What Do We Expect From Artists?

[Suicane75]

Reading the NIN thread it makes me wonder, does the complete lack of anything near as good as TDS from Reznor negate what you think of him as an artist? I've never listened to a NIN album but that song and the image he created from that album to me are just amazing. Same thing goes with an artist like Tori Amos, never got into her after Little Earthquakes but that album to me is just so damn good that I consider her to be an amazing musician/creative person even if I havn't liked much of anything since LE.
It's early, im tired, did that make sense?

[Ksyrup]

In dealing with the aftermath of Metallica's descent from AJFA to TBA to Load, I came to the realization (as I got older and saw my own musical tastes change) that I can be a fan of an artist, or I can be a fan of a particular album(s) or style of an artist. As a result, I've gotten away from automatically calling a band sellouts when they change their style. I just recognize that I'm not a fan of the band, but of a certain set of albums or an older style.

With NIN, industrial rock always was a limited subgenre to begin with, but NIN did it well for about 5 years. Now that Reznor is 10-15 years older and has decided to temper his angst musically, I find that it just doesn't work. Industrial needs to go full-out or it loses its edge and is plain boring. That's the new album in a nutshell.

With Tori Amos, I agree with you, and I'd add the second album as well. I still like her, but she went away from what initially drew me to her (piano-driven solo songs) to a full band, and got either too crazy for me (Boys for Pele) or too undistinguished adult/contemporary (anything after Choirgirl).

Then, there are bands who I am, and always will be, a fan of. King's X sounds remarkably different than they did in 1988, yet I still love everything they do. Thought Industry is another onee - they went from whacked-out progressive thrash to shimmering, non-metallic prog rock over the course of 6 albums, and I loved every one of them.

I guess what I expect from an artist varies on the artist. Depending on what I thinnk of them, I'll either embrace anything they do with an open mind, or I'll be disappointed when they don't live up to what I think are their strengths. I loved Corrosion of Conformity's Blind; since then, I've been disappointed by each of their Skynyrd-meets-Metallica releases - that's just not what I want to hear from them. I'm sure a lot of Weezer fans are struggling with a song like Beverly Hills when compared with the Blue Album - some of them will take the band as they are and enjoy the new release; others will call it trash. Just the way it goes, depending on the mindset of the listener. That's why bands should never make music for anyone but themselves, because they aren't going to please everybody no matter what they do.



I think Reznor is in a no-win situation. When you build your career on angst, it's awfully hard to keep that up 10-15 years and millions of dollars later. It just doesn't translate as well. To me, his biggest problem is that he's trying to stick with the formula that made him successful to begin with, but temper it with some new-found pop sensabilities. The result, though, is awful. It just doesn't work. There's a reason why industrial rock went away a decade ago, and he's just proven the limitations of the subgenre - unless you're going to go full-out, it doesn't work.

He's doing what he knows how to do, so I can't fault him for not completely scrapping that and doing something entirely foreign to him. That said, the new album is terrible on its own - not in comparison to previous efforts.

[JonInMiddleGA]

I think Ksyrup hits it pretty well, you can be a fan of the artist or a fan of their work in a particular style/vein/genre.

Off-hand, I'd say that there's an extremely limited number of artists who are the former (for me) and the incredibly vast majority are the latter.

I think the best example of just how rare it is for me to be able to deal with truly anything that an artist does would be Scorpions Eye To Eye. I'm hard pressed to name a band that I enjoyed more, or more of, over the past 20 years, but that was truly one of the most disappointing & unlistenable pieces of crap I've heard in my life.