Queen Bey: FORMATION

[D.o.S.]

Not sure I follow you.

No, if I understand 'singular motivation,' I hadn't thought about that as such. She might not be completely aware of what's happening, or able to articulate why this looks/acts the way it does, but does that matter?

When the OP is trumpeting the zillions of dollars in marketing research and 'creative investment (i.e. brainstorming) that the Beyonce Brand Brain Trust™ came up with as the achievement of Beyonce, the person (and a small percentage of the aforementioned BBBT), yes, it's an important distinction.

MIA's middle finger, at least, was the act of one person working independently against the grain of the production as a whole: that's why it was subversive. Trite, but subversive. Gnome's Pepsi analogy is right on, here.

[D.o.S.]

Like, if she'd gone to levitate the pentagon or burned money on wall st. or something else out of the Abbie Hoffman playbook, I'd be more inclined to agree with you, but the personal blowback to her (or her brand) is zilch. It's not as if they snuck this one past CBS/NBC/ABC or anything. No risk no reward no praise, especially since, sans video, the song would just be more inane bullshit on top of other inane bullshit.

That's my takeaway.

[casecandy]

Like... I'm gonna take the middle road on this one. I think it's okay for Beyoncé to work with a ton of writers and producers to achieve a final product because hip-hop is, by definition, less about the auteur and more about the collaboration (notable exceptions aside, Kendrick, Kanye, etc., but even then they're directing the collaboration, not going it alone).

A collaboration, even on a big corporate level, can actually be better than the work of an auteur (witness the most recent awesome Disney Star Wars, which was basically what happens to fanfic after running it through two dozen focus groups, vs. the prequels, which were singularly the vision of George Lucas and his army of yes-men, and sucked).

BUT, as far as that goes, it can weaken it when it's trying to make a political statement, and this is where I agree with D.o.S. in a huge way. Watching her standing on a sinking cop car or whatever has less of an impact for me when I have to ask, "Who's making this statement?" The eight people who wrote the song? The five people who produced it? The woman singing it? Like... people mocked Macklemore for jumping on the bandwagon with "Same Love," but at least he and Ryan actually wrote it from start to finish.

Also, being influenced by Death Grips is just this thing people do and say now. Kanye was influenced by Death Grips. Bowie was influenced by Death Grips. Now Bey's influenced by Death Grips. It's the new MO of major-label artists. Make something with a little fuzz on the synths and some angry lyrics and then stand by it like some 1930s newspaper hawker like, "Death Grips! Get yr Death Grips, everybody! Hot off the (180g vinyl) presses!" Transparent attempt by 40 somethings to appeal to millennials who can honestly just actually listen to Death Grips.

[infamousalien]

Hard to give her the benefit of the doubt since she's married to Jay-z and in one of his songs he talks about how he dumbed down his lyrics and tripled his audience. I do like that the media is saying it has anti-cop lyrics when they aren't mentioned once in it. All this being said the motivation behind it doesn't really matter since it is getting people talking about issues or continuing to talk about issues.

[D.o.S.]

All this being said the motivation behind it doesn't really matter since it is getting people talking about issues or continuing to talk about issues.

Yeah, this is both true and probably the best thing to come of it, from my way of thinking.

Also Macklemore blows. #HOTTAKES

[Invisible Man]

Like, if she'd gone to levitate the pentagon or burned money on wall st. or something else out of the Abbie Hoffman playbook, I'd be more inclined to agree with you, but the personal blowback to her (or her brand) is zilch. It's not as if they snuck this one past CBS/NBC/ABC or anything. No risk no reward no praise, especially since, sans video, the song would just be more inane bullshit on top of other inane bullshit.

That's my takeaway.

Eh, this sounds a bit like you're romanticizing resistance. She has a platform, she might just be using it. That she stands to gain from this doesn't have to diminish what she's doing. I get what you mean about risk/reward/praise, but that logic isn't really at play here as far as I can see. MIA, for example, didn't really have anything to say except a kind of generalized 'fuck you,' which doesn't get anyone anywhere. It just credentialed her as someone with some kind of credibility--which is the same thing she'd undermined by doing a Super Bowl appearance in the first place. It just seemed kind of desperate and adolescent.

And how fucking dare you agree/disagree with me. I don't really even have an opinion as such, just working some things out...

Beyonce is her own corporate overlord. Not sure who's signing her paychecks these days. So Pepsi telling cops to stop shooting people might not be any different than Beyonce doing so. She's already at single name-status, so the branding process is complete.

But I enjoyed this for what it is, and I think it has massive appeal to a huge audience. Perhaps it was a mistake to set this up as a question of motivation--I can see how that's where this started--but this seems like a net positive to me. I struggle a lot with this--what are the politics of using station and influence to institute change? Is it even possible to push from the back, or to 'institute' grassroots movements? Can those things cohabitate, or does the existence of one prohibit the growth of the other?

I don't expect answers, nor am I Beyonce. Just trying to be transparent. But I do think that--since this is a matter of talking about race--that rolling live grenades into the pop consciousness is awesome. Seems to me to that there is definitely subversive with this video, if not the tune itself. But, as expected, it doesn't go far enough to earn an ILF stamp of approval.

[D.o.S.]

nor am I Beyonce

Illusion shattered.

Just because it doesn't move the needle for me doesn't mean that the needle isn't being moved for other people, so I see what you're saying there. And it's certainly better to have the conversation in the forefront, in some ways, but I'm also a little suspicious of the super bowl watching audience writ large in general, so I'm not sure how much this will serve to do much of anything.

[Invisible Man]

Agreed on all fronts.

I'm so glad that someone responded to "I'm not Beyonce." It was an opportunity to type out a sentence that pleases me.

[Invisible Man]

But now I'm thinking really hard about what would happen if Bey was an ILFer...and I guess that's why this video was so damn interesting. It kind of seemed like a mashup of some of the stuff that many of us are into, while still being a pop song. That 'bayou goth' stuff in particular was really intriguing, especially considering the climate that gave rise to all this.

[daseb]

Feel like its one of those things where I cant hate on other people who get some genuine hope and strength out of it. But I'm deeply cynical about how much rich celebrities really care about this shit. Why not write a song straight up about this issue without filling it with brand names and hiding under some (appropriated) half baked art statements? Is it because thats a better way to infiltrate your message or a way to have a a nice safe pretense of activism thats not going to alienate people whonbuy your records?

That said my sole exposure to Beyonce is white 20 something girls who act like she invented feminism so ...

[casecandy]

Also Macklemore blows. #HOTTAKES

Yeah that's a fresh one for sure

I'll tell you what, though, Jay-Z is gold. Even Magna Carta is a pretty decent album, TBH.

[Invisible Man]

...this place is great, but it's hard to deny the prevalence of standard-issue dick swinging that happens here with 'subversion cred.' Talking about Beyonce here is probably just my mild-mannered middle finger to the application of the same logic used everywhere else, but logic that's peculiar to ILF because it's so aggressively inverse to the 'normal interests.'

Part of the reason I posted this here is that I'm terrible at belonging to communities, and am a contrarian, and immediately want to go left when I see people going right. But that's true of most of the people here. So a double-negative in this case equals advocating for Beyonce and Jay-Z, which is something I don't want to do. The 'fuck you' reflex is strong, though.

Anyway, what would you do in Bey's shoes? Say you wake up one day, and you're Beyonce. Formation is probably pretty close to what I'd try to accomplish. I'm not totally slitting my throat (giving away my fortune, platform, audience), nor am I pandering to total bullshit. Yes, this is wrapped up in what's probably a pretty expensive package of endorsement and corporate sponsorship, but it seems a little naive to think that 1) you can reach a shit-ton of people with a big message without making some questionable compromises; 2) that the music we collectively 'like' 'round these parts--for all its honesty, value, and integrity--has any impact beyond 'I fucking love XXXXX,' 3) that we should dismiss anything shiny based on its shininess. Being funded by evil people doesn't always mean that everything you do is evil.

I don't even believe all of the things I just typed out. But damn...provocation is a useful tool.

It's interesting to watch people with no interest in 'popular' pop culture filter media that they're suspicious of through the lens of fuzz. Not to wax poetic or anything--trying to be brief--but this place is boring as shit when it just gets reduced to 'we like noisy music and pedals.' Those interests seem to be tip-of-the-iceberg as far as an approach to living, and the anthropological thrills I get from watching this place lift stuff up, or eat itself, or even just slowly digest the world are why I stick around.

But I do love fuzz, so there's that, too.






What do you all think of the new Refused album?

[odontophobia]

...this place is great, but it's hard to deny the prevalence of standard-issue dick swinging that happens here with 'subversion cred.' Talking about Beyonce here is probably just my mild-mannered middle finger to the application of the same logic used everywhere else, but logic that's peculiar to ILF because it's so aggressively inverse to the 'normal interests.'

Part of the reason I posted this here is that I'm terrible at belonging to communities, and am a contrarian, and immediately want to go left when I see people going right. But that's true of most of the people here. So a double-negative in this case equals advocating for Beyonce and Jay-Z, which is something I don't want to do. The 'fuck you' reflex is strong, though.

Anyway, what would you do in Bey's shoes? Say you wake up one day, and you're Beyonce. Formation is probably pretty close to what I'd try to accomplish. I'm not totally slitting my throat (giving away my fortune, platform, audience), nor am I pandering to total bullshit. Yes, this is wrapped up in what's probably a pretty expensive package of endorsement and corporate sponsorship, but it seems a little naive to think that 1) you can reach a shit-ton of people with a big message without making some questionable compromises; 2) that the music we collectively 'like' 'round these parts--for all its honesty, value, and integrity--has any impact beyond 'I fucking love XXXXX,' 3) that we should dismiss anything shiny based on its shininess. Being funded by evil people doesn't always mean that everything you do is evil.

I don't even believe all of the things I just typed out. But damn...provocation is a useful tool.

It's interesting to watch people with no interest in 'popular' pop culture filter media that they're suspicious of through the lens of fuzz. Not to wax poetic or anything--trying to be brief--but this place is boring as shit when it just gets reduced to 'we like noisy music and pedals.' Those interests seem to be tip-of-the-iceberg as far as an approach to living, and the anthropological thrills I get from watching this place lift stuff up, or eat itself, or even just slowly digest the world are why I stick around.

But I do love fuzz, so there's that, too.






What do you all think of the new Refused album?

I watched the video. I think in general I liked the video. The Bayou Goth seemed cool, something I could get into, ya know. The music was alright. It wasn't what I expected from Beyonce because Beyonce feels like a brand in the way that Taylor Swift feels like a brand. I think there is certainly something to be said about being famous and having a platform and wanting to deliver a message (even if you have to compromise something to do so).

[casecandy]

What do you all think of the new Refused album?

Trash.

[backwardsvoyager]

NSFW: show

...this place is great, but it's hard to deny the prevalence of standard-issue dick swinging that happens here with 'subversion cred.' Talking about Beyonce here is probably just my mild-mannered middle finger to the application of the same logic used everywhere else, but logic that's peculiar to ILF because it's so aggressively inverse to the 'normal interests.'

Part of the reason I posted this here is that I'm terrible at belonging to communities, and am a contrarian, and immediately want to go left when I see people going right. But that's true of most of the people here. So a double-negative in this case equals advocating for Beyonce and Jay-Z, which is something I don't want to do. The 'fuck you' reflex is strong, though.

Anyway, what would you do in Bey's shoes? Say you wake up one day, and you're Beyonce. Formation is probably pretty close to what I'd try to accomplish. I'm not totally slitting my throat (giving away my fortune, platform, audience), nor am I pandering to total bullshit. Yes, this is wrapped up in what's probably a pretty expensive package of endorsement and corporate sponsorship, but it seems a little naive to think that 1) you can reach a shit-ton of people with a big message without making some questionable compromises; 2) that the music we collectively 'like' 'round these parts--for all its honesty, value, and integrity--has any impact beyond 'I fucking love XXXXX,' 3) that we should dismiss anything shiny based on its shininess. Being funded by evil people doesn't always mean that everything you do is evil.

I don't even believe all of the things I just typed out. But damn...provocation is a useful tool.

It's interesting to watch people with no interest in 'popular' pop culture filter media that they're suspicious of through the lens of fuzz. Not to wax poetic or anything--trying to be brief--but this place is boring as shit when it just gets reduced to 'we like noisy music and pedals.' Those interests seem to be tip-of-the-iceberg as far as an approach to living, and the anthropological thrills I get from watching this place lift stuff up, or eat itself, or even just slowly digest the world are why I stick around.

But I do love fuzz, so there's that, too.






What do you all think of the new Refused album?

I keep trying to type out a coherent response here but keep being reminded of why I dropped out of my music degree.

What would you define as an "impact beyond 'I fucking love XXXXX'"? Beyonce obviously 'speaks' to people and I'm certainly not convinced that this track is completely watered down corporate bullshit, but people don't all need to engage with music on that level.
The reason i don't have an appreciation for most artists in this vein is because i can't feel anything worthwhile by just listening, because removed from the 'culture' the music is extremely uninteresting (IMO).
My own attitude towards music and one that is probably more common around here than most other parts is simply that timbral, harmonic, rhythmic, spectral , and other sonic concepts that are present in music are what 'speaks' to me. For me that applies to harsh noise and it applies to pop music, in my head I don't necessarily break each down differently even if one has countless lyrical/production devices, social/cultural/economic aspects poured into it to make it what it is. I can engage with music that I like on this level and it has an immense impact on me personally, because I love it so much that it makes me want to be alive. Sometimes we might be ignoring things that are quite valuable in some way or another but I don't necessarily think that's a 'tip-of-the-iceberg' approach to living.

You should feel totally obliged to talk about Beyonce here, it doesn't matter, I talk about cheesy J-Pop and couldn't give less of a shit because it means something important to me.

You're basically trying to work out why we musicians are ignorant of an audiovisual performance product though, right? This is pretty different to noise and fuzz, it's not like you'd expect a still photographer to be deeply engaged in cinema, right?