than that particular Miley album.

 

Late, but we're not gonna drag my queen Olivia Rodrigo into the discussion!! For years I've been begging for more Taylor Swift pop/rock scraps and Olivia has more than delivered on that front. Icon.

 

Heh well I’m glad to be proven wrong on my take, felt alone on that one in real life. All that said, Galway girl is still a jam. None of the others though.