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2011 In Musical Catastrophes

Instead of rising to their port of call, some artists this year took it upon themselves to become irritating pests.

Posted 14th December 2011, 6:59pm in Blogs by Jamie Milton
Jamie Milton

Jamie Milton

Writer

2011 In Musical Catastrophes In an age of instant mp3 consumerism and gruesome backlashes, most internet-addled music consumers are keen to poke fun at a hyped-up artist. Most of the time, this is only egged on by buzz blogs and influential publications. But some of the acts themselves seem to encourage such furore. Instead of rising to their port of call, they took it upon themselves to become irritating pests, rearing their horrible heads with every passing minute. All publicity is good publicity, after all. Here are some exceptional cases; the sadistic acts of musical torture in 2011 that left us feeling truly used:

The James Blake/Bon Iver collaboration
Two acts with the ability to firmly split opinion, put together to let down every single remaining person willing to sing their praises. James Blake and Justin Vernon are good songwriters; they’ve a keen ear for melody and they know how to break some hearts. So, presumably we’d see a combined effort capable of re-defining the art of the ballad or at the very least, a song with a redeeming tune. Not to be. Popular blog Hipster Runoff made the fine observation that ‘Fall Creek Boys Choir’ was quite simply; “some silly song with men trying to do Rick Astley/Bruce Hornsby impressions and owls hooting in the background.” The most extraordinary of let downs.

Tyler The Creator’s Bigotry
When ‘Yonkers’ was unveiled early this year, with its cockroach-spewing video and harsh, witty lyricism, Tyler the Creator seemed like the real deal, the culmination of a barrage of hype thrown at Odd Future. And yet his debut album reeked of over-confidence, sealed in a fairly offensive attitude that most music critics didn’t take too kindly to. Tongue-in-cheek or not, what began as an initial queasy sensation soon unravelled, to the point where many people (Steve Albini included) became turned off by Tyler’s extreme disposition.

Lana Del Rey’s Remix Train
At some point between early and late summer, Lana Del Rey turned from critical darling into online punchbag. It’s not worth going into why exactly this happened, be it the fake lips or the sheer pomposity of the blogosphere, but here’s where things started getting nasty: Day by day, another producer would take to the challenge of putting a new sheen on Del Rey’s breakthrough song, ‘Video Games’. Soon afterwards, even the likes of Balam Acab were cashing in and every single music journalist’s email feed was flooded with nobodies on soundcloud pointing you towards their version. It all climaxed quite chaotically with Kasabian’s Live Lounge cover of the song. It was time to put the backlash to bed and give Lana some space.

Other non-musical monstrosities
Lady Gaga turning herself into a bloodthirsty motorbike for ‘Born This Way’’s artwork, and Jessie J having a new-found respect for amputees. In what ranged from the amusing to the downright grim, us music fans had it reasonably tough this year, what with having to formulate backlashes for a new artist every month or so. Next year, we’d be sensible to curb the insensitive jibes and let irritating music pale into insignificance, but there’s little to no chance of that happening.
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