To an extent it’s understandable. TOOL fans basically ruined TOOL for me, the fanbase is just fucking insufferable, but that doesn’t mean the band themselves make bad music or something. I personally think it just means for whatever reason it appeals to people who are desperate to find meaning in music, and so things that have obvious surface level “meaning” become things that are easy for that subset of fans to latch onto. So especially for classic rock a lot of the interpretation of meaning has already been done so you’re not having to puzzle it out the way you do an entirely new piece of music and that baseline “meaning” is appealing to some people.
I mean, it’s also the take of someone with a smidgen of education who isn’t deeply impressed by the philosophy or ideas that Maynard Keenan put forth in his lyrics. It doesn’t mean they’re bad, but it does mean they’re somewhat simplistic and not all that interesting, especially as you get older. So people who spend an inordinate amount of time praising it and acting like Maynard is like the coolest person alive for first year philosophy takes just seem like they’re overrating it to me. I know that makes me a bit of an elitist, but I mean, I don’t really care. I think stanning over any kind of celebrity whether it’s an artist or a movie star or movie director or fashion designer or whatever is foolish, and leads to a lot of unhealthy behaviors in our society. It’s a behavior that I can tie to actual negative social consequences, such as continuing to support an artist after it’s clear they are terrible (Chris Brown, for example, still has fans) which can lead groups of fans banning together and attacking innocents (Taylor Swift’s online army famously won’t stand for any criticism of her whatsoever without the critique being labeled “misogynist” by the fans). It can lead to genuine victims being dogpiled and abused by legions of fans. It’s just a behavior that I think leads to these negative outcomes when people put so much emphasis on a piece of art and who made it.
I had friends who were massive Tool fans, and all they spoke about was how great Tool was. Their fanboyism turned me away from Tool without even wanting to give it a proper try.
I wasn’t until years later when I no longer regularly saw those friends (we got old-er) that I ended up listening to it, and it turns out I really like them.
If it wasn’t for the annoying cult of Tool, I would have had the pleasure of enjoying them much sooner.
Well, if you inflate that “explanation” to everyone who says they don’t like the band, then you are obviously resorting to a strawman. It is in fact perfectly possible to not like them, not everyone has the same taste in music.
If I expanded that explanation to everyone, that would be silly. In no way am I proposing everyone has the same reason for disliking pink Floyd as my 10th grade friend. I do think some people feel like he did, though, about various things.
It was a few years back there is the group King Gizzard, the sub-reddit started to have a lot of tier lists for their albums because they had a decent back log by then and they spanned a wide range of genres. It was fascinating seeing how wildly different people ranked these albums. Some that many considered a classic would hit the D tier list on others. Very cool to see.
Some see Pink Floyd as S-tier, other could barely muster a D-tier. Just how it goes.
I’m not a huge fan of Pink Floyd, but Dark Side of the Moon is a really solid album all the way through. I could skip most of their catalog except for a few songs otherwise.
It doesn’t do anything for me at all. Pink Floyd has a couple of great songs, “Wish you were here” and some others which escapes me, but I just don’t enjoy any of their albums all the way through, too few songs on them that I like.
But I am making no judgement on their skill and the quality of the music, it is just not for me.
Oh no, you committed the cardinal sin of admitting to not liking Pink Floyd. We obviously can’t have that. It is an objective fact that everyone likes that band.
/s (obviously needed for the Pink Floyd fans here judging from your downvotes).
I’m one of those odd ducks who never cared all that much for Pink Floyd. I can hear the talent, but I found the music somewhat tedious.
Due to not caring for them much, I’ve run across people who actively hate them, and I heard this joke once:
I had a friend in high school who was always putting down pink Floyd. He’d say the lyrics were simple and the music was gimmicky.
Eventually, one day, I got out of him that the real source of his ire was he, quote, “didn’t want to be one of those kids who’s into pink Floyd”.
I think about this sometimes. He made up all these plausible sounding excuses, but the truth was something social that he was embarrassed to admit.
Granted, we were in 10th grade, but I think a lot of people still act that way.
Hopefully Tim’s doing good these days.
To an extent it’s understandable. TOOL fans basically ruined TOOL for me, the fanbase is just fucking insufferable, but that doesn’t mean the band themselves make bad music or something. I personally think it just means for whatever reason it appeals to people who are desperate to find meaning in music, and so things that have obvious surface level “meaning” become things that are easy for that subset of fans to latch onto. So especially for classic rock a lot of the interpretation of meaning has already been done so you’re not having to puzzle it out the way you do an entirely new piece of music and that baseline “meaning” is appealing to some people.
Isn’t this kind of a haters take? Painting those fans as desperate, idk.
I mean, it’s also the take of someone with a smidgen of education who isn’t deeply impressed by the philosophy or ideas that Maynard Keenan put forth in his lyrics. It doesn’t mean they’re bad, but it does mean they’re somewhat simplistic and not all that interesting, especially as you get older. So people who spend an inordinate amount of time praising it and acting like Maynard is like the coolest person alive for first year philosophy takes just seem like they’re overrating it to me. I know that makes me a bit of an elitist, but I mean, I don’t really care. I think stanning over any kind of celebrity whether it’s an artist or a movie star or movie director or fashion designer or whatever is foolish, and leads to a lot of unhealthy behaviors in our society. It’s a behavior that I can tie to actual negative social consequences, such as continuing to support an artist after it’s clear they are terrible (Chris Brown, for example, still has fans) which can lead groups of fans banning together and attacking innocents (Taylor Swift’s online army famously won’t stand for any criticism of her whatsoever without the critique being labeled “misogynist” by the fans). It can lead to genuine victims being dogpiled and abused by legions of fans. It’s just a behavior that I think leads to these negative outcomes when people put so much emphasis on a piece of art and who made it.
I had friends who were massive Tool fans, and all they spoke about was how great Tool was. Their fanboyism turned me away from Tool without even wanting to give it a proper try.
I wasn’t until years later when I no longer regularly saw those friends (we got old-er) that I ended up listening to it, and it turns out I really like them.
If it wasn’t for the annoying cult of Tool, I would have had the pleasure of enjoying them much sooner.
Well, if you inflate that “explanation” to everyone who says they don’t like the band, then you are obviously resorting to a strawman. It is in fact perfectly possible to not like them, not everyone has the same taste in music.
If I expanded that explanation to everyone, that would be silly. In no way am I proposing everyone has the same reason for disliking pink Floyd as my 10th grade friend. I do think some people feel like he did, though, about various things.
That’s cool, different tastes for different folk.
It was a few years back there is the group King Gizzard, the sub-reddit started to have a lot of tier lists for their albums because they had a decent back log by then and they spanned a wide range of genres. It was fascinating seeing how wildly different people ranked these albums. Some that many considered a classic would hit the D tier list on others. Very cool to see.
Some see Pink Floyd as S-tier, other could barely muster a D-tier. Just how it goes.
I’m not a huge fan of Pink Floyd, but Dark Side of the Moon is a really solid album all the way through. I could skip most of their catalog except for a few songs otherwise.
It doesn’t do anything for me at all. Pink Floyd has a couple of great songs, “Wish you were here” and some others which escapes me, but I just don’t enjoy any of their albums all the way through, too few songs on them that I like.
But I am making no judgement on their skill and the quality of the music, it is just not for me.
Oh no, you committed the cardinal sin of admitting to not liking Pink Floyd. We obviously can’t have that. It is an objective fact that everyone likes that band.
/s (obviously needed for the Pink Floyd fans here judging from your downvotes).