Critically-beloved artists people don't care about

maybe a few like Elvis Costello, Tom Waits and Arcade Fire... but at least half of those artists are top notch

Death Grips isn't even top 10 000

Wait, music journalists said for DECADES that Sonic Youth were the best? They were soooo NYC cool? KEK'D!
Maybe people don't want to hear guitar noise wankery, awful harmonies and two singers that can't sing. Pathetic band taylormade for amerifats critics.

What is the point of these threads?

crazy how zoomers bought into the idea that the internet created a level playing field lol

Stooges, Eno, and Roxy are the only good artists on here

picrel

While I despise this guy's music, there's some truth to what he's saying. Back in the day, if you wanted to listen to a record, you had to buy it. And because of this upfront cost, it leaves space for critics to come in and help you not waste your money on records that you likely wouldn't like, or to spend it on records you would like. But in the age of the internet, if you're interested in an album, you can listen to it without that upfront cost. Be it via piracy or via streaming services. However, I'll still partially disagree. While you're not spending money anymore to check albums out, you're still spending something else that you have a finite amount of: time. So it might still be worth your time to read or watch a review of an hour long album that takes 10 minutes to complete, or even to glance at a score at a music review website like RYM. Another aspect is discovery. There's a lot of music out there that you could like that you won't come across organically. That's where being exposed to positive reviews by critics or common music site users can still come in handy. There's also a third aspect: the review itself can serve as a piece of entertainment. You see it a lot with people reviewing movies on YouTube.

I mean at one point and time artists like The Byrds were liked by people just as much as critics. Considering they had 7 top 40 US hits (and two #1's) they were popular at some point in time at least. Some of these artists were never that popular though.

Nick Cave is the spiritual successor of Iggy Pop. Liking one but not the other doesn't make any sense.

Trolling

New York Dolls

Most of the BBC Radio 6 playlist

What compels someone not to like Elvis Costello? Are you illiterate?

I think at least on a subliminal level they know it's not true either but refuse to accept it because social media is quite literally the only thing they have left. That's why rap and country are the only 2 """"""alt""""""" genres anymore. These people are all desperately clinging onto the idea that rags to riches and aspirational figures still "rise and grind" their way to the top, rather than just get handed it by serendipity and nepotism.
Older millennials were similarly deliberately blind to reality during the 2008 recession and the years following.
You won't really see actual external resentment for how the Internet panned out until the skibidi generation are expected to take a swing at it.

The Band #63 #5,236

3 of the greatest rock vocalists of all times and not even able to crack the top 5000.

Bjork's gotta be up there

I don't think so, it's the followers charts and people who follow him (595k) probably include the ones who follow the Attractions (310k) or at least the vast majority

no they're close to Vampire Weekend but critics don't care much for them, The Money Store is #970 all-time

maybe the Birthday Party but not his solo stuff at all, it's closer to Leonard Cohen or smth

Only critics listen to elvis costello

Not him but one of my, surprisingly successful for 20+ years, musician friends thinks he’s a lazy and cheap songwriter fwiw. He only told me this after I said that I hated David Bowie and EC as a teenager and didn’t understand them musically until my 20s and lyrically until my 30s. Now they’re two of my faves.

nah she got some fans (#2,374), even people like Vanilla Ice or Huey Lewis are in the top 5k so below that is truly literal who territory

What compels someone not to like Elvis Costello? Are you illiterate?

I'd argue sites like RYM made critics useless, I'm actually not sure why people care about someone like Fantano

fans of those artists typically prefer buying them on physical as opposed to streaming them

no one is doing that anymore grandpa

I listen only to a critic who is an expert in a certain genre.
As a journalist, the guy who gives his opinion of any musical piece is no more worth than the guy who writes horoscopes.

actually caring about Spotify stats

I never thought I’d long for the days when Anon Babble was a den of hipsters who hated anything popular enough to get played on the radio.

people here used to hate music that crossed a certain threshold of popularity

that sounds really dumb and pathetic indeed, although surely they would've had to check some sort of stats to know what was popular?

sure but the critical acclaim here is coming from relatively recent lists from Rolling Stone, Pitchfork...etc

10,000 artists making $500k last year is a lot of "serendipity" dawg

not quite beloved by critics, say compared to the Sex Pistols