Arcade Fire: Album of the Year

First off, I'd like to give my congratulations to Arcade Fire for winning album of the year. It's always nice to see a good band get some well deserved recognition.

I really don't give two shits about the Grammys or any award show, but when something that's apparently underground (I had thought the band to be fairly mainstream, but I'll address that in a moment) wins over utter shit such as Lady Gaga, it brings a smile to my face. To me it says that some part of the music industry still cares about actual music, not just pop bullshit that sells. I think Eminem was a contender too, which I would have been okay with. Recovery was a pretty damn good album.

Which brings us to http://whoisarcadefire.tumblr.com/

What gets me is the reaction that has come as a result of this. For starters, you people care way too goddamn much. It's a fucking award show. I doubt any of the artists who lost care as much as you seem to.

You're not familiar with the band. Okay, that's cool. You're a purebred MTV clear-channel zombie. I don't expect you to know what real music is beyond the shitty overproduced pop you bend over backwards to receive. But to start a blog asking who the band is? Just google it, it's honestly not that hard. It makes you look like a simpleton.

But wow. Some of these posts are just baffling. Most people are incapable of even spelling the band's name correctly, and more seem to have the album name confused with the band itself.

It all comes down to opinion, of course, but the moron who said that Gaga is better needs to clean his fucking ears. I'll admit it, I actively avoid Lady Gaga like the plague that she is, so this might not be the most fair assessment of her, but since I'm not a fan of hers, why should I care? Lady Gaga is the absolute epitome of shitty pop. It's at least partly autotuned (which is a trend that really needs to go away), writes simplistic songs and uses shitty beats. My biggest quarrel with her though, is her fucking act. The woman honestly needs to get over herself. She is not unique, artsy, or any of the pseudo-bohemian intellectual shit that she claims. Want to fight that? Look at all the shit Madonna did sixty years ago when she was culturally relevant. Now look at Gaga. There's quuiiiiite a few similarities. Well, okay, Gaga made everything twelve times bigger so that people wouldn't notice, but whatever.

(Post writing the article side note: coming out of an egg? That's just fucking stupid.)

When you do things for the sake of doing them, it's almost always a waste. Something is unique when it's NOT ripping off what's done before and it's pretty good to actually make a point. Granted, it's fashion, but still. Get off your high horse and stop acting like you're this amazing fashionista goddess and go back to fantasizing about sucking off Worhol while Picasso jacks off in the corner.

Anyway. Back to the point. I was honestly surprised by how few people seemed to know about the band. I was under the impression that Arcade Fire was at least somewhat mainstream, I was almost certain that "The Suburbs" or "We Used To Wait" had good exposure. But still, people are up in arms about someone with actual musical talent winning an award. DEAR GOD NO! WE CAN'T HAVE THIS!! THE BRAINWASHED MASSES MIGHT WAKE UP AND STOP BUYING INTO THE EFFORTLESS SHIT WE SELL THEM!! (by the way, if you want to comment about how hard it is to make a top 40 hit, watch this: http://www.wimp.com/popsong/. It really is quite easy to make a pop song).

Sarcasm aside, one more post from the blog that struck a negative chord with me was the post that stated that the winner of album of the year should be known by everyone. By that logic, the quality of music has NOTHING to do with whether or not it deserves an award. To an extent, yes, something good will be exposed to a large number of people. But shitty pop gets far more exposure because it's what sells. Speaking in a strictly musical sense, those songs are not very good. Vocal talent is less than present with autotuning, and the beats are simplistic. I do get that market, even though I'm not a fan. People like simple music because it's catchy and they can dance to it.

However, popularity has nothing to do with how good music is. Hipsters take the opposite approach the aforementioned guy, in that the less people who know of an artist make that artist better. But both are wrong. The number of people who know of an artist and how good that artist is have NOTHING to do with one another. Music isn't some fucking popularity contest.

Anyway, to summarize, I'd like to congratulate the band again on the win. It's nice to see some integreity in what I perceive to be a dead industry. I think people are fucking stupid for hating a band simply because they're too brainwashed to have heard of them, but whatever.

If you want to check out Arcade Fire, start with Neon Bible. An absolutely amazing album. Suburbs is damn good too, but I'm usually a fan of chronology. And yes, I do know Neon Bible is the second album, but I'm not going to sit here and tell you to check out a bands entire discography to prepare for one album.