Nickelback vs OFF! CLOSED

I don't disagree with that and I do not believe "free market economies will produce excellence". At least not necessarily.

But my original question was why do these single entities become the face of the hate/backlash for "that thing" which people despise? Nickelback was just a band trying to make it. Michael Bay was just a dude trying to make movies. They eventually got their shot and were wildly, wildly successful. Blame the audiences. Blame the studios/labels. Blame radio/the media. What I don't get is why people fall all over themselves irrationally hating the artists themselves. With certain people/groups it just seems like it becomes trendy to say you hate them and they are the "worst ever". IDK, it's not something I care enough about to go back and forth forever but it's just a phenomenon that's always piqued my interest and strikes me as silly.

I also think a lot of people want to ignore that it's the music BUSINESS, the movie BUSINESS. While at their core these are certainly artistic endeavors you just can't separate the business from the mainstream versions of these arts. And I think it's naive to think otherwise. Money talks and the mainstream pretty much always has and probably always will be littered with a lot of garbage. No one has to consume or support anything they do not want to.

 

I wasn't saying you were calling anyone an idiot necessarily. But this debate generally reaches a point where "the masses" are either implied to be idiots or it is outright said.

I agree with a lot of this. It still seems to me to be much more of an industry and audience problem than an artist problem though. They are the only ones who can change the trajectory of the way things are going. If Michael Bay stops making movies or Nickelback (or whoever the huge, lame band of the moment is) stops making music that solves nothing. Their respective industries would just slide someone else just like them right in their place.

I love movies and hate that more and more studios are only wanting to crank out big budget action movies. But like I said in the previous post, money talks. And as long as consumers are forking over their money hand over fist it's tough to blame the industry for continuing along that path. And as long as the industry is making the artists rich it's tough to blame them for continuing to accept the paycheck.

 

This thread is interesting

 

Well, I.listed my reasons for disliking Nickleback...can't speak for.anyone else
I often compare music with visual arts, and these sorts of "band wars" don't distinguish between rockers, musicians and recording artists very well. I love artists and am very jealous of their talent, and I live in an area that has LOTS of visual artists. Still, no matter how trained or skilled they are it's hard to truly think of them as artists when they are all painting beaches, sunsets, dolphins and palm trees. One particular artist is very highly successful but it's all s**t work featuring dolphins and whales at sunset above and below the waterline, smiling happily at the viewer. Up in the mountainside there are thousands of rainbow-colored paintings of Buddha, Vishnu and "spiritual geometry". Artists are everywhere but there's no art. Sculptors, woodworkers and glassblowers churn out thousands of cresting waves, surfboard paddles and whale tales. If I visited the gamut of art shops and festivals here looking for a simple Ansel Adams photo of the Flatiron building I would be SOL.
Such as it is with Nickleback et al: they attract scorn by deliberately playing it safe and appealing to the masses by removing anything remotely artistic about their product. Coldplay is detestible also but it's not because they aren't artists; it's because their art is as banal as smiling dophins at sunset.

 

Just posted and saw Cruds said the same thing but better....