Ok, I'm going to say this: people (not here, but
elsewhere) are writing way too much about Radiohead and it's getting on my goddamn nerves.
I want to hear Radiohead
news as much as anyone, but this isn't news. It's filler... it's
overfiller... overkill... unnecessary and a total goddamn turnoff.
I think it speaks to the state of popular culture that certain artists just get covered and covered and covered when a new album drops. Kanye West and Radiohead more than any others, really. But the news coverage is absolutely fucking exhausting. There's no attempt to be tasteful, no attempt to stick to what the public needs to know. It turns into click-bait. New Kanye album? Well, Kanye West is one of the most Googled names in the world, so surely if we fill our website with daily updates on every facet of his public and personal life, we're sure to have a spike in readership that will make our parent company (let's say, for no reason in particular,
CONDÉ NAST) happy.
Radiohead drops a new album? Well, we have barely said a word about them in five years, but they're Radiohead so a new album means a bunch of nerds will be habitually checking our website for tidbits every goddamn second for a while, so let's absolutely DROWN our readers in bullshit features about Radiohead and politics, Radiohead and technology, Radiohead fandom, Radiohead anal beads and Radiohead bumfuckery to milk this data cash cow for all it's worth until... y'know... Kanye or Betoncé does something else.
It speaks to the state of pop culture because pop culture is more fractured, fragmented and divided than it's ever been, and yet these artists are presented as though they somehow unite EVERYONE in the way the Beatles (or, to a lesser extent, Michael Jackson) did. Well, they fucking DON'T.
This board is evidence enough of that fact. I'm estimating that about 80% of the users here are well over the age of 30, meaning we all remember when Radiohead became "started" -- we all remember "Creep," and we remember the Bends, and we certainly remember OK Computer and the media frenzy surrounding it, and everything since. Add in the fact that this is a Sonic Youth board, and you can probably safely assume that just about EVERYONE here either is or has been a Radiohead fan at one time or another, probably between the years of 1995 and 2003 for the most part. Not only that, but we were all getting down to Sonic fucking Youth during those years, so it's probably not a stretch to assume that Radiohead is one of the "biggest" non-Nirvana bands we habe ever been into.
So we've all been there, seen it, done it, bought the t-shirt.
And yet, look at where we collectively stand on Radiohead now. Fucking everywhere and nowhere. There are a couple absolute die-yards, but mostly we're split. There are old timer fans who think the band dropped off a bit at some point, but still consider them a great band (like SFAD, louder, myself and a bunch of other folks who don't waste as much time here as the three of us). Then there are the golden era fans who think the band has sucked for 15 years. Then there are the dead batteries and evolloves who may or may not still like them, but certainly would rather talk shit than fawn over them at this point. And then there's the folks who just think they're awful, even though I'm positive that even they carried a torch for the band in '97.
Radiohead is/are not the Beatles.
Kanye West? Not the Beatles.
We have no Beatles. But Pitchfork wants to present this image of Radiohead somehow uniting two (or three?!) generations of music fans unlike any other band.
It's nonsense, and I'm sick of it. I work in the media. I have to write new content every goddamn day for one newspaper or another. If I wrote about the same goddamn thing and tried to slap it onto the homepage or front page every day for a week, I would be told to take my bullshit copy and shove it up my ass, and asked to go find something REAL to write about toot sweet or else.
I'm not saying anything negative about Radiohead here. Certainly not saying anything negative about Kanye, or Beyoncé. But I am saying the global entertainment media machine has turned into a shit factory. It's not even in the same category as news anymore. Pitchfork turns into a higher profile, no character limit version of a fan Twitter for the days and weeks surrounding a major release by a major artist, just like Entertainment Weekly wrote about nothing but The Force Awakens for three goddamn months.
It's despicable, and it actually makes it harder to enjoy the music. Who cares about decoding the deeper meaning behind the politics of a music video?! That just makes the band less appealing. Makes me want to take a hammer to my skull. It's just a song!!!! It's just a video!!! It's just an album! It's just a band!!! You're KILLING it by analyzing every little goddamn detail. Fucking executing it.
We have no Beatles. Nothing and nobody unites the world anymore. I wish everyone would stop wishing it was the '60s and wishing we were all happy. We're not, and nobody needs three Radiohead history lessons in one week.