What went wrong?
Music discourse is dead
i like his glasses but the amount of power he has over music is astonishing. do people not have their own opinion? with one rating he could have rym ratings up or down in a flash. its insane.
literally the eric andre shooting meme
The lack of self-awareness is hilarious.
Wow he's even admitting it. Thought it was the HECKIN golden age of pop?
He has no room to be complaining about music discourse going down the toilet. He contributed to its decline.
He's saying social media are shit. Though he also says that back then the discourse was trash too because it was "elitist" and shows a Anon Babble chart lol.
Since the US is collapsing and will be a third world shithole in a decade he won't have much power for long and American popslop will finally cease.
Fantano is to blame, too many memes, too much of his own personal politics injected in reviews, light lifestyle content and drama gossip think-piece bullshit, doing a score instead of just explaining his opinions on the album through words and ideas, too much interfacing with musicians through social media, no separation between himself and the celebrity of being a musician, and now he's just trying to recreate his own chattel of music reviewers being blessed on his main channel
youtube.com
Tyler spoke about this July 2024
I'll challenge you to explain how all of that actually diminishes the quality of musical discourse.
Since the US is collapsing and will be a third world shithole in a decade
none of that is happening
never watched any of this dudes videos, are they good
i like his glasses but the amount of power he has over music is astonishing. do people not have their own opinion?
Young people under the age of 30 lack the experience necessary to realize what's good and isn't on their own, and what the actual importance of having good taste is which isn't what they'll think it is throughout their teens and their twenties. Midwit NPCs especially will defer to the opinion of the group or an expert with clout; any difference of opinion is viscerally assumed to be ignorance on their own part to be corrected by following what the people who supposedly know better say. There's a large amount of insecurity, as adolescence is motivated by the desire to ingratiate oneself within the social structure in a favorable position. It is better to have as little disagreement with the majority as possible.
Also, media literacy has fallen generationally because of the glut of easily available yet-low-effort user-produced content on the world wide web today. In your youth, your formative years, you are more likely to have been inundated with "slop" rather than "classics"; the pure shock of a completely different and established cultural outlook instigates an identity crisis only alleviated by conversion to this discovered faith.
Because of the cultural and demographic twilight of whiteness in America spurred on by the great replacement, the nexus of "cool" if you will has shifted from a white and male standard to a black and feminine standard. The black and feminine mindsets are anti-intellectual and anti-elitist and anti-effort; it's considered a faux pas to "take things too seriously", including music. Anything you could type a paragraph to describe could instead be summed up as easily in a single word such as "mid", so why bother? "Nobody finna read all dat", and such similar sentiments.
Music discourse is dead because "the unbearable whiteness" of it is dead or dying. As America and its popular culture has gotten more brown, so has its discourse, and essentially it is lower quality across the board.
What went wrong?
Three clues
Starts with Z, rhymes with boomer, and sub humans who need to be culled.
AND HE KILLED IT!
He's not taken seriously anywhere other than Anon Babble.
It varied
black background/tree era
At this point he was one of the very few to do this type of "bedroom vlogging" when it comes to music reviews. Music discourse was mostly randos in their bedrooms only talking about one genre or a few bands. He was the one generalist to be consistent, articulate enough and have a fairly broad scope in what he listened to. That set him apart miles ahead from anyone else at the time. The competition was full of amateurs not even hiding their messy bedrooms while he had his own experience as a radio DJ to rely on.
brown background, Cal incursions era
Arguably his peak. He was interested and invested, still put effort into covering a wide range of releases and not just chase clicks by only covering big releases. Around this time, he joined an MCB which helped a lot with upolad consistency. Should not be a surprise that this is when his more popular formats (classics week, YUNOreview, shirts) appeared
Coincided with his shitpost channel being top and that unfortunately led to
post-Fader article era
Melon-man gets into a really dumb controversy over some actual literal whos accusing him of posting racist-ish memes on his shit post channel. He completely gives in and things really seem to have had an impact on him mentally. That's when he gets gradually demotivated in his reviews but also starts posting more and more op-eds and commentary on his new second channel.
livestream era
At this point Fantano is just fully on-board with operating a content farm and is clearly putting more of his own energy and passion into commenting on musican news, editorials and his livestreams. Starts outsourcing some of the NeedleDrops reviews which may honestly be for the best. In short, this is where Fantano turns into a NeedleDrop publication outlet which is exactly what he wasn't and him not being that is what made him appealing in the first place.
you don't go on youtube
Since the US is collapsing and will be a third world shithole in a decade
two more weeks…
Music is meant to be listened to
good post, I remember finding out about Fantano on Anon Babble around 2010 when it was probably himself posting his vids on here, used to watch his early livestreams he did on the defunct blog.tv, my greatest achievement was getting Cal to live react to this video
youtube.com
Fadergate fucking killed him
we had a decent culture of discussing music for a long time thoughbeit
yeah but what zoomers don't realize is that before it was even worse. albums would get shit on and discarded because they were given a bad review by ryan schreiber @ pitchfork. pic-related is what that looked like. he fucking obliterated a NiN album (the fragile) and the only reason it wasn't doomed is because of just how good it was and tront's relevance
and then years before it was richard christgau whose style you'll be very familiar with as an anon
lol this lou reed guy should od on heroin
lol these guys seem kinda gay
why do these guys think they're so cool? i'm just as cool
why should i talk about the music? i'm giving a kneejerk cultural reaction
hey buddy did you hear the news ?
dun-du-dun du-dun-dun
it's
MEME
revieeeeeews
I want to go back.
Fadergate fucking killed him
Really seems to.
Remember just before that when he interviewed Sam Hyde and went on Sargon's stream?
It's just impossible to imagine today.
do people not have their own opinion?
have you not noticed all the "what did i think of x" threads these days
E-celebs were a mistake, or at least their dickriders.
interesting thx man
People can't articulate because they are afraid to say banal things like I like this rhythm or I like how catchy it is. Everyone wants to be deep and pretentious these days. If you say that you like or dislike something you must articulate like a professional critic or just repeat what Fantano said to sound smart.
you are an anti-intellectual projecting your insecurities as the case when it is not
all music discourse is stupid
"i dont like that song"
"damn thats crazy i do like it"
music doesnt have anything deep to it like films, where you can discuss plots, themes, acting, etc. all that goes out the window when you realize music is just "that sound is cool"
debating about music with anyone is stupid, people enjoy what they enjoy
i have never been convinced into liking a song which i disliked first and never will
the only music discourse which should exist is "if you like X then you will like Y"
holy trvke
Alright Fagtano. It's been over 2 years. I will give you exactly 6 minutes of my attention watching this slop on 2x to hear why music discourse is dead and be back with an update on if you're retarded or not.