Hey, everyone. Anthony Fantano here, the internet's busiest music nerd. I hope you're doing well. This article is a compilation of a bunch of Let's Argue clips, conversation bits, responses that I've had to questions, comments, and hot takes that we have received on our Patreon page where we do a monthly Patreon-only, let's argue, segment. Again, this whole video is essentially a teaser for that and a quick little promo for our Patreon page, where you can support us and some extra bonus monthly content in the process.

So, yeah, let's let the compilation begin. Enjoy. Join up with the page if you feel so inclined. Get access to our Discord community, too. And if not, just enjoy the article. That's totally fine, too. You're the best.

Despite being the biggest star in the world, right, I don't see Taylor Swift having the same staying power as the pop legends of old. We will listen to and appreciate the Beatles, Michael Jackson, Queen, etc. But I have a hard time imagining people 30 or 40 years on putting on a Swift track.

Oh, man. Oh, dude. You must not know many Swifties.

Not only does it make sense that many of them would still be listening to her music in some capacity 30 or 40 years from now, but many of them have already been listening to her for 10 years or more and are still rocking with her to this day. And on top of it, you're talking about an artist who many people are growing up on, many people are spending a good deal of their teens and their 20s and their 30s listening to. While there are definitely artists that you look back on after you've listened to them through that time span, you're like, "That's cringe. Wish I didn't spend all my time listening to that." Yeah, that happens. I've had that experience personally. I know a lot of people have had that experience. But in the case of Taylor, she's got a massive audience right now. Most people don't really look back upon the music of those golden years as bad or cringe. A lot of people don't really ever have that coming to Jesus moment in terms of them really growing out of the music taste they forge for themselves in their teens and 20s. The reason a lot of people listen to that stuff still past that point is for nostalgia reasons.

Again, if Taylor Swift musically was a huge part of your life during those teens and 20s, the likelihood is great that a lot of those people are going to be sticking with her because she was just a pivotal part of their musical diet during those key informative years. I can't guarantee the next generation is going to give a shit about her for sure. They very well may not, but will a great deal of her current fans still be proselytizing for her shit, maybe going at random people on social media for disrespecting her? Probably.

If you were held at gunpoint, you were forced to sing a karaoke If you were to sing a Gaelic song for your freedom perfectly, what would you choose?

In terms of vocal execution perfectly? Or just like, I know all the words. You know what? I would not sing it perfectly, but I would sing it passionately. "I got to be me!" I would absolutely sing that shit and If I fucked up, I'd be shot and I'd be fine with it because you know what? I died doing what I loved, singing Sammy Davis Jr.'s "I Got to be Me."

What's the worst gift you can give to a music fan, an artist's worst album from their catalog or a shirt that's not even their size.

I would say worst album from the catalog, though that's not even necessarily a terrible thing because you can always put it on for a laugh or gawk at it a little bit or maybe just play the one good song that's on the thing. At least with a shirt that's not even their size, you could probably cut out the logo and put it on a battle jacket or something like that, or throw it on the back of a leather coat that you got with other patches and spikes and shit like that. You could repurpose that shit. Whereas a bad album, not a whole lot you could do with that, especially if you don't like not even a single moment on it.

Eddie Vedder's vocals aren't nearly as warbly and unenunciated as his haters seem to think. He just sings with his natural voice, listen to him talk, all the singers have tried to copy him.

No, look, I think well-enunciated is not a very well-enunciated singer. I feel like that's just objectively true. If you're picking up every three goddamn Eddie Vedder Lyric, no Lyric book at all, totally flawlessly, which is even hard to do sometimes with somebody who speaks as well into the mic as John Darnier, then I don't know what your deal is. Do you have a degree in Eddie Vedderanese? But with that being said, I agree with what you're saying here. Everybody who went on to copy Eddie did a much, much, much, much, much shittier version of Eddie. I don't really think there's anybody who was directly influenced by his style in the mainstream that somehow did more justice to his vocal style than he did. I would much rather listen to him than any one of his copycats.

Is not being able to understand the lyrics in a song count as a valid critique?

I think this is a pretty good question. I guess it depends on the context and the delivery and whether or not the lyrics or words are meant to be interpreted or understood on a surface level. I mean, certainly, vocals can be delivered or performed in a way where it's really more about the sensation than what they're saying much of the time. This is the case for a lot of the moody auto-cruan rap that we hear these days or something like death grips, where you don't necessarily catch every lyrics of a song on first listen or even various shades of death metal music. And even within that genre, there are some death metal vocalists, even though death metal is known for having these unintelligible deep guttural growl type vocals. Some artists in the genre operate in a way vocally that you can actually catch the lyrics on first listen, just hearing out the record, paying attention?

Yeah, I mean, I think it all comes down to personal preference and taste and whether or not you feel like there is any loss in entertainment value or quality within the music you're listening to with not being able to understand what the lyrics are as you're listening to them. Because certainly it could be argued that there is a value brought to the table when swapping out intelligibility for a vocal style that sounds weird or experimental or odd or eccentric or, you know, express a different emotional quality than you would have gotten if the lyrics were delivered more clearly.

When we're talking about the best albums of all time or best music of all time, do you think that it's correct to consider video game soundtracks in the conversation? I've asked my friends and they overwhelmingly said yes, though I think that's probably the popular opinion.

I think whatever belongs in that conversation depends upon who's having the conversation. Would I consider video game soundtracks in my favorite albums of all-time list? Possibly. But the thing is, I feel like if I were to open that floodgate, it wouldn't really enrich my best albums of all time list all that much because while I have spent a lot of time gaming, I am by no means, in my own opinion, an expert on video game soundtracks. It's not really something I spend a whole lot of time analyzing, even if there are some soundtracks that I do have a large affinity for, a lot of nostalgia for, be that Chrono Cross, be that Earthbound, be that the Mega Man series on NES and beyond, all The Legend of Zelda games. There's a lot of soundtracks that I can name. How I would square that against ranking it above or below, I don't know, Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti? I have no idea.

Aphex Twin predicted the campy hyperpop esthetics by a decade with window licker's music video and sound, and he should definitely be included in the protogenesis of most internet music genres.

I don't disagree. Richard D. James is definitely a very protogenesis type of person. But the visual tropes that he was indulging in on that music video were very much of that time. And the music video is a satire of the pop music and pop culture visual media esthetics that were popular during that '90s, early 2000s era. That's the stuff Charli XCX is borrowing from. That's the stuff many hyperpop artists are knowingly borrowing from. The thing is Richard D. James was just giving it a nod as well, but doing a little teehe, tongue-and-cheek thing on it and turning it into a campy performance, a joke. But the thing is Charlie and a lot of those artists who have been referencing back to that stuff, a lot of them pull from it because they have genuine reverence for it.

Burial is actually dubstep. A lot of people don't get this because it doesn't sound like Skrillex.

Are we still having this debate? Is this still a discussion? In 2024? Skrillex is and can be dubstep. It is its own subgenre of dubstep. Also, Burial is dubstep. They're Both Dub Step In Their Own Way. I don't know why this is such a difficult concept to grasp within this specific genre or even more broadly in a lot of subgenres of electronic music, because in rock music, you have a lot of genres where there are bands seemingly that are under the same stylistic umbrella but sound so wildly different. And yet the fans of these artists and the genres they're in more or less just understand that and accept them. But when it comes to something as trivial as dubstep, we need to, for over a decade, be debating back and forth in terms of where the fucking boundaries are and who's in and who's not.

Not that defining things isn't important. When it comes to musical discourse, it can be. It serves a purpose and can do wonders for musical discovery and understanding the different stylistic colors of music and what makes red, red, and orange, orange. But extending the debate out to this degree is just annoying and unnecessary. Who is saying that Burial isn't dubstep or needs to be defined as actually dubstep as opposed to any other artist at this point?

Have you ever shared your opinion on Flight of the Concords? Because I would love to hear it.

Yeah, I mean, I dig some Flight of the Concords. I mean, not so much the albums, and for sure, the songs and the parodies and all that stuff are cute entertaining and fun. Handily, they're one of the coolest things musically to ever come out of New Zealand, no shade to New Zealand, or to like you to underrate the more serious music acts to come out of there. But I mean, you have to admit, Flight of the Concords is pretty cool.

I love the show. I thought the little indie comedy run that they had for a while was really entertaining. I mean, when it comes to parody music, I think there is stuff out there esthetically that is a bit more interesting. But as far as the artistic reference points that would often be made in their stuff and just the quality of the humor that was laced into their work. I mean, that was all good and highly respectable. It's a shame that they're not as popular or as well acknowledged an act on the musical comedy front as they used to be.

James Ferrero needs more recognition as the actual person to invent vaporware, not Oneiotrix Point Never/Daniel Lopatin. James's early vaporwave stuff came out mid-2009, almost 11 months before Daniel you'll use the Chuck Person alias with Eccojams.

I don't know. Honestly, I feel like we're splitting hairs here just a little bit, especially considering you're not even talking about a period of years between these two albums, they were still released relatively close to each other. Plus, on top of it, when you're looking at some of the goats of the genre, be they Vectroid, be they Daniel, be they James Ferrero, it's pretty clear that they're all very versatile creatives who don't necessarily want to be defined by Vaporwave anyway.

Even in my recent interview with Daniel, he expressed some sentiments about him creating that Eccojams record and it taking off in the way that it did as kind of a fluke. He didn't necessarily mean to come up with this trend or this genre. So I don't know, passing off the ownership of who invented Vaporwave, at least for him, may not even be something he would have any issue with. I don't think he's really trying to lay claim to it.

Even so, you can't really deny his impact on the genre, as you say here. I'm not even sure what utility coming together collectively to decide who really invented Vaporwave would even have.

I get that The Cure is a great, important, well-respected band responsible for a lot of cool stuff, but how does Robert Smith expect me to get my friends on board when he sounds like that all the way up to at least wild mood swings?

It sounds like what? Just like, just like a little yelpy and expressive and effeminate, I guess? It really depends on the record. Some Cure albums are very shouty and punky and in your face. Others are a lot more despondent and sad and spacy. Others, later down the road, have a very wide pop appeal. I mean, I don't know how your friends would get into the Cure. I guess the same way that most people have.

The band has millions of fans. You know this, right? They have millions and millions of fans. They're not exactly a difficult band to get into, a difficult band to sell people on. Even if you can't get your friends into them. That's fine. They have lots of other people who love their music. Not everybody needs to like everything.

More rappers need to do haikus.

I feel like the standard set of syllabus for a haiku, and correct me if I'm wrong here. Maybe you're a super rap brain man and you can do it, you can pull it off. But I feel like haikus don't necessarily lend themselves to the types of rhythmic patterns that typically play over well in a lot of hip hop music. But hey, maybe there's a rapper or two out there with just nothing but haikus songs, and they fucking rule, or maybe they're garbage. I don't know. I'm sure if I type "haiku raps" into YouTube right now, they're where they exist. And yet there's not really a cell in my body that's saying, You know what? I have to do that. I have to hear this.

And there we have it. Thank you for reading. It's Anthony Fantano over here.

Anthony Fantano, I said my name already, YouTube forever.