oh shit memoria!

i have not heard any of rihanna's shit but you were really one of the coolest guys ever so i will give it a try (i am trystero/steel btw).

Err thanks  ​  Currently my favorite Rihanna is "Lemme Get That" from her newest album.

hey is this the lipgloss girl?

No, I don't really like that song 

EDIT:  For those who don't like Rihanna, what is about her music that you don't like?

well for one thing she is not attractive hello bronze skin and too much makeup ick

She's pretty attractive.  Pictures from photo shoots always look a bit Photoshopped, though, because they are.

(though honestly I dont know who the fuck she is, but I'm sure I've heard her music on the hip hop/rnb station that everyone at work listens to cause they are so thugggg, and I can say truthfully that nothing that is played on that station has any musical merit for any of these reasons a) no real musicians b) the artists dont write their own songs c) the artists actually cant really sing and either use like pitch bending or 5 million fucking takes to get one perfect note/word/syllable *cough britney spears cough*)

a) What's a real musician?
b) Most of Horowitz's, Gould's, and Karajan's contributions to the music world have not been "composed" by them.  Bad artists?
c) Most famous singers can sing pretty well (I've heard Rihanna singing live before and given that there was choreography involved she did a good job), but hypothetically if she was a terrible singer and her recordings were extremely pieced together, does this even matter in the listening experience?

a) real musicians as in ones that are living and breathing and play instruments. everything in those horrible rap/rnb songs is synthesized

Her singing, whether you like it or not, is a crucial part of her music.  Separately, are synthesized timbres somehow musically invalid?  If so, why?

b) the people who wrote the songs that classical performers play were pretty fucking good at what they do. the people who write pop songs are not.

I was referring Horowitz, Gould, and Karajan.  Would you consider them artists even though their contributions were performances of works written by others?

c) yeah as of like 1999, any time after that, pop music stars are pretty much manufactured at least 80% of the time

The question still remains, does this even matter in the listening experience?  If so, why?

Synthesized instruments are great in conjunction with real instruments.

So Subotnick, Xenakis, Varese, and tons of others who wrote many pieces without any "real" instruments were misguided?

And they are also great when they are used to make music that is more complex than the random song you might hear on the radio, for example large sections of the album Bitches Brew have synthesizer, Joe Zawinul was a genius on the instrument, and his contribution to one of the greatest albums of the 20th century is massive. But when I hear a song that is composed of... a drum machine, something that sounds like a midi patch for bass, a random simple melody and some like random sound effects with someone singing pretty shittly over top of I am not excited.

Why is complexity necessary for good music?  Chopin's work is often beautifully simple.  Hell, the Beatles are often beautifully simple.  Or is it just that a piano or guitar playing something simple is okay but a Reason synth playing something simple isn't?

I would consider them artists because of the reason that I stated. They are artists because the music they interperate requires a) skill to play and b) the ability to memorize lengthy pieces of complicated music and play it in their own style (this is why people listen to different performers of the same piece, because no one plays it the same way twice)

It takes "skill" for both the songwriters/producers and performers of pop music to do what they do.  The songwriters/producers have to be able to know how to manipulate their instruments to get the sounds they want, just as any orchestral conductor or orchestral composer does (not to mention they need the skill to know what they're looking for in the first place).  I'm not afraid to make a value judgment, though, and there's no doubt in my mind that .  The performer, though, must lend his or her unique talent to the recording because they possess things timbrally that no one else has (and things that the songwriters/producers wrote for).  And they must have a command of these things to be effective.  You're greatly exaggerating the role the producer has in shaping the performer's performance.

EDIT:  I didn't realize I started a sentence that I didn't finish.  What I was going to say is that there's no doubt in my mind that typically performers in pop music have less intellectual input in the music than a classical soloist does (the reason being completely technological).  But regardless, they're a vital part of the creation of the music and thus should be considered as much artists as anyone sitting in an orchestra.

It matters in the listening experience because if I know the performance is fake or contrived I'm not going to enjoy it.

How is any sound "fake?"  Timbres are timbres, rhythm is rhythm, sound is sound; while listening you're projecting your extra-sensory ideas onto music that clearly isn't designed to cater to them, thus ruining a potentially enjoyable listening experience.  Having your mind open to extra-sensory or extra-musical ideas during the listening experience is not a bad thing (it's a really good thing, in fact) and is pretty much a staple of postmodernism, but imposing a set of extra-sensory prejudices onto music regardless of how the music itself demands that you listen is immature listening.

the umbrella song is dumb as fuck (umbarella ella ay ay ay) but i have nothing against rihanna in general

I actually didn't like it at first and initially preferred the other ones I mentioned.  I had heard it a million times, too, but over the past week or so it's sunken in more than the others (it has more shelf life, imo).

@Memoria: I give pop/r&b singers credit for being able to dance around on stage and still sing. I personally don't like the music but it does take skill to be able to remember lengthy coreographed pieces and sing at the same time. But as a musician, this type of music does not musically stimulate me. I'm not saying "Lol, Rihanna isn't s00pers teksnikal!!!", no, I just don't like it. I'd rather listen to Meshuggah (thats right) or Frank Gambale. But that doesn't mean you can't listen to Rihanna. If you like her music, then by all means, listen to it. Its your right.

@Memoria: I give pop/r&b singers credit for being able to dance around on stage and still sing. I personally don't like the music but it does take skill to be able to remember lengthy coreographed pieces and sing at the same time. But as a musician, this type of music does not musically stimulate me. I'm not saying "Lol, Rihanna isn't s00pers teksnikal!!!", no, I just don't like it. I'd rather listen to Meshuggah (thats right) or Frank Gambale. But that doesn't mean you can't listen to Rihanna. If you like her music, then by all means, listen to it. Its your right.

That's fine; nobody digs everything.  I personally don't like much jazz; "Bitches Brew" is the only jazz recording I've heard that has strongly resonated with me.  The problem is when you begin thinking of it as an objective value judgment.

I hate her music... and even if she is hot, what the hell does that do? It doesn't change her music.

It doesn't affect her music when you're only listening to it (as in, CD, *.mp3, etc.)  But live pop music and pop music on TV is usually extended into an audio-visual experience, so in those situations it should be experienced as such (so of course in that context her attractiveness plays a role).  Personally, I'm not terribly sensitive to the visual aspect of pop music when it's present, just because nearly all other music I listen to doesn't incorporate visuals, so I just get used to not having to pay attention to them. 

Memoria, producing a pop record that uses pretty only synths is a lot more easy than say recording a whole frickin' orchestra or a 6 piece band and such. Also, most producers have a huge role dude.

They're both easier and difficult in their own unique ways.  Recording an orchestra is obviously harder logistically (and might cost more), but then again the pieces are already written, the timbres are already created, and I'm sure that to a large extent the recording practice has been standardized.  Recording a pop album is easier logistically and probably cheaper, but it requires different production skills and the music has to be written.  I don't think one or the other is necessarily harder.  Still, though, this entire point of discussion is irrelevant to the value of the music.

And I don't doubt that producers have a huge role, but Wash Cycle makes it sound like they ask the performer to go into the recording booth, recite the Gettysburg Address, and then somehow turn that audio into a track like "Umbrella."  All I'm saying is that without the unique talent of the performer, there is no record.

One thing I really hate about pop music now is the drums. They'll often actually use REAL drummers but then they run it through programs like Drumagog and such. People prefer a drum that sounds completely synthetic. And the thing is that it just sounds completely like a fake drum. I don't mind artists/musician using drum programming but please make it sound good (like The Fall Of Every Season has a great sounding drum even though it's fake)

This is just a simple matter of timbral taste.  Processed or synthesized drums simply have a different feel than acoustic drums and a lot of people like it.  It's not really an issue of "fake" or "real"; timbres are just timbres.  I bet someone like Leadbelly would think that distorted guitars sound "fake."  I personally think that real drums would ruin a lot of great pop tracks and sound very out of place, but again it's just taste.

Man, and she probably doesn't even have anything to do with her music.  Does she even write hers?  I'm not claiming for sure she doesn't, but I want to ask since it's dumb to argue her musical talent if she doesn't even do any of her own work.

Have you been reading the thread?  This has already been covered.

In general:  Seriously, all this talk about how hard such-and-such is and how much skill so-and-so has is all completely irrelevant.  Technical skill is a means to an end, the end being in this case music.  A piano player needs to be technically skilled to play a Liszt concerto because that's the only way to make that music a reality.  Likewise, a rap producer needs to be adept at using Reason and/or other musical software because those means are the only way to make his music a reality; he doesn't need to be a virtuoso guitarist because his music doesn't require it.  Criticizing music based on the means by which it was created is stupid; it's like criticizing a book because the author is a slow typist.  So, even if Timbaland produced Justin Timberlake's entire last album by manipulating a recording of Justin reciting the ABCs, does it really make a difference?  The important thing is the end product.  Even discussion about how involved a person needs to be to be considered an artist is ultimately useless because it says nothing about the music; it only serves to boost or break someone's ego (and why be concerned with something like that?).  I asked for reasons why some people don't like her music and so far there's been hardly any comments actually about her music.