Well, shucks. It does seem that Brat summer is over, and I didn't even get a chance to do cocaine. No, no. Come back. Come back to me. Oh, man. At least we got to have the fun times we did. Yeah, I got to do some squats. I gave a 10. I got to give a 10 on an album. Drake and Kendrick Lamar beefed, and Drake sent me a nice message saying, 'Hey, dear Anthony, I thought that you covered the beef really good. Here's a vegan pancake recipe that I think you'd really enjoy.' I sent him a picture of my ass. I mean, it's been looking good since the squats, and he seemed to enjoy it.

Okay, the time for intros are done. It's time for arguing. Yeah. Yep, that's it. Another episode of Let's Argue where I hop online, I take your hot takes, your unpopular opinions, your tough questions, I respond to the best ones. That's literally what we're doing. Let's do it.

"Pop music doesn't need Taylor Swift anymore. Artists like Billie, Sabrina, and Charli have made better pop albums this year than her." - @KaisTestKitchen

Yeah, I do think all those artists made better pop albums, but simultaneously, I don't really think Taylor Swift cares about being there for pop music per se. I don't think Taylor has any interest at this point in terms of being a defining pop artist or influencing the pop scene on the whole. I mean, if you look at the quality of her writing, instrumentally and lyrically, clearly, Taylor is only interested at this point in just feeding the lore, feeding the parasocial cult that we are currently calling her audience.

There is no "Shake It Off", for example, on Taylor's new record. Taylor is not making music anymore that is meant to appeal far beyond her audience. She's just focusing on feeding that very passionate niche of people who are obsessed with her so much that they will just stream her music forever because they're not really exposing themselves to much of anything else other than, I don't know, maybe right now, Gracie Abrams, who literally just writes bad Taylor Swift and Lord combo songs. But yeah, I don't think Taylor has any interest in feeding pop music as a scene or a culture anymore. She's just interested in feeding the Taylorverse.

"Weezer having dorky, unlistenable albums like Ratitude in their discography is good, actually.

Ever since their debut, they've embraced their dorkiness, and having a wildly inconsistent discography makes them still feel like 'underdogs', even as a highly successful band." - @NuckFulfaro

I don't know if I fully agree with the progression here because on Maladroit, as well as Pinkerton, I would say the band was taking themselves pretty, pretty seriously, relatively seriously. I mean, not every Weezer album, provably, is all about dorky, teehee type fun. But with that being said, I guess I do agree with your point to a degree. The fact that the band's discography over the years has proven to be so wildly inconsistent and with a new Weezer album, you don't know if you're going to get pure trash or if you're going to get one of the best records they've dropped in a long time. It does certainly keep things exciting.

You can really look back on their catalog, and even if you do see a bunch of albums you never want to listen to again, you can look at them and just be like, 'Oh, yeah, I remember the horrible time that I had with that album. Memories.'

"The streaming model will likely collapse within the next decade if prices aren't raised significantly, the deal is just too good, and neither corporations nor artists are happy with it." - @fyridk

I think, very provably, corporations are pretty happy with it. The record labels are making money hand over fist now. Big, big, big, big, big profits in their pockets. Big profits as well for the CEOs of these streaming companies, too. I guarantee you if the labels and corporations were not happy with this deal, it would be re-arranged in a heartbeat, and yet it isn't.

The party that is really getting screwed in the whole deal is artists, really because there's no gate, there's no barrier to entry anymore at this point. As a result, I feel like streaming services presume that if some artist decides to opt out of uploading their music to their platform, there's going to be 200 other artists that will be willing to do so instead and will upload their stuff to the platform and their music will just get streamed by audiences.

I do agree with what you're saying to an extent, because I don't think for artists long term, this model is all that sustainable. Because if the amount of money you can make off your music gets smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller, the only people who are going to be making music in the next 10 to 15 years are just fucking nepo babies.

I feel like the only way we're actually going to see this turnaround is if artists get together and collectively strike against these music streaming services and take their music off of them or refuse to upload music onto them. It all needs to be done at once together as a group. That's going to be the only way to twist the arms of the labels and these platforms. Fingers crossed that it happens at some point.

"If Kurt Cobain still alive, Nirvana would be the greatest band of all time." - @levr_5

I think what you're trying to say here to some degree, is like, Nirvana would be even better if they continued as a band and were still, hopefully, even functional today. I don't know, that's a difficult argument to make, especially considering pretty much Every single one of Nirvana 's contemporaries, artistically speaking, fell off to one degree or another in the time since the early to mid '90s. Even bands that had really great players and songwriters in their roster, even bands that had multiple classics under their belt. I mean, as a '90s kid, there is nothing that could have prepared me for how mid these new Smashing Pumpkins albums are.

And while I'm not out here predicting that new Nirvana albums in 2024 would have been trash per se. I think the band, just like any other group of rock-playing humans that came out of that decade, they're still people, and they still would have been subject to esthetic changes and trends. They would still be facing the same downturn in the popularity of rock music today that pretty much every great band during that era and during the 2000s, too, are currently facing.

"Chapelle Roan is another generic pop artist." - @Mark_K14

Even as somebody who was not super impressed with Chapelle early on and also sees her sometimes as somebody who's drowning in her influences a little bit, I can't name eight, nine other pop artists who sound or look or present themselves exactly like Chapelle Roan on the pop scene today. By what metric are you saying she's just a generic pop artist? Even if she's not putting the most unique spin on the types of new wave or Cindy Lauper type stuff or, I don't know, queer dance pop, all of that stuff, or pop rock. Again, even if she's not redefining all of these sounds within the confines of her album, I can't really think of any other artists who are nearly as popular as she is right now who are pulling from these same influences and doing it as big, doing it with songs that are as compelling as the ones that she's dropping.

So again, generic how. Generic where? Do we know what the word generic means? If you want an example of something that is generic, I would sample the two new Katy Perry singles that honestly, if you didn't tell me those were Katy Perry songs, I would have no earthly idea because they really are that dime a dozen. They really are that average, esthetically and vocally. I feel like you're just saying this to be different, but you're not. This is just a generic take.

"Love your channel, but many of your reviews are just summarizing the songs on an album and giving it a score. Where's the human connection to the form? How are you, as a critic, pulling the humanity out of the music in doing so, drawing a parallel to your experience?" - @sk8b0rt

First off, I'm not just simply giving rundowns of the songs. I'm talking about aspects of those songs that I like or dislike or talking about how they all come together as a whole, if they in fact do. A very recent example would include the new Magdalena Bay review that I did or the new Nails review that I did where I talk about how various themes throughout the tracks on the album tie together as one focused cohesive thing, while also talking about qualities of the music or production or performances that I think are special or stand out or impressive or make these albums important, significant in some way.

But also the human connection to the form by sitting here and telling you about what I love about the music and I'm expressing my passion for it. Am I not showing you some human connection to it? Also, drawing a parallel to my experience, I can't think of a faster way to make a review, pointless, boring, and stupid than to try to find ways desperately to draw something that I'm hearing in the music to my experience. Like, 'Oh, this thing on this album reminds me of myself and this thing that happened to me. Let me tell you a little story.' I know there are some reviewers and writers who operate in that way, and that's their mode of doing things, and that's fine. But believe me, it's not mine.

Not only because I think that thing is pointless in most cases. Outside of the rare occasion where I actually do think maybe my own personal experience might be important here, but for the most part, in my view, it isn't. And some of my favorite albums of all time are based on or are influenced by experiences that I have no connection to whatsoever. You're telling me I'm supposed to sit here and tell tell you how great TPAB is or SINNER GET READY is based on how I draw my own personal experience to it. Those albums deal in experiences and perspectives that I have no connection to myself, and I would be an idiot to sit here and pretend like I have the capacity to speak to you from those perspectives in my review. In fact, what I feel like is more important is allow the perspectives that are being shared on those records to speak for themselves.

"There are no redeemable qualities to Sexxxy Red's music and image." - @GroggyPogChamp

I disagree. A lot of her songs are quite catchy, and she is very funny. In fact, Sexyy Red is quite hilarious in my opinion, and I feel like the mere fact that she has the capacity to, like shooting fish in a barrel, just upset middle-brow morons who think they're smarter than her brings a lot of value. I've said I've said this before, and I'll say it again.

To me, there is no quicker way to understand who's an idiot and who's not than seeing who's really upset at Sexyy Red on the internet. If you see somebody who's really mad about Sexyy Red in a comment section or on camera or whatever. That person's dumb. That person's stupid. That's a moron. Every fucking time, I guarantee you, that is a man, and it's most likely a man, who is not as smart as he thinks he is.

I think I'm going to leave it there. That is going to be this episode of Let's Argue. Thank you very much for coming through and arguing with me. You guys are the best.

Anthony Fantano, Argue, Forever.