itt we make fun of rick beato

inspired by my browsing youtube in private mode so as not to fuck up my sidebar recs and getting a rick beato video titled "Today's Lyrics Are Pathetically Bad" recommended on the sidebar

for the record the video it's recommending me this on is a live version of "dazed and confused"

helpfully genius has transcribed complete lyrics for the live version of "dazed" on "the song remains the same":

[Instrumental Intro 00:00-01:40]

[Verse 1]
I've been dazed an' confused
So long it's not true
I wanted a woman, never bargained for you
Now lots of people talkin', pretty few of them a-know
Soul of a woman was created below, that's right
You're the one, you're the one

[Verse 2]
Oh, everybody's been talkin', Lord
I swear they been talkin' trash (trash)
The way that ya push, push, push, push, push, push me darlin'
I can't take too much of that
So c'mon, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon whoah darlin' show me the way
I wanna make love to ya, little girl, twenty five
Twenty five
Twenty five
Twenty five
Ohhhhhhh

[Verse 3]
Said you hurt an' abuse, tellin' all of your lies
I try to quit you, baby, but ya keep me
Ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-mesmerized
So c'mon, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon, say what you will
I wanna make love to ya again, darlin', twenty five
Twenty five
Twenty five
Twenty five
Ahhhh
Ma-ma-ma-ma
Ma-ma-ma-ma-ma
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Dazed and Confused
Led Zeppelin
The Ocean (Live)
Led Zeppelin
Whole Lotta Love (Live)
Led Zeppelin
[Instrumental Break/Guitar Solo 04:10-06:37]
Oh, yeah

[Verse 4]
If you're goin' to San Francisco
Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair
If you're goin' into San Francisco
You're gonna meet a lotta gentle people there ohhh
Everywhere, everywhere, everywhere, oh ho
Everywhere

[Instrumental Break 07:15-07:50]

[Vocal Interlude]
I know, I know, I know, I know, I knoow
Whooooooooooaah, whooooooooooaah
Ahh, ahhh, ahhh
Ahhh, ooh
Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ah ah, ah ah, ah
Ah, ah, ah, ah, ahh

[Instrumental Break 08:34-13:46]

[Vocal Interlude]
Ahhhhhh
Ah ah, aah, ah, ah, ah, ah
Dun dun dun [repeated call-and-respond between Page and Plant]
Ahhh, ahhh, ahhh, ahhh, ahh, ahhh, ahhh
Ah, ah ah ah ah ahhh ah ah
Push, push, push, push, push, push
Push, push, push, push, ah, ah
Ahh
Ah
Uhh, uhh, uhh, uhh, uhh, uhh, uhh, ahh, ahhh
Oh
[Instrumental Break/Guitar Solo/Vocal Improvisation 14:59-25:12]

[Verse 5]
Oh everybody's been talkin', Lord
I swear they been talkin' trash
The way that ya push me darlin'
Ya know I couldn't take too much of that
So c'mon, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon, show me the way
I wanna make love to ya little girl twenty five
A-twenty five
Twenty five
Twenty five
Ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ahh

[Instrumental Outro/Guitar Solo/Vocal Improvisation/Drum Solo 25:52-29:18]
Ohhh, suck it
Yeah
Ohh

[Spoken]
Jimmy Page, electric guitar

and yes, definitely the best lyrics out of that set are:

See rock shows near Portland
Get tickets as low as $42
You might also like
Dazed and Confused
Led Zeppelin
The Ocean (Live)
Led Zeppelin
Whole Lotta Love (Live)
Led Zeppelin

i like his classic song breakdowns but his comments on contemporary music are infuriating. he either hates or does not understand hip-hop, electronic, reggaeton, etc. and makes the same tired criticisms of the genres whenever they pop up. oh a hip-hop song uses a repetitive loop throughout, you say? a reggaeton song uses the reggaeton riddim? my stars!

yeah he's honestly pretty knowledgeable about stuff within a certain genre but at this point his constant old-white-guy-isms...

all i can say to that is "ok boomer", even knowing that doing so makes me the middle aged white lady in 2003 talking about "bling bling".

this man came of age in the "yummy yummy yummy i got love in my tummy" era, idk if lyrics today are much worse than that

Earlier today I enjoyed his video about the James Bond theme. My knowledge of music theory is rudimentary at best, but I was mostly able to follow his analysis and it sort of made me want to learn more. He's a good teacher.

His tastes seem to be about what I'd expect from a guy his age, so yeah, not the first person I'd consult about new music. I get it, I'm old too.

Mostly I'm annoyed when yt recommends his videos to me, but he's good when worshipping (white) jazz legends like Keith Jarrett, Mehldau, and Metheny.

I like his analysis just fine, I came across him at first because of those amazing videos of his son's perfect pitch. I started to really go off him when he went down the path of bitching on and fucking on about being demonitized or record companies/management blocking his shit, nobody cares.

I love when http://www.youtube.com/@pat_finnerty rips on him

even his classic rock breakdowns aren't all that interesting though. he has a great ear and an obviously deep well of musical knowledge but he rarely has anything to actually *say* about songwriting, which seems to be his greatest passion.

as youtube music geeks go, i much prefer adam neely, who's a deeper thinker, knows how to tell a story, understands other people's stories, and actually likes pop music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAyxatBvKfg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebwjOEqxYd8

sorry, right, rick beato. he's annoying! not as annoying as the fantano guy but he's annoying for sure.

I’ve been enjoying his recent interview series tbh. Nowhere near as annoying as his other material

even his classic rock breakdowns aren't all that interesting though. he has a great ear and an obviously deep well of musical knowledge but he rarely has anything to actually *say* about songwriting, which seems to be his greatest passion.

it's cool to hear the stems and individual parts on all those songs, and his breakdowns of the chord progressions are enlightening, if not insightful. he never engages with the substance of the song, that's true

this man came of age in the "yummy yummy yummy i got love in my tummy" era, idk if lyrics today are much worse than that

I bet you he hates "Yummy Yummy Yummy' though.

His dissections of contemporary music can be annoying, but not nearly as annoying as the video thumbnails for his dissections of contemporary music.

Like I feel like his videos are at least a little more nuanced and insightful than the titles and thumbnails have you lead to believe.

a lot of the titles of his videos are clickbait, though sometimes he does make interesting points. like there was one about how all 90s rock sounds alike, yeah okay sure it does blah blah blah but if you watch it it breaks down the various producers who were involved and the samples that wind up in a bunch of different recordings, which of course was not how things were done beforehand. it's kind of interesting. i'm lukewarm on him overall, but he's a pretty decent interviewer, one of the few who actually knows the subjects' records well

another goofy looking guy makin faces for those youtube videos looking straight into my eyes, this is so up my alley

I kind of thought his resume would be much more impressive based on his YT clout but nope, his discogs looks like any other mid-90s indie obscurity... his band that had the most exposure has never been mentioned on this board that claims to LOVE music.

https://i.imgur.com/JCHdVE5.jpeg

This sounds like a demo that our station would have received and get quickly tossed in the pile without making it to the airwaves:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBDrUqJhMQ4

He's rockist in predictable and boring ways, but I like his enthusiasm for stuff he likes. I've found some of his videos interesting, made me more aware of the architecture of a song. Also I thought his tribute to Mimi Parker was totally unexpected and really nice.

He surprises me sometimes. He once listed Curve as one of the best bass sounds of all time or something.

Yeah those are the times you remember he was in a '90s band.

He also reminds me of the Italian guys I grew up around in the Rochester suburbs (where he's from too). In good ways, mostly, the gregariousness and excitability.

this man came of age in the "yummy yummy yummy i got love in my tummy" era, idk if lyrics today are much worse than that

― the defenestration of prog (voodoo chili)

I bet you he hates "Yummy Yummy Yummy' though.

― Tom D (the first British Asian ILXor) (Tom D.)

dave barry declared it to be the second worst song ever... i do think of dave barry as sort of the canonical white male boomer in terms of musical taste

i looked up the song to see if anybody has confirmed or denied the allegations that it's about swallowing cum. wikipedia was silent on the fact but provides an all-time disambiguation page:

For the Julie London album, see Yummy, Yummy, Yummy (album). For the national anthem of Vanuatu, see Yumi, Yumi, Yumi.

anyway, what i did find is that "yummy yummy yummy" is a kasenetz-katz joint (unsurprisingly), written by artie resnick and joey levine. i don't know what exactly resnick's contributions as a songwriter are, since all of his songs are co-writes. joey levine i can get a better bead on, since he went on to be a jingle guy. i mean kind of a natural career path once you've done "yummy yummy yummy", the song's basically a jingle. i mean look at this guy's career, absolute fuckin' legend:

Starting in the early 1970s, Levine began working on jingles for television commercials, as well as singing on them, with one of his most well-remembered jingles being "Sometimes You Feel Like A Nut" for Mounds and Almond Joy chocolate bars.[4]

just for that alone levine's in my good book. one of my go-to orchiectomy jokes is based on that jingle.

Popular campaigns from the past include: “Pepsi – The Joy of Cola", "Gentlemen Prefer Hanes", "Just For the Taste of It – Diet Coke", "Orange you smart, (for drinking Orange Juice)", "Come See the Softer Side of Sears", "Heartbeat of America – Chevrolet", "Dr Pepper – You Make the World Taste Better", "You Asked For It, You Got It, Toyota," "Who's that Kid With the Oreo Cookie," and "This Bud's For You" for Anheuser-Busch, and also the infamous "Proud as a Peacock" image campaign for NBC used from May 1979 to Summer 1981

just wall to wall bangers here. (if anyone here hasn't seen the "WE'RE LOUD!" parody, please do - peak "dunking on fred silverman" shit. i'll always love fred silverman for orchestrating the rural purge, but his nbc was fuckin' _dire_.) i'm sure dave barry would make fun of someone who made his career writing ad jingles, except, well. if you look at the career of jake holmes, the folkie who wrote the original "dazed and confused", then he went on to write the "be all that you can be" jingle for the us army. to me, hating on someone who can write jingles like that, one's just showing one's ignorance. i didn't hear the "valumarket" jingle for 30 years, and the second somebody brought it up again, bam! right back in my head. i don't know who wrote that one, that one's a classic tho.

the point is even if the song's _not_ actually about fellatio, it can reasonably be interpreted to be about fellatio, and that makes it an all-timer in my book. even if the residents' version is probably technically better.

oh, also, i was once again reminded that the ohio express and the ohio players were two different bands.

basically what i'm saying is that rick beato, if you do a video talking about the genius of joey levine's jingle writing, all will be forgiven

There were also (at least) three versions of Ohio Express: the original band which recorded their first single, the band hired to promote the single after the original band fell out with their record company and all their subsequent releases, the studio band who actually recorded all of their material (with Joey Levine on vocals). Oh and 10cc were Ohio Express for one single. I don't know who Dave Barry is but he's completely wrong about 'Yummy Yummy Yummy".

Oh no, Kate, you can't defend the Rural Purge!

"Yummy Yummy Yummy" is definitely about swallowing cum. I think it is firmly in the tradition of Serge Gainsbourg's "Les Sucettes" and Annie's "Chewing Gum."

I don't know who Dave Barry is but he's completely wrong about 'Yummy Yummy Yummy".

― Tom D (the first British Asian ILXor) (Tom D.)

dave barry is some american guy

named "dave"

i thought he was really funny when i was 12. he had a syndicated newspaper column. i remember his headshot in the newspaper column looking sort of like one of the wilson brothers, somewhere between brian and carl.

he had a sitcom too. like one that was supposedly "about" him. it ran for like three or four seasons. he was played by harry anderson from "night court". i don't think it had very much to do with dave barry's actual life.

Oh no, Kate, you can't defend the Rural Purge!

― Josefa

well, maybe i won't, critique it and i'll listen :)

btw while we're talking kasenetz-katz joints, i fucking love "1, 2, 3, red light" by the 1910 fruitgum company... talking heads' cover of that one is sooooo good

idk how i feel about how many of those bubblegum pop songs were kind of gainsbourgian. gainsbourg was a creep, and i don't like the idea of pressuring young women to put out that way. it's a good song, though.

Green Acres was still a viable show when cancelled - its reruns ran for YEARS - as was Hee Haw, as proven by its long afterlife in syndication. We did need more urban shows, but not at the expense of the classic rural shows.

Dave Barry played in a rock group with Stephen King and Amy Tan. I think he said "MacArthur Park" was the worst song ever, which is extremely wrong.

Rick Beatoff

One of his videos was about why quantization makes modern music suck, contrasting Nickelback and Zep.

I really don’t think some natural swing was the missing piece to Nickelback.

He dislikes a lot of the same music I do, and for more or less the same reasons, but at least I try not to be a scold about it.

"Sometimes You Feel Like A Nut" for Mounds and Almond Joy chocolate bars."

i STILL sing this to this day. like, i was singing it two days ago. that's how genius it is. that's seriously like 50 years of me singing that jingle. peterpaulsalmondjoysgotnuts...mounds don't.

xps I used to find great joy in Dave Barry's columns in the Miami Herald back in the day, and he seems like a good guy, but he's the kind of Boomer who thinks the lyrics of "Hang On, Sloopy" are superior to the lyrics of "MacArthur Park."

Calvin K. Kazanjian was the founder and president of Peter Paul Inc., the maker of the Mounds and Almond Joy candy bars, located in Naugatuck, Connecticut. For 30 years, he met and solved the problems of an ever-growing business.

https://static.wixstatic.com/media/a6c0f4_ef69d9a633994e54b32ca482643ff6fa~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_238,h_298,al_c,lg_1,q_80,enc_auto/a6c0f4_ef69d9a633994e54b32ca482643ff6fa~mv2.jpg

Just watched the Beato video where he takes down Jack Harlow and "Texas Hold 'Em," and have to say, at least he's punching upwards.

I think what's happening here is you have a guy who's only kinda annoying being forced into being really annoying by the YouTube algorithm

i STILL sing this to this day. like, i was singing it two days ago. that's how genius it is. that's seriously like 50 years of me singing that jingle. peterpaulsalmondjoysgotnuts...mounds don't.

― scott seward

mounds: yes
nuts: no

i mean, batting two for two here

Green Acres was still a viable show when cancelled - its reruns ran for YEARS - as was Hee Haw, as proven by its long afterlife in syndication. We did need more urban shows, but not at the expense of the classic rural shows.

― Josefa

mmmm i just don't know that commercial viability... i don't think of it as the be-all and end-all

like, for me, there's cultural impact to both the westerns and the rural sitcoms that followed them. bonanza? yes, great, classic all-time show, cancelling it for "being a western", that would be silly. the andy griffith show? same, fucking all-time. if the rural purge had cancelled the andy griffith show instead of, like, "mayberry rfd", i might have a problem with that.

i guess what i'd say is that i'd frame it more in terms of... like, the doctor shows. like, to me the problem with "the other martin loring" wasn't just that it was broadcast, it was that THIS FUCKING DR. KILDARE-ASS SHOW WAS STILL ON THE AIR IN 1973. Like WHAT THE FUCK. CBS had Mannix. NBC had the NBC Mystery Movie. ABC is showing fucking MARCUS WELBY, M.D.? That's pathetic. Completely pathetic. I'd rather watch "The Girl With Something Extra", even after learning that the "something extra" was ESP and not, like, a penis.

I think what's happening here is you have a guy who's only kinda annoying being forced into being really annoying by the YouTube algorithm

― frogbs

forced "well, actually" is my least favorite sexual fetish

I didn't know he was in a band I sorta like that YouTube song you posted lol

xp i raced my bike in naugatuck once it was kinda terrifying. the town seemed kinda post-industrial-washout consistent tho

yeah, that's a hell of a jingle. "you asked for it-- YOU GOT IT, TOYOTA!" was WAY more immense. it owned all media. everywhere. all the time. it owns me. now.

he should go full inverse maron and do a tight 5 after each interview

there was that time he spent years practicing chord identification with his son who later turned out to not really be interested in music

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3Cb1qwCUvI

the YouTube ecosystem needs Beato to feel like the teacher so people like Neely and Finnerty can feel like your peers

i basically know this guy only from pat finnerty videos but his signature lp special is rad imo

https://images.ctfassets.net/m8onsx4mm13s/3l9hCDnmmlh9da4eD9kf3K/6169e1577647e4b25be663352bd3732a/LPSDB21BMNH1_front__1_.png

i think i also have a bias against someone like rick beato because of my occupation. 9 out of 10 times people similar to him (dude dad musos) will come in and grill me about my receiver and my speakers - things i have no interest in other than i know what sounds good to me - and then they will leave. without ever buying anything.

I think I'm right in saying that for a lot of music tuition youtubers - and especially in the guitar world - the real money they're making is not from adverts or patreon or sponsored videos or paid promo or whatever but from selling courses off the back of their channel. Rick's approach to this has long been something called the Beato Book which he sells at fifty bucks a pop, and if you've ever wondered whats actually in it, here's a review:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EfLcFImdg8

conclusion: lol, no thanks pal

maybe we're talking about two different things here, in regards to the songwriting teams yes that's something that's always existed and has kinda more or less been the norm for a lot of pop artists, though I definitely feel a sense of too many cooks in pop music these days. in my grossly uneducated view that's something I really started noticing with the Black Eyed Peas, where every element is smashed with overproduction and there's no room for things to breathe and groove. you'd think Beato would understand this as a YouTuber, given how they tend to take out natural pauses in speech and do a ridiculous amount of cuts for videos that are just a dude talking to a camera to the point where it doesn't feel conversational. granted Beato is not as bad with this as others. but its an attention economy now and I guess part of that is reducing as much 'downtime' as possible. this wasn't really what I was referring to though, rather his argument that the music business has largely moved past people who actually know how to play and can do interesting things with their instrument. like how many drummers could you name that have played on a Billboard top 100 hit in the last years? how many bassists? keyboard players?

people on the internets with opinions about music, amirite?

rather his argument that the music business has largely moved past people who actually know how to play and can do interesting things with their instrument. like how many drummers could you name that have played on a Billboard top 100 hit in the last years? how many bassists? keyboard players?

-frogbs

I don't care if a song is made by a person using protools, a laptop, or an acoustic bass or an electric bass, a conga drum or a drum machine. Does the song sound good? If he's suggesting that the lack of old-school musicians playing the instruments he learned how to play has somehow now made music worse let him argue that, but it just sounds like tedious rockism the way you have phrased it

Does the song sound good?

it doesn't :(

i'm listening to the new willow record and it's like nothing but insane chord changes and harmonics. i guess the argument there is you have to be related to a famous person to make a career off of that but idk

― ivy., Thursday, 23 July 2026 18:49 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

imagine half-dropping a take this monumentally wrong and then dipping

thread is full of stuff that makes my blood boil tbh. one major problem is that beato, while his intentions are largely good, is incapable of framing music outside of a relatively small paradigm - his purview is the precise intersection point of rockism and poptimism, and so he makes grand, often quite accurate and technically astute pronouncements about really quite a small range of music

this has resulted in the thread contributors extrapolating beatonian principles whither they cannot extend. there's so much music out there, and so many professional musicians doing all sorts of things with song construction, that a coherent grasp of 'musical complexity' is a nonsense

beato is ultimately a pop critic and an interviewer. he fucks with angine de poitrine because they're popular and musically slightly diverting, he lambasts taytay because she's very very popular yet her music has been dreary clichéd toss for ages. put any one of the thousand incredible feats of pop and rock composition from the last decade in front of him and the first question he'll ask himself before responding is 'do people like this'. which is honestly fair, it's his MO and he's entitled to it, but it's not going to give anyone a full overview of what is currently happening in terms of interesting popular-form composition

for that, you need to listen to me, obv ;)

and ofc even beato doesn't, cannot cover all the bases of what's both really popular and musically interesting. i'd write a big list but then even that would be subjective and incomplete and kind of pointless, although in lieu of it you'll just have to trust me

"no imago you sodding dolt, water from your eyes/keiyaa/clarissa connelly/clipping are not popular enough!!!"

imagine half-dropping a take this monumentally wrong and then dipping

imagine copping for nepo baby shit by choice.

imagine not understanding that my point is that you do not in fact have to be related to someone famous to make a career out of interesting pop composition

you'll have to wait a bit longer for most of the Americans to wake up if you really want to have an argument with them

not spoiling for a fight, just y'know trying to frame this conversation out of smaller blocks than duplo

listening to the new WILLOW album thanks to the above encounter btw. it's not bad! wouldn't call its harmonic/melodic sensibilities 'insane', it's all fairly standard jazzy stuff and largely in 4/4. you want insane I can give you insane

like, L'Rain is right there

??????????????? i really hate this shit from both you and austin

except one of us carefully laid out a reasoned argument and the other lashed out at the wrong tree? if you hate this shit then explain why i'm wrong to say it

you want insane I can give you insane

Naw, ye're awright.

i really hate this shit from both you and austin

maybe leave then

imagine not understanding that my point

imagine framing every single interaction you have as, "well i have a lesson to teach you, now listen up."

ivy otm

you guys created this toxicity. happy to air it out in this thread for sure.

oops threadbanned again

all ya'll need an ego check

have a good day

ivy otm, no idea why you two are spoiling for a fight in here but maybe leave other people out of it?

this has descended into ridiculous ad hominem bafflingly quickly. i am chill, please just stop trying to pretend this is a clusterfuck of some sort and address my thread-relevant arguments

oh Tall Baby is pretty good, well done Willow

it feels like you all see the post was done by me and your eyes glaze over. what has that idiot said now. probably something really stupid. and look he's in another argument ffs why does he have to keep bringing this bad energy to my sainted messageboard. meanwhile i've made some actual points that will never be addressed because someone latched onto something i said - incorrectly - and that became the seed for another round of whack-an-lj. and yet somehow i keep coming back for more, naively figuring that since i'm not the same person i was 20 years ago (it's my 20 year joining anniversary in 2 days holy shit I should quit) people will take me seriously maybe once ever

if you don't want to start a fight then maybe don't start with

imagine half-dropping a take this monumentally wrong and then dipping

hyperbolic opprobrium as hook and dynamo for response is part of the fabric of ILM surely, if you dish it out you gotta take it. i clearly don't mind being called an idiot all the time - ivy does it quite often - but what i do object to is that the substance of what i've said gets completely ignored

NOW. let's try that again

thread is full of stuff that makes my blood boil tbh. one major problem is that beato, while his intentions are largely good, is incapable of framing music outside of a relatively small paradigm - his purview is the precise intersection point of rockism and poptimism, and so he makes grand, often quite accurate and technically astute pronouncements about really quite a small range of music

this has resulted in the thread contributors extrapolating beatonian principles whither they cannot extend. there's so much music out there, and so many professional musicians doing all sorts of things with song construction, that a coherent grasp of 'musical complexity' is a nonsense

beato is ultimately a pop critic and an interviewer. he fucks with angine de poitrine because they're popular and musically slightly diverting, he lambasts taytay because she's very very popular yet her music has been dreary clichéd toss for ages. put any one of the thousand incredible feats of pop and rock composition from the last decade in front of him and the first question he'll ask himself before responding is 'do people like this'. which is honestly fair, it's his MO and he's entitled to it, but it's not going to give anyone a full overview of what is currently happening in terms of interesting popular-form composition; for that, you need to listen to me, obv ;)

and ofc even beato doesn't, cannot cover all the bases of what's both really popular and musically interesting. i'd write a big list but then even that would be subjective and incomplete and kind of pointless, although in lieu of it you'll just have to trust me. "no imago you sodding dolt, water from your eyes/keiyaa/clarissa connelly/clipping are not popular enough!!!"

Well the problem with that is you entirely musinterpreted ivy's post - she wasn't saying you need rich relatives to succeed with interesting music, she was predicting that as the possible rebuttal to her bringing Willow up as an example and then expressing skepticism about that rebuttal ("but idk"). Can't really get huffy at your argument being ignored if you're arguing against shit no one has said.

xp maybe it read as that to you, to me it just looks aggressive, I don't know if there's some history here, but that's surely not any way to start a discussion.

I know there are some people here who are keen to argue like that with you, but ivy?

xp also that, yes, you can't start with the least generous interpretation

the rebuttal was not introduced as a strawman but as a concession to someone who'd seriously think it, and 'but idk' is basically handwavey 'hey they might have a point if they think that'

and ofc even beato doesn't, cannot cover all the bases of what's both really popular and musically interesting.

So what are you even arguing about here?

sorry lj on rereading i know that your quoting my post was good-natured and beside the point. austin just jumped off of it and it was the second time i’ve experienced out of nowhere hostility from them on this board

not the most wonderful thing to wake up to!!! anyway

'i guess the argument is that' is not the language of someone who is about to say something they strongly disagree with. also note i said 'half-dropped', acknowledging an element of non-committal. i am nothing if not fair

oh lol ivy with the olive branch well gladly received, pax etc

we fight hard and fair on ilm

So what are you even arguing about here?

― stanes on the knees and blood on the jumber (Tom D.), Friday, 24 July 2026 11:39 (sixteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

the thread had long descended into generalisations about what sort of music people (including the eminent sir richard of beato) want to listen to, with a framing device of 'muso shit versus producer pop' that was threatening to become one of the most reductive conversations i've seen on here

the problems began when people stopped using this thread to make fun of rick beato

thing about beato is that idk if there's thaaat much to make fun of, he sticks to his lane way more than a lot of popular online music content creators. i don't watch his stuff and don't consider myself a fan but i also don't see what the fuss is really

ok i'm skimming the beato/lefsetz podcast and lefsetz is just a completely bizarre guy, even weirder than last time i read one of his newsletters because one of you made fun of it. beato barely seems to get a word in because lefsetz is just stream of consciousness rambling the entire time. it starts out with pretty reasonable discussion of the economic dynamics of music streaming but within a few minutes he's rambling about how everyone knows taylor swift wrote a song about him but no one actually knows any taylor swift songs at all. later he's just rambling about how most music just isn't good enough to compete with tv any more and singles out fontaines dc to hate on for no clear reason

I don't think you can stick to your lane when you're a youtube celeb

this thread should stick to its lane

i’d like to make fun of beato’s hair. he looks like a warhead wrapper

I think he looks like one of the Katzenjammer Kids.

later he's just rambling about how most music just isn't good enough to compete with tv

Haha I like this - common talking point regarding cinema a decade or so ago, amusing to think of music being discarded in favour of 2026 streaming slop.

i think this is the type of stuff he's good at, or at least provides a forum for...like i never considered the structure of "Plush" by Stone Temple Pilots but hearing DeLeo talk about how he adapted it from old blues and ragtime forms is really interesting, especially when he can use the guitar to illustrate his points

the hot take stuff sucks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPSyOvPX5UI

I don't care if a song is made by a person using protools, a laptop, or an acoustic bass or an electric bass, a conga drum or a drum machine. Does the song sound good? If he's suggesting that the lack of old-school musicians playing the instruments he learned how to play has somehow now made music worse let him argue that, but it just sounds like tedious rockism the way you have phrased it

― curmudgeon, Friday, July 24, 2026 12:59 AM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

well, by and large I think the answer is "no", to my ears a lot of modern pop does not sound good, it sounds overproduced and inhuman and it seems clear there are several teams of songwriters who are writing the bulk of hits these days. yes I realize this is nothing new, I grew up in the Max Martin era of late 90s pop, but there was a bunch of stuff going on then, you still had rock bands and pop-punk and electronica and stuff like Ween or Beck who just threw everything under the sun together, not to mention a steady stream of fun novelty hits like Mambo No. 5 or whatever, all of it had fans and was promoted pretty heavily. I think the main problem is record companies don't seem interested in developing anybody anymore, you can't do the thing where you release some shitty demo tapes and a weirdass debut and then find your groove, from what I've seen this is where Beato is at too. like I get it's tedious rockism to complain that a band like Rush would never get off the ground today but in my view that also means a lot of other interesting stuff probably can't get off the ground either, including something that might be the sound of the 2030s or whatever

like I get it's tedious rockism to complain that a band like Rush would never get off the ground today

I also don't think it's true but then depends what you mean by "get off the ground".

maybe we're talking about two different things here, in regards to the songwriting teams yes that's something that's always existed and has kinda more or less been the norm for a lot of pop artists, though I definitely feel a sense of too many cooks in pop music these days. in my grossly uneducated view that's something I really started noticing with the Black Eyed Peas, where every element is smashed with overproduction and there's no room for things to breathe and groove. you'd think Beato would understand this as a YouTuber, given how they tend to take out natural pauses in speech and do a ridiculous amount of cuts for videos that are just a dude talking to a camera to the point where it doesn't feel conversational. granted Beato is not as bad with this as others. but its an attention economy now and I guess part of that is reducing as much 'downtime' as possible. this wasn't really what I was referring to though, rather his argument that the music business has largely moved past people who actually know how to play and can do interesting things with their instrument. like how many drummers could you name that have played on a Billboard top 100 hit in the last years? how many bassists? keyboard players?

― frogbs, Friday, 24 July 2026 00:36 (fourteen hours ago)

An obvious response to this post is to point out that songwriting hasn’t actually changed that much, but that the way songwriting is credited has dramatically. It used to be people contributed to songs and weren’t credited, and now the system leans the other direction. In Nashville if you change a word that’s used in a pop song and contribute nothing else you get an even songwriting split with everyone else in the room, in 2026