Shut Up, Dude: This Week’s Best And Worst Comments

Shut Up, Dude: This Week’s Best And Worst Comments

You may have noticed things look a little different on the homepage now. We moved from giant images to a thumbnail view that will display more stories on your screen, and we put a carousel highlighting recent interviews halfway down. But that’s not the only recent change to our site design, which was introduced six months ago today. Based on your feedback we made tweaks that include displaying the number of article comments on the homepage, adjusting font sizes, adding a Most Commented tab to the Most Viewed module in the right rail, expanding the Heavy Rotation display, beefing up user profiles and artist pages, and turning the Spotify icon in the top menu rightside up. All of this should work much better in mobile, too. Thanks for sticking with us, everybody! Your best and worst comments about Carly Rae Jepsen are below.

THIS WEEK’S 10 HIGHEST RATED COMMENTS

#10 Max the King of All Wild Things | Aug 20th Score:24

“Aww, you motherfuckers thought it was over! It’s not over.”

Tom, I really really really really really really like you.

Posted in: Watch Carly Rae Jepsen Bestow The Gift Of Her Glorious Presence Unto The Tonight Show
#9 meat | Aug 20th Score:24

i guess this was bound to happen, eventu….ugh, forget it.

Posted in: Congratulations To Tame Impala On Their First Sample Lawsuit
#8 son_of_cheap_suit | Aug 14th Score:24

Now I’ve lost total respect for you.

This is the Age of Trump. When you’re wrong, you double the fuck down.

Posted in: Obama Shares Vacation Playlists Featuring Florence + The Machine, Beyoncé, Okkervil River
#7 Max the King of All Wild Things | Aug 19th Score:25

MELT ALL WAX MUSEUMS

Posted in: Azealia Banks Was Right About Nicki Minaj’s Wax Figure
#5 HartfordTheWhale | Aug 18th Score:32

“The songs on E•MO•TION are about love and crushes and heartbreak”

On a POP album?? No fucking way!

Posted in: Album Of The Week: Carly Rae Jepsen E•MO•TION
#4 Max the King of All Wild Things | Aug 18th Score:40

That each mention of a song in the review links back to an article with text nearly as long makes me view this as your own personal Infinite Jest, Tom. It also helps that this is a great write-up.

Also, #hottake: this album is v v good.

Posted in: Album Of The Week: Carly Rae Jepsen E•MO•TION
#3 Max the King of All Wild Things | Aug 18th Score:40

This was the only part that bothered me, and it’s not even a real critique of her lack of pop image. That portion of the review begins critiquing her lack of personality, which I agree with and wish came through clearer. It feels like the one area in which she can really mature as a songwriter/singer.

What the review ultimately ends up positing, however, is not the need for personality but, quite literally, the need for her to become a meme or #brand. The listener cannot boil Carly Rae Jaspen down to an irreducible 800×800 px image with Impact font bolted atop it, and the Pitchfork review treats this as the album’s great sin. I’d counter that this is a misreading of what makes pop music compelling, and the existence of “meme-able” pop stars narrows the power of pop*. Really good pop–the kind of pop that makes you dream big and dance like a total goof without a care and makes your cynical heart unafraid to swell–comes from artists who operate _through_ that irreducible personality. Rather than exist as a simple meme, pop artists wear an ever-changing mask that reflects back the listeners desires. It connects with such a wide range of people because the vagueness allows it to do so and be read into. It’s also why the pop artists who refuse to let their mask (or brand or image or whatever) become static so often transcend their fifteen minutes in the spotlight and become icons rather than relics of an era. When you reduce a pop artist down to a meme, it becomes shallow emotional medicine rather than music (“Take two Swifts and call me in the morning.”). Pop music like that can still be great and have its place. It’s just also too narrow and quick-and-easy-Internet-Identifiable to suggest that’s the major route pop artists should now proceed. So while Carly Rae Jepsen might need to better define her personality as an artist, it should be a multi-faceted one that still remains elusive and not an “adjective noun” to file away until needed.

*I think the way Pitchfork reduces some of the artists in the review down is unfair to their total work, even if they mean it as a complement. But that would take more time to get into, and this ramble has already taken long enough to write.

Posted in: Album Of The Week: Carly Rae Jepsen E•MO•TION
#2 meat | Aug 18th Score:46

“seriously, tom. pick any album you like. it’s totally your choice. the rest of the staff leave it in your capable hands.”

Posted in: Album Of The Week: Carly Rae Jepsen E•MO•TION
#1 dansolo | Aug 17th Score:55

Yes

Posted in: Chvrches’ Lauren Mayberry Responds To 4chan Trolls

THIS WEEK’S 5 LOWEST RATED COMMENTS

#5

The Fly | Aug 14th Score:-10

It’s kind of a little late. And the statement doesn’t say much. He offered his condolences. I don’t see how that could ever be misrepresented as anything else but. He should have given his condolences within the first couple days.

What does a 9-day-later open letter do for the families that lost a child.

The right thing to do is the right thing to do.

Muzik should be shut down. Period. No discussion on that.

As for his OVO fest, we can’t legally stop him from holding it, and the concerts themselves are fine, but it’s clear he brings on a lot of attention and hostility. And that follows him to the after-party.

As a gesture, I wouldn’t hold OVO next year. Take a year off. 2 years in a row people have been killed at his after-parties. This is madness. As a gesture, take a year off. The following year you can begin having it again, and I would suggest not having an after-party. If there is an after-party, I would say that police department of the City of Toronto should issue a warning wherever it’s held that advise you don’t attend. For that year and all subsequent years indefinitely.

I’m just a dude on the internet, but we cannot say Drake is not at least somewhat responsible for these deaths. Obviously not directly, but at some level indirectly.

I don’t know how people can still give this man “mad” respect.

I’m out.

Posted in: Drake Shares Statement About OVO Fest Shooting Victims
#4 job | Aug 17th Score:-11

Greenwood has long been the only interesting part of this band. Freeing himself from the stagnation of this group would be in his best interest. I feel he’s being held back by the whims of a lazy eyed mad man.

Radiohead enjoy the same phenomenon that Kanye does, in that they’re not required to actually make good music a lot of the time. Whatever they release will be considered genius regardless of quality and their coffers will be refilled. We do these artists no favours, besides monetary, by pretending everything they do is great.

Posted in: Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood Shares His Current Cultural Recommendations
#3 GoodKid | Aug 19th Score:-12

Just in case you didn’t know, she has been sucking the white mans dick for YEARS. Her current boyfriend is WHITE.

Posted in: Azealia Banks Was Right About Nicki Minaj’s Wax Figure
#2 miss_merboy | Aug 15th Score:-14

this list is basic af

Posted in: Michael Stipe Lists His 10 Favorite Books
#1

Matthew Skrinski | Aug 17th Score:-19

Can’t defend them, but the video was pointless focused on a wet Lavren..

Posted in: Chvrches’ Lauren Mayberry Responds To 4chan Trolls

THIS WEEK’S EDITOR-IN-CHIEF’S CHOICE

meat | Aug 20th Score:8

i know i’ve been giving crj a ton of shit lately, but honestly, after watching that performance, i’m man enough to admit that i didn’t watch that performance.

Posted in: Watch Carly Rae Jepsen Bestow The Gift Of Her Glorious Presence Unto The Tonight Show

more from Shut Up, Dude: This Week's Best Comments