😤 LET’S ARGUE! 😤 (June 2021 Thread)

Thoughts on the new Liz Phair album?

Señor C

When Nick Cave doubled down on doing shows in Israel after Roger Waters and Palestinian rights activists asked him to cancel them, in essence out of spite for what he believed was Roger Waters' "bullying", that was truly his lowest moment and I can't imagine a close second.

Sean L Byrne

Hot take: Origin of Symmetry XX is produced cleaner and more instrumentally interesting than the original 2001 release. Highly recommend checking it out if you haven’t.

Andrew Shaktah

Early 2000s Eminem was a better Hiphop antihero/villain than MF Doom.

Isaac Myers

Hot Take: The “Pork and Beans” music video is the only YouTube rewind we will ever need.

Alex Alcalde

This is a bit of a weird one but, I was wondering what it’s like for you to experience music. Specifically music you like. I got to thinking about this because you’ve said you don’t enjoy fiction because you have trouble imagining it; I am the exact opposite and that’s true of music too. Oftentimes when I love a piece of music I’ll start imagining things like a music video or the opening of a movie to it, along with the usual things like feeling the groove and whatnot. Thanks Melon!

Kristin Maccarrone

Do you think an album has to of influenced future music to be considered a classic

Michael mantinaos

What would you say was the worst year for music?

Ryan The Great

maybe. it'd have to be a very broad one to make it fair tho; maybe a repeat of one we've done already

The Needle Drop

Weird Al is funny and novelty but this shouldn't take away from the fact that his original tracks are bops. Songs like Dare To Be Stupid are very well written and the track Nature Trail To Hell is a masterpiece. I honestly think the word "Novelty" in general takes away from a lot of genuinely interesting qualities of so called "novelty" music. I mean, look at Ween.

Sid Mullendore

I don’t know if necessarily agree but I really liked this take

Jackson Moeller

I feel like Broadcast doesn’t get enough credit for their influence on modern noise pop

TraJay

Led Zeppelin is in an interesting position when it comes to plagiarism. On one hand, they absolutely should have given credit to the musicians of whom they took music from. However, to simply label the band as thieves I think is not an accurate description since the songs they took from sound absolutely nothing like the originals minus the lyrical elements. I'm not saying they didn't steal, I'm just saying its not that cut and dry.

The Patrons deserve a themed Let’s Argue

Drake Parker

What do you think of the Parannoul album ? I think there are some great songs that are unfortunately ruined by bad mixing and vocals. And the tracks could've been cut short. Still an impressive album for something made up entirely of VSTs.

po gal

People who read/watch/listen to album reviews fail to take into account that though there may be banging hit singles, cohesively as an album, the artist may fall a few points. How much do hit singles factor into the overall album review/score for you Anthony?

I feel like some people take their taste too seriously sometimes. Sometimes a song from a musical standpoint may be "bad" but if its funny or I just had a good time listening to it its a good song. Like every time I listen to Kanye's "Nah Nah Nah" or yachtys "Bring It Back" I have a pretty good time, therefore they are good songs to at least a certain extent. This may sound stupid but I feel like that's a good way to approach music

Riley Schmedeman

A lot of Bob Dylan’s more “abstract”/“weird” lyrics, on albums like Blonde On Blonde, Bringing It Back Home, and especially Return To Highway 66 just sound bad to me. For every brilliant line like “the geometry of innocent flesh on the bone” you get a bunch of sophomore-in-college-attempting-to-sound-deep crap weighing it down Songs like Hard Rain or Chimes of Freedom prove he can make incredible imagery that isn’t necessarily tied to a narrative but albums like the above really strike me as Bob buying into his own hype and making songs that prove how clever he is through endless references.

Dave Mustaine and Kanye West are similar in that both of their music would benefit greatly by them not being the primary vocalist.

Callahan Hirrel

Audiences have no tolerance for electronic music and it's genuinely disappointing. The deep EDM scene is pioneering production styles that could easily be translated into some of the best forward thinking music, but until it has vocals it's discounted entirely. E.g: Moore Kismet, Voltra, Refraq, Hudson Lee, or Leotrix

Cya

You have cool glasses

"Judas and the black Messias the inspirad album is an amazing album is an amazing álbum, maybe the best hip hop álbum of 2021 for now

Blu is a top 30 rapper

GKMC is kinda mid. I really like the concept and flow of the album, but a lot of the songs' hooks are pretty bad, especially money trees and poetic justice, which sound exactly the same and are right next to each other on the track list. I like the concept of the album, but a lot of the music itself doesn't do much for me. One of the rare cases of substance over style, I guess.

ahahhhaaa

"Let's Argue" is probably the most influential thing you've done. I've seen everyone from book reviewers to gaming and anime channels doing their own version of "reading your hot takes" or whatever, and from what I can tell, you're the guy who came up with that.

ahahhhaaa

Bo Burnham made comedy music a legitimate genre to take seriously with the Inside album and you should talk about it

I feel like I don't see a lot of people talk about public enemy as much as they should and that is a damn shame because they were one of the best hip hop acts in the 80s and 90s and Chuck D has one of the most iconic voices in hip hop full stop, and Fear of a Black Planet is a classic album

Adam mezzarone

Nobody talks about how Oasis's Definitely Maybe may have been the very first mainstream shoegaze album ever. While not having any of the vacuum noises that were present on Loveless, songs like Columbia and Shakermaker have lots of the tropes that went onto define shoegaze, like the absolutely giant walls of sound made of washed out guitars, Liam's wailing vocals, and the repetitive outros. I'm not saying it's Loveless, or that it's pure shoegaze, but it is kind of hard to deny the presence of those sounds on most of the songs on the album.

sebastian garcia

For better or for worse, Mac Demarco is the most influential rock musician of the 2010s and a top ten most influential artist in general of the 2010s. Just think about the absolute vast amount of indie rock musicians that pretty much completely rip off his sound constantly. Artists like Vacations, Alfie Templeman, and Boy Pablo, and even moments on Tyler the Creator's Flower Boy have very clear Mac Demarco influence. It is insanely hard to imagine the indie rock scene without him, when you ask any young person how basic indie rock sounds, they'll always say Mac Demarco.

sebastian garcia

Soundtracks for the Blind is the best album title ever. It makes listeners wonder if this album really was supposed to be a soundtrack to a non-existent movie or was this album titled just like that without a deeper context. Also, this title inspires people to imagine scenes fitting to the music and the lyrics during listening experience so everyone has its own view on what this album really is about.

As much as I enjoy Jesus Is King, Kanye is snubbing awards from actual gospel artists and albums. The only reason kanye is winning so many “best gospel album” awards is because everyone knows who Kanye is. No sane Christian church is gonna have their choir sing On God

Drake Parker

Not even a let's argue just please review my favorite artist, World's End Girlfriend. Please Melon I love them and nobody has heard of them

Too many people conflate “under-appreciated” and “underrated.” No dude, VU&N is not an underrated album just because your co-workers haven’t heard of it.

dkore

Thoughts on the new Bo Burnham special?

Wheres the stream melon boi?

Jackson

Aaliyah would’ve had a grander career than Beyoncé

Drake Parker

Absolutely not, tigers are waaayy more rare and majestic than cows. Tigers are bordering on endangered. Sorry cows, still luv you

Jackson

MUSIC REVIEWERS SHOULD HAVE A CAP TO HOW MUCH MUSIC THEY REVIEW. Reviewers have heard everything so at a certain point things sound repetitive to them, just because of the sheer amount of music they consume. Reviewers rating a album poorly because it sounds like X, Y, Z artist, doesn’t affect the mass population because we don’t listen to everything so the album can still be new and exciting to us. Maybe this needs a separate hot take but also ties in with my first take, artist don’t need to reinvent the wheel for their music to be worthwhile. Olivia Rodrigo should be able to release and succeed with her cute teen breakup pop songs, poppy should be able to venture into the metal space with her pop fusion type songs , and AJR shoul- actually let’s stop there. Point being, artists shouldn’t be penalized or need to one up other artists work because of a already established music.

Eduardo

paramore's self titled album is just as good as after laughter

would you ever do a list of "most disappointing album releases?" especially with the new 21 pilots album out id be curious to see what albums didnt meet your expectations or were WAY below the bar the artist had previously set

MeowmiXX

You don’t get angry at the albums in your negative reviews anymore. I miss it when you would shit on an album and insult it and make the artist feel bad about the atrocity they put out, but these days it feels like you are trying to keep a smile on your face and find something to giggle about.

Drake Parker

The Devil and God Are Raging Inside of Me is one of the greatest pop punk/alternative albums of the 2000s and does not receive enough praise for its excellent songwriting and structure. Easily Brand New's best project.

"Dark Ambient" is an overexplanation and a hinderance of a genre title. Because it is so specific, it has separated the Ambient genre into "Pleasant and Not Pleasant" when, in reality, most ambient music blurs the line here. The term "Dark Ambient" either needs to be completely retired as a genre title or a genre such as as "Gray Ambient" needs to emerge to breath fresh life into the genre.

Godforbid is an underrated and diverse artist. He recently got some positive attention for his appearance on the last Czarface/Doom record, but his early work with That Handsome Devil still holds up as unique and darkly comical. Not to mention he put out one of the best Trump diss tracks IMO.

"Mystic Stylez" by Three 6 Mafia is one of the greatest Hip Hop albums of the 90s and deserves to be mentioned more in that conversation

Arnarok

Even though I love metal, I've got a trouble with some metalheads. Mostly the one who spit on other genres, only talk about metal and spend more time complaining metal isn't popular rathen than making metal known via content and sharing stuff to non-metalheads.

What kind of music/genre fits the idea of putting on a vinyl the best? For me its something with a very clear progression with an obvious journey from start to finish. Its like putting on a movie. I rarely play pop on vinyl for that reason.

Trym Sørsdal

I guess it also helps that the last few NIN projects have been killer, too.

Abe Froman

The fact that Trent Reznor, the man who said "fist fuck" and won a Grammy for it in the 90s, just received an Oscar for scoring a Pixar film proves that changing lanes doesn't necessarily constitute "selling out". As long as there's authenticity and passion behind a new project, the artist's past works shouldn't negatively cloud the perception around it.

Abe Froman

Thoughts on Ruff Criminal, the new up-and-coming YouTuber who reviews albums in 10 seconds or less?

Franco del Rosario

The Arcade Fire has gone too far

Wildridge

What’s the best David Bowie song and why is it Heroes?

James Carlisle

Suppose you were reviewing music in the 60s. What albums would you give 10s, if any? Or 0s?

What do you think separates the quality from rodeo to astroworld when giving it a lower score. Interested to hear cos they both touch on different kind of points of his career, so there is a variation of style between the two.

henry hanlin

The Notorious Byrd Brothers is overall better than Sweetheart of the Rodeo. As the last “true” Byrds album, it’s the only one they made that works as a full album. Sweetheart is great, but at the end of the day it’s a Gram Parsons record, not a Byrds record.

Neal Garbenis

For some reason it feels as though some influential albums or genres inspire better music than others. For example, the number of quality albums that 2pac's music inspired seems to be -- or at least feels like -- higher than something like Deathconsciousness or Loveless. Listen to any project inspired by those two albums and 99% of it is soulless garbage that's sad for the sake of being sad It's almost like people appreciate the art without understanding what makes it good; it's as though they hear them and go "wow, this is sad, I want to make sad music" without thinking about *why* the sadness is so impactful. And sure, for every bad shoegaze record, there's a 2pac wannabe who's spitting bars that are not thought-provoking whatsoever. I suppose what I'm saying is that I more often like albums inspired by the former than the latter.

Adam Washington

Not a super earth-shattering question but I'm curious regardless: When you were converting to veganism, how hard was it for you to give up cheese? Also, are there any foods you miss from your pre-vegan days?

Herbieguy

If you think about it, eating a tiger is more ethical than eating a cow. A cow is a herbivore that would only ever harm you accidently or if threatened, while a tiger absolutely would eat you unprovoked.

ElephantofDoom

Cymbal Eat Guitars before disbanding in 2017 came out with 4 really excellent albums all which varied in sound and style and I still go back to them occasionally. While I have some complaints, I think the band was certainty distinct and stood out in their own way. When I looked up your videos to see your take on them I was pretty surprised to see all 4 of their albums end up in your YUNO review for the exact same reasons claiming “you heard built to spill you heard these guys” “ you heard pavement you heard these guys” that I certainly disagree with. I feel like you took your first impression of them or read about their influences and ignored the totally original guitar work, melodies, and much darker ambiance than a lot of their 90’s idols. This Is all just to say I think the band was robbed of a fair chance by you to introduce them to your audience because you incorrectly pigeon-held them as a 90’s indie nostalgia act

In your vinyl update video you sounded confused that one of your King Gizzard albums packaged without shrink wrap, just wanted to say that Gizzards label Flightless is against single use shrink wrap for records and therefore are packaged with cardboard sleeves. I think that all records labels should follow suit since record shrink wrap can cause record warping, and cover creases/other damage but also they are bad for the environment (side note, please return the single use plastic to your local supermarket if you are in Australia or the US). The flightless method of creating a cardboard cover is also much cooler than a plastic cover because they've added artwork to the cardboard sleeve.

darrenfx

UK Post punk is the best music scene out there in 2021

While it makes sense to not stream or support any future releases from an artist once they've outed themselves in one way or another (for me, Ariel Pink's participation and statements in regards to the january 6th shitstorm have effectively blacklisted him for me, sadly), I've still held on to all the vinyl and merchandise of his I've picked up from his shows. Maybe I'm just having a hard time moving on, but it feels like a little discussed aspect of physical media, is that it's one way of separating the art from a problematic artist.

Scaredycrow

Matchbox 20 are responsible for some of the best rock hits of the late 90s and early 2000s

branm25

Metallica’s death magnetic is actually one of their best albums. Mixing is what brings it down so far. Listening to it on Qobuz changes how it sounds and it’s incredible how much better it sounds in HI-res and it deserves that title of “one of the best”

Eric Mugford

Why does Matana Robert's Coin Coin Chapters 2 & 3 not sound that good/enjoyable in comparison with the other 2?

The album cover for Volta by Björk isn't *that* bad

SAMIR

Seriously, how do you seem to remember ALL of the albums you've listened to

Can we get some more thicc vegan recipes please?

Ian X

Laura Stevenson is the most underrated singer-songwriter of the past decade.

I know you acknowledged this fact in that one video, also the themes let’s argued help for better content, but still, LA is nearing the end of it’s run

Let’s argue as a series is struggling. Takes just aren’t that hot anymore.

What are your top 5 Madonna songs?

Addiction to YouTube content is real and unhealthy, and it all starts with YOU, Melon!

Hunter Eggers

Do you plan on reviewing the new mix of Origin of Symmetry by Muse? The two tracks that they've released so far have been improved on quite a bit in terms of production.

Josh

Every artist's music gets worse after they have kids

Trevor Young

Self awareness or a tinge of irony/comedy goes a long way in making music enjoyable ie 100 gecs, ween, death grips to an extent

Jimmy Swag

How's your day going, Anthony?

Bo Burnham’s Inside is basically Pure Comedy on steroids.

Ibrahim Daily

For The First Time >>>>>>>>>>>>>> Cavalcade

The Beat Switch on Self Care is better than frank oceans nights

Ryan The Great

Apologies in advance for being that guy complaining about your top 55 rappers video several months later, but why would you leave off Jean Grae? She's top 10 imo, and easily better than at least some of the rappers that made it-- she's at least never made something like Revival or Rebirth-- and I get that influence counts for a lot in lists like these, but she's just so talented, I can't imagine leaving her off, even if she hasn't been especially influential

Caden Meyer

In your personal belief as a critic, how strict or loose do you believe people/critics should be with 10s? I know you’ve said before that “you can’t give out 10s like candy”, and your 10/10 reviews are most certainly seen as monumental because of how rare they become, but considering how users on sites like RYM range from having 5 five star ratings to over 100, and sites like Pitchfork tend to avoid 10s like the plague despite giving previous decades absurd amounts, where do you think a respectable amount of 10s should lie? Not that I think people are being disingenuous with their ratings, but I think there’s a huge disconnect between what people/critics believe should and shouldn’t get a 10.

Pvzuzu

Recently your reviews have been way shorter than they once were. Which i understand to a degree, i cant imagine how tough it must be to upload multiple times a day sometimes, but i feel like some reviews need more than just the 6-8 minutes you give them. Sometimes the reviews come across as rushed, and a lot of times you barely touch on why you like a song or record and mostly resort to making brief comparisons to other works instead of actually explaining in detail what the song/album did to make you like or dislike it

TheBaseballFur

As someone who hasn't watched the show and loves both versions, Evangelions version of Fly Me to the Moon is better than Frank Sinatra's

How many 2021 albums have you listened to im currently on 181

Jackson Moeller

Most post punk bands have great instrumentals but terrible vocalists who ruin the music because singing in key isn't 'cool.

Duel of the Fates is a certified banger

bressig

You actually think cavalcade is a 9 but were annoyed at the amount of begging for a 10

Rank the Smash Bros. Soundtracks! For me it’s Ultimate>Brawl>Melee>Smash4>Smash 64

Is it safe to assume Die Lit is now a 9/10 since it was on your best of the decade list?

membertatooine

In the GOAT conversation which rappers do you think get overlooked/underrated the most?

Liz Phair's "Exile in Guyville" is very overrated (but not bad) and her self titled is a lot better than people give it credit for. It's a perfectly fine pop-rock album.

Blue October will always hold a special place in my heart

Andy

wreck it ralph is actually the best disney movie

superdude75561

There is no such thing as a song being "overdramatic". Not every song touching upon feelings of anger, self-hatred, jealousy etc. has to be performed in the vein of You Won't Get What You Want. While it is certainly better if such a song has deeper meaning and overall better poetry some of the Imagine Dragons or Blue October songs can convey deep emotions too, and hiding behind the oh-it's-so-overdramatic façade should not undermine their value.

If you play your vinyl records on one of those suitcase turntables with the built in speakers, you are not allowed to make the argument that vinyl sounds better than digital, you’re just lying to yourself.

Andy

Are there any 9s that you would now rate as a 10?