Laughing Man

from one genderfluid individual to another, I'm really happy for you!

Put me down as a "Probably". I'll get you a more definitive answer tonight.

#same

Definitive yes

#same

no, they're all just booklets because I couldn't take pictures of the cases without getting a lot of glare and reflection

now, with my Opeth and Katatonia collections, those are mostly digipaks and digibooks

edit: switched out the image to avoid further confusion

act in a tragedy stage play with Krekka

(though i wouldn't really say that they're necessarily going mainstream and tuning their music for popularity than passion because they made a track for a movie, unless they themselves said something to that effect in an interview).

oh, no, that was just the latest in a fairly long line of steps toward the mainstream. their last album, Heartthrob, was about as slick and commercial a pop album as you can find (though still good) and had a hit pop radio single in "Closer", which even ended up being performed on Glee. they started performing with people like Taylor Swift, began signing numerous merchandising and advertising deals, their CDs started showing up in places like Walmart, and now this. 5 years ago I don't think they would've even considered doing a silly nonsensical song for a kids' movie or collaborating with The Lonely Island of all people.

I think the thing that bothers me the most about "Everything Is Awesome" is that it's on its way to becoming the most popular and well-known thing that Tegan and Sara have done. sure, it'll introduce new fans to them, but having been a fan of their music for years now it pains me to see a song like that become the thing they're most known for, to see them become "the band that did that song for the Lego movie" in the eyes of the public.

as a side note, they did literally state that their last album was a conscious effort to go mainstream, with album sales and venue sizes being among their primary considerations when working on it.

Markiplier was a great alternative to PewDiePie until he started trying to act like him

I've got nothing against pop usually, I enjoy a ton of poppy music. Tegan and Sara have always had a bit of a pop element to their music as well, and like I said before, I really enjoyed their latest album which was basically full-on synthpop.

I'm just disappointed with the career path they appear to have decided to take since. it doesn't do them or their image justice.

Ugh. I'd never heard of the two before, but apparently them doing something that increases their exposure so that folks like me learn about them amounts to "selling out". Just a reminder of why I hate so much of music culture.

I like how you felt the need to get all indignant over the opinion of a long-time fan of a band you know nothing about based on a statement that was tongue-in-cheek to begin with.

but no, it's more like they've made a conscious decision to transition from a respected indie rock band to a radio dance-pop band without any of the depth that drew people to them in the first place, culminating in a terrible collaboration with one of the worst musical acts of the last 5 years for the theme song to a Hollywood children's movie.

it's not even so much their newfound mainstream popularity or their current musical style that disappoints me (I really liked their latest album and I like a lot of artists who have very similar sounds, such as Chvrches who released my second-favorite album of 2013), it's how far they've deviated from the skills they spent over a decade honing, how blatantly they've given up their roots, and the way they've alienated a large amount of their original fanbase in the process.

I honestly still like them a lot (although I hate this stupid song) but I wish they resembled the same band that released some of my favorite albums like The Con and weren't on their way to becoming just another in a sea of artists trying their hardest to be the Next Big Thing™.

again, I'll concede that it could potentially go down as a classic in animation, but I don't even have to see it in order to be certain that in 10 years it will not be mentioned in the same breath as Citizen Kane or 2001: A Space Odyssey by anyone who has objectively studied overall cinema as a form of art. it may go "above and beyond" what it takes to be a great film, but that does not make it a classic film.

I'm not telling you what to think about it, either - if you absolutely love it, awesome, if it's one of your favorite films ever, that's great (heck, I don't even consider many classic films to be among my favorites, but nor do I consider many of my favorites to be among classic films), just don't make weighted claims and insist that that they will soon be accepted as fact by everyone.

so far, the Lego fandom seems to be the only ones who think so. critics (mostly) love it, sure, but the only place I've seen anybody basically putting it on the same pedestal as films like 2001: A Space Odyssey or Casablanca is within the fandom. maybe it'll come to be considered a classic in animation, but not as one of the single greatest cinematic features of all time.

there are classes devoted to objectively studying film as an art form, and I do not see The Lego Movie being a topic that will come up in that context, ever.

"It's an amazing movie" is an opinion. "It is a classic film that will be counted among the all-time cinematic masterpieces" is not, it's an incredibly weighted claim, and if you've actually seen many movies that are considered classic, or even iconic for their era, I highly doubt you'd count The Lego Movie of all things among them.

if you honestly believe that The Lego Movie is going to go down in history as one of the all-time cinematic greats, you really need to watch more movies.

it'll be a fan-favorite, yeah, but it's nowhere near a classic film.

better than my "fuzzy tree meepers".

First though, fun fact: punk band Versailles broke up in 1993. Two of its members became Daft Punk. The other four are the French alternative rock band known as Phoenix.

that's not quite what I've always heard, and it's not what I'm finding online right now either. the band was called Darlin', Versailles was their hometown, and only one member of Phoenix - guitarist Laurent Brancowitz - was in it, not all four.

a bit late, but if you haven't heard it already, def check out the album Climax by Beastmilk. it's some super good post-punk/gothic rock, kind of like a mixture of Joy Division and Disintegration-era Cure (in atmosphere, mostly) while also doin its own thing really well. I caught it late because it was released at the end of November and I didn't hear it until a week or so ago, but I'm already thinking of revising my own AotY list to include it.

(good picks btw, although I'm a bit disappointed to see Sunbather and One of Us Is the Killer didn't make it higher on your list)

sign me up for friday if there's room.

yup

JfaC is still pretty trendy but the others are good starts I guess.

idk I just think you should expand your horizons a bit beyond mainstream and/or generic metal subgenres typically ending in the suffix "-core"

Fear Factory's a good start for that sort of thing incidentally

so many snarky elitist remarks I could make about this entry but I'm going to refrain and just say that "Powershifter" is a great song and Fear Factory are a legendary band so props for that

pretty much all of those examples that TN05 mentioned - as well as most of the other issues mentioned in both the entry itself and the preceding comments - are feminist issues. pretty much all of them have their roots in society's attitude towards women. pretty much all of them could potentially be helped or even solved by feminism. the problem isn't that feminism doesn't work, it's that people are either too ignorant or just plain-old-sexist to let it work.

yeah

classic song. still have heard weirder though.

pff, I've heard weirder.