Why has "...Ready for it?" flopped?

[Oivind 287]

4 hours ago, Ziggy said:

“Thinner” refers to the production as in it isn’t very layered or textured. “Uninspired” means that it doesn’t sound like the artist’s heart is in it and that it lacks originality. “Bland” holds a similar connotation: it doesn’t excite the listener and that is usually due to a lack of originality.

Assuming that the production isn't very layered, why does that matter? Some music is written for symphony orchestras. Phil Spector created the "wall of sound". But you can also create great music with just one instrument and a voice. Many layers is not always a goal. I would say it's very often not a goal in modern music. They often go for a very sparse sound, sometimes with only some drums and some bass. Whether you like that sparse sound, is subjective. It's not objectively bad.

When you say the artist's heart is not in it, that's an entirely subjective feeling, and such statement only give information about your perception of an artist. When Amy Winehouse sat down on stage, and refused to sing, everyone knew her heart wasn't in it, but there's no such thing as an artist's heart not being in it on a studio album. "Her heart's not in it" doesn't have a specific sound you could describe to me, because it is nothing more than your subjective feeling. That's why I find such statements to hold no value when I read reviews. I don't care about the reviewer's perception of the artist. Your description of "bland" is also a description of something which is entirely subjective. If the statement "it doesn't excite the listener" is not subjective, I don't know what is.

As for lack of originality, very little is truly original in music. People have been making music for symphony orchestras for hundreds of years. They have been making music for drums, bass and guitars for at least 60 years. The harmonical rules have been the same. Most popular music doesn't use a large subset of those rules, either. There are about 10 chord progressions which are used over and over and over again. Yet we never get tired of hearing them in new contexts. And that's what it's all about: Creating something new, using the same old elements. Sometimes, someone creates a completely new sound, and that's cool, but it's also extremely rare. I don't see anything that's truly original on "Melodrama", you just happen to like the production choices better than the production choices on "Reputation". I certainly like the songs better on "Reputation". Half the songs on "Melodrama" I don't like at all, and I think "Pure Heroine" was a much better album. No producer is going to save a song I don't like.

I just don't find much objectiveness in what you say, and that's exactly how I feel about reviews, too. I'm OK with it, and it's not meant as criticism against you or reviewers, but it means what you say (and what reviewers say) is not very useful to me. And it means that metacritic ratings are useless to me. They just give me a confirmation of what I already knew: How an artist is perceived. "Joanne" got a rating of 67 while Leonard Cohen's last album got 92? From listening to those albums, it's pretty clear to me that I'm right: Many reviewers are purely influenced by their perception of the artist. Not all reviewers, but enough to make metacritic ratings useless. I wish I knew which reviewers write useful reviews. I just know it's none that I have come across so far.