Is this for real?!

[I. Spaceman]

One fan's taste may not say much.  Lots of fans saying the same thing?  More informative.

Exactly why sales are objective, the consensus of individual's subjective taste.  You guys don't really think you speak for the entire Pop appreciating public do you? You keep harping on your personal taste.

Cam, it ain't about taste. It's about facts. Pop is a form of music. That isn't opinion.
From Princeton's word.net definition site:
pop music, pop (music of general appeal to teenagers; a bland watered-down version of rock'n'roll with more rhythm and harmony and an emphasis on romantic love)

Hmm, sounds like EXACTLY what I defined it as, right?


OK? It's a form of music, whether it sells or not.
Cam, what's a better pop album, going just by what happened in one year, Party or Pet Sounds? I want your opinion.

[I. Spaceman]

Sales are the only thing that we can use to objectively judge a record, though.  Since the "goodness" and "quality" of a recording will always be mostly subjective, if an objective judgement of a record is needed, we have to go to sales.  So, going by that, in a sense one could say Mike was the best lyric writer for the BB.  Best at facilitating moving units, at least, and again, that's all we have that is indisputable.

I can't do that.  One of my favorite albums ever is Village Green Preservation Society.  In its first run it didn't make the Top 200 and sold less than 50,000 copies.  I think Sunflower outperformed it.  And so are we to say that on sales it is one of the Kinks' worst?  Or for that matter, is Sunflower one of the Beach Boys' worst?


Sales may be "objective" in that it is measurable, but it tells you NOTHING about how good a record really is.  And so what if there is no objective measure?  You like what you like, and that's all that matters.

Jeff, do you sometimes wonder why we even post here, considering the mentalities we come up against?

[Sheriff John Stone]

If talking about the Beach Boys, I like them because I'm a weenie. One look at my avatar will tell you this.

rb,
   Is your avatar a picture of Mitch Miller? If it is, or if it isn't, do you know he's still alive? He'll be 94 years old in a few weeks! Sing along with Mitch...

[rb]

If talking about the Beach Boys, I like them because I'm a weenie. One look at my avatar will tell you this.

rb,
   Is your avatar a picture of Mitch Miller? If it is, or if it isn't, do you know he's still alive? He'll be 94 years old in a few weeks! Sing along with Mitch...

Hell yes, SJS - it is indeed. A picture of him circa 1969, when he was into peace and love and such. I wonder if he still conducts? I also wonder if he is still continent?

[I. Spaceman]

So, Mr. Aeijtzsche and Mr. Spaceman - do you guys like:

1. The Girl From New York City
2. Amusement Parks U.S.A.
3. Then I Kissed Her
4. Salt Lake City

?

People usually use those songs as a way to put down 'Summer Days(And Summer Nights!!)'

Hate Then I Kissed Her with a passion. Love the others, dig the sax-bass groove of Girl, the carnival-seasick vibe of Parks, and the fantasia of sound combinations that is Salt Lake.

[RickD]

  If the BBs are one of the greatest Pop groups of all time and their songs are among the best Pop songs of all time and most of their best have lyrics by Mike then it seems to me he is certifiably [not subjectively] one of the greatest Pop lyricists [not to mention vocalists] of all time. 

THAT has to be one of the best lines I've ever read on any message board. ROTFLMAO.

[Cam Mott]

THAT has to be one of the best lines I've ever read on any message board. ROTFLMAO.

THAT has to be one of the best lines I've ever read on any message board. ROTFLMAO.

[Cam Mott]

One fan's taste may not say much.  Lots of fans saying the same thing?  More informative.

Exactly why sales are objective, the consensus of individual's subjective taste.  You guys don't really think you speak for the entire Pop appreciating public do you? You keep harping on your personal taste.

Cam, it ain't about taste. It's about facts. Pop is a form of music. That isn't opinion.
From Princeton's word.net definition site:
pop music, pop (music of general appeal to teenagers; a bland watered-down version of rock'n'roll with more rhythm and harmony and an emphasis on romantic love)

Hmm, sounds like EXACTLY what I defined it as, right?


OK? It's a form of music, whether it sells or not.
Cam, what's a better pop album, going just by what happened in one year, Party or Pet Sounds? I want your opinion.

I think you missed the point Ian.

Josh, "do you sometimes wonder why we even post here, considering the mentalities we come up against?" [overly dramatic sigh]

[Jeff Mason]

Ian, I feel your pain.

And Cam seems to have admitted by omission that You Light Up My Life is one of the best records ever made, better than any Beatles or Beach Boys record. 

Ugh.

[Cam Mott]

Ian, I feel your pain.

And Cam seems to have admitted by omission that You Light Up My Life is one of the best records ever made, better than any Beatles or Beach Boys record. 

Ugh.

I know everyone is sooooo curious about my personal taste  but Jeff, I think you missed the point too.

[Jeff Mason]

Then what IS the point, if you aren't saying "record sales is the best measurement of record quality?"  Because that's what you are communicating to me for all the world...

[Dan Lega]

     It's easy to come up with a scenario that proves you can't judge a song's worth based solely on it's sales.  Imagine if Brian had written a song back in the sixties that he never played for anyone.  Finally he brings you into his home and says, "Listen to this!"  You hear it and you think it's the greatest song you've ever heard.  He gives you a copy telling you that you can never let anyone else hear it.  So for the rest of your life you get to listen to this song over and over, and you never get tired of it and you never get over the feeling that this is the best song you've ever heard.  However, no one else has ever heard it, it never appeared on any charts, and it never sold a single copy.  Does that mean you have to say to yourself that there is no possible way this could be the greatest song ever written?

     Sales and chart action are definitely things that can be helpful in some cases, but they can't possibly be the final word because things like promotion, and radio playlists, and availability for purchase are things that are not uniformly equal across the whole spectrum of music.

     I believe SMiLE would have sold better in its first week of release if there had been more copies of it in shops.  I think it may have charted much closer to number one for the week if that had happened.  (It was number one at Amazon.com in it's first week, wasn't it?)  It charted where it charted though, but because it didn't chart higher doesn't mean it's any less good than it is. 

     "Mony, Mony" never got a bit of airplay when it was first released.  A couple of years later some disc jockey starts playing it, and eventually it becomes a big hit.  The song didn't physically change over those years from when it was first released until it became a hit.  The only thing that changed was that someone in power liked it and promoted it. 

      The lesson in all this: all things are not equal in record promotion, therefore you can't base artistic conclusions only on sales and chart action.

     Love and merci,   Dan Lega

[No. Fourteen]

     It's easy to come up with a scenario that proves you can't judge a song's worth based solely on it's sales.  Imagine if Brian had written a song back in the sixties that he never played for anyone.  Finally he brings you into his home and says, "Listen to this!"  You hear it and you think it's the greatest song you've ever heard.  He gives you a copy telling you that you can never let anyone else hear it.  So for the rest of your life you get to listen to this song over and over, and you never get tired of it and you never get over the feeling that this is the best song you've ever heard.  However, no one else has ever heard it, it never appeared on any charts, and it never sold a single copy.  Does that mean you have to say to yourself that there is no possible way this could be the greatest song ever written?

     Sales and chart action are definitely things that can be helpful in some cases, but they can't possibly be the final word because things like promotion, and radio playlists, and availability for purchase are things that are not uniformly equal across the whole spectrum of music.

     I believe SMiLE would have sold better in its first week of release if there had been more copies of it in shops.  I think it may have charted much closer to number one for the week if that had happened.  (It was number one at Amazon.com in it's first week, wasn't it?)  It charted where it charted though, but because it didn't chart higher doesn't mean it's any less good than it is. 

     "Mony, Mony" never got a bit of airplay when it was first released.  A couple of years later some disc jockey starts playing it, and eventually it becomes a big hit.  The song didn't physically change over those years from when it was first released until it became a hit.  The only thing that changed was that someone in power liked it and promoted it. 
      The lesson in all this: all things are not equal in record promotion, therefore you can't base artistic conclusions only on sales and chart action.

     Love and merci,   Dan Lega

Wasn't that "Hanky Panky"?

[Aegir]

That happens with lots of songs.. "Get Together" by the Youngbloods is another.

And I find it really hard to believe that Cam & co actually think that sales have anything to do with whether or not a song is good. What about a great song that a band only plays live but never bothered recording? Is "Denny's Drums" a better song than "You Are So Beautiful" just because the former had more commercial sucess? Don't be ridiculous. A great orchestra that hardly ever records is automatically deemed much worse than The Backstreet Boys?

Or how about this: Sure, the Beach Boys sold alot in the 60s, but those same songs don't sell nearly as well now. Are the songs themselves losing quality? No, of course not.

[Jeff Mason]

I think Cam has a high level of faith in the discrimination of the record buyer. If a song is "good", it will attract a large number of buyers and that will verify its quality.  Sometimes this works, a la Good Vibrations.  But most people consider River Deep Mountain High to be Spector's ultimate song, and it stiffed.

The modern music scene proves two things to me:

1) the average music buyers are lemmings with poor taste, and the number of people buying, say, a Mariah Carey album is not a sufficient criteria for quality (since that only proves that they can be convinced to buy something and stow it away after one listen), and

2) Payola lives.  Sales get skewed when you consider how pop gets marketed.  Many great bands never have a prayer of getting heard.  Or consider how, whatever else you may think of American Idol, they go through a season playing songs that were proven standards in general, then for the big finale they bring up brand new schlock that reeks to high heaven.  And somehow it sells despite its obvious lack of quality.

I am happy for my favorite musicians when they have hits.  I do not think of my tastes as invalid if their albums should fail and I like it anyway.

Or consider this:  Village Green stiffed.  People today revere it and it sells better now than then.  How many people listen today to You Light Up My Life?  30 years later, sales are a meaningless criteria for judgment.  Now, we have to evaluate something about how it impacts us now.  The former work clearly still matters, the latter one is a historical curio.

[I. Spaceman]

Great post, as always, Jeff. Nailed it.
The three biggest acts of the early 70's, the bands that played stadium shows, were Three Dog Night, The Osmonds and Grand Funk Railroad. Where are their places in ANY published or filmed history of rock and roll. You won't see them mentioned anywhere. Who is mentioned? Bands like The Velvet Underground, MC5, Stooges and New York Dolls, who sold nearly no copies when they were around. History and critical consensus are far greater objective judges than chart statistics.

[Dancing Bear]

History and critical consensus are far greater objective judges than chart statistics.

Not when you're talking about the Monkees... 

[I. Spaceman]

History and critical consensus are far greater objective judges than chart statistics.

Not when you're talking about the Monkees... 

Well, you know, there are box sets, and many, many great musicians have hailed them. There's a general lack of serious scholarship, but how many other bands have an exhaustive day-by-day almanac about them? Beatles, Beach Boys, Elvis, Stones, Kinks, not many others.

[Jeff Mason]

Give it another 10 years -- I think that you will find an ever greater appreciation of the music once the baby boomers are all gone.  Within a few subgroups of music fans the Monkees already rule.

[Aegir]

How morbid.

[endofposts]

Three Dog Night and The Osmonds played stadium shows?  I did not know that.

[Cam Mott]

Sheep, pay attention, we are being told what is really good. Take notes.

It seems ironic to have elitism used as a standard for a populist genre; not to mention some of us seem awful full of ourselves while being awfully dismissive of the "sheep".

Promotion is over-credited in my opinion, used as an excuse mainly.  Promotion is supposedly all powerful yet bands with tons of it and buzz and payola and momentum on top still have songs tank regularly, one example is RD,MH for instance.  Bands with none of it have songs that catch. It might just be that the sheep judge each song critically and on its merit and by how artfully it moves them regardless of what they are told to like. It seems to me history and critical consensus IS the judge and jury in Pop Music, quantified in chart statistics. The consensus from the BBS heyday seems especially meanful to me since their was not all the compartmentalization of today and lots of genre were going toe to toe in the same marketplace.

[I. Spaceman]

Cam, what the HELL are you talking about? That is some seriously incomprehensible mumbo-jumbo.
WHy have you not addressed any of the points me, Jeff or the others ( who number pretty much everybody except yourself) have made. There's confusion on your "point" because it is simply incomprehensible. "Elitism"? You're on a fodaing Beach Boys board, dude. You're preaching to the converted. We are here now because of the CRITICAL groundswell of Pet Sounds appreciation, not because of charts, and not because of Endless Summer. Get your facts straight, man, and stop confronting people who know what they're talking about.
The "elite", as you call them and which you number among whether you like it or not, were responsible for BWPS's release. We forced him to do it because we couldn't stop asking him about the damn thing.
So who are you baiting and why, exactly? Is You Light Up My Life better than This Whole World? Is Party better than Pet Sounds? Answer the damn question and stop evading the real issue, which is clarifying what the hell you mean. We don't get it.

[Jeff Mason]

Sheep, pay attention, we are being told what is really good. Take notes.

It seems ironic to have elitism used as a standard for a populist genre; not to mention some of us seem awful full of ourselves while being awfully dismissive of the "sheep".

Promotion is over-credited in my opinion, used as an excuse mainly.  Promotion is supposedly all powerful yet bands with tons of it and buzz and payola and momentum on top still have songs tank regularly, one example is RD,MH for instance.  Bands with none of it have songs that catch. It might just be that the sheep judge each song critically and on its merit and by how artfully it moves them regardless of what they are told to like. It seems to me history and critical consensus IS the judge and jury in Pop Music, quantified in chart statistics. The consensus from the BBS heyday seems especially meanful to me since their was not all the compartmentalization of today and lots of genre were going toe to toe in the same marketplace.

Explain to me again how this logic doesn't mean that You Light Up My Life isn't the greatest song ever done in the 1970's.  And explain to me why I should care what the charts said about a record 30 or 40 years ago.  And explain to me why Wild Honey, an album with nothing but Mike Love lyrics, underperformed Pet Sounds if Love is a better lyricist than Asher and sales mean everything.

I am not saying anything about what you SHOULD like or being elitist.  I am only saying this:  people still rave over music that sold nothing 40 years later, while some of the biggest hits ever have sunk into obscurity today.  The Osmonds were the biggest pop act from 1971-1973.  How many songs of theirs can YOU name?  How about Grand Funk?  Are there other acts from the same time frame you like better?  If so, why do you ignore the pop consensus that says that the Osmonds made the best music of the early 70's?

(said with a grain of salt, as we all know that the Crazy Horses album RULES!)

You don't have to be an elitest to know that bad songs make it to number one.  REALLY bad songs. REALLY REALLY bad songs.

[I. Spaceman]

Didn't you get the memo, Jeff? I'm Too Sexy and Rock Me Amadeus were two of the greatest songs ever written! They have to be, they were at #1 for about 3000 weeks!