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Pitchfork: The Age of Pleasure


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"Janelle Monáe’s fourth album exchanges science fiction for lusty romance, creating a rapturous Afrofuturistic sound collage for sunny days and sticky nights."

Spoiler

The Age of Pleasure revels in an ecclesiastic enjoyment of indulgence.

Each influence ebbs and flows through the record like neighbors stopping by for some rum and gossip.

The Age of Pleasure isn’t as intricate as their sci-fi novellas or as electrifyingly innovative as The ArchAndroid. It’s a bacchanal in the haven Monáe constructed for themself, cobblestone by cobblestone, tree by tree. Even the Lord rested.

Full review here.

Previous scores:

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Bronco

It's really interesting how as her music has got more explicitly political, black & queer as opposed to talking about it through more opaque coded themes that her scores with the critics have gone down...

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RodeckDanny

ahh Dirty Computer is still my fave <3

Listen to my debut pop single 'Want You Bad'! (link on Insta)
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Ceres

I felt like the first half was trying to be renaissance, and the second half was the actual album. I think it had potential but idk, a bit let down.
 

I’ll have to give it another  listen… I think playing it all the way through will give me a different opinion.  

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Agunimon
5 minutes ago, Ceres said:

I felt like the first half was trying to be renaissance

I was actually thinking that this is probably what people who were really into Beyonce prior to Renaissance were probably expecting Renaissance to sound like if they didn't hear anything prior.

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Dr Fudge

I really liked it! I might even like it more than Dirty Computer…(minus Make Me Feel which will always reign supreme), but time will tell

Been a cuff touple, a puff bupple, a tough couple of years.
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Ziggy
On 6/9/2023 at 3:01 AM, Bronco said:

It's really interesting how as her music has got more explicitly political, black & queer as opposed to talking about it through more opaque coded themes that her scores with the critics have gone down...

Ehhhhhh I wouldn’t say that because her music has *also gotten less refined and/or pop over time.

Its a little disingenuous to say The ArchAndroid is less queer than dirty computer or less complex or Black. ArchAndroid is damn near immaculate in its detail and themes. It provides allegory and concept, sure, but in that nuance she was able to find a TON of depth. The following albums less so. Dirty Computer is like a more distilled version of the archandroid thenes and tbh they’ve aged less well bc they’re so Trump era music and musically a little too Prince derivative.

I loooove all her music, but lbr and not try to paint these reviewers (who are queer mostly) as anti-queer or Black when Beyoncé put out Renaissance and lemonade to pitchfork acclaim specifically for those elements you’re citing.

Imo this album deserves higher than DC as I think it flows a bit better and she loosens up a little more, but if we’re being critical and observing the themes she explores across her albums, AA definitely did it with the most finesse and originality. I mean, just because the politics are explicit doesn’t make it good lol some of the issue with past albums after AA were the politics became pop sloganeering. They didn’t always have a tooon to say that wasn’t already being said. Compare that to AA where she synthesized a lot of the themes she’s still treading in a much more original manner.

but I’d put this as my #3 album for her rn. I wish it were longer and that’s about it :messga:

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Bronco
49 minutes ago, Ziggy said:

Ehhhhhh I wouldn’t say that because her music has *also gotten less refined and/or pop over time.

Its a little disingenuous to say The ArchAndroid is less queer than dirty computer or less complex or Black. ArchAndroid is damn near immaculate in its detail and themes. It provides allegory and concept, sure, but in that nuance she was able to find a TON of depth. The following albums less so. Dirty Computer is like a more distilled version of the archandroid thenes and tbh they’ve aged less well bc they’re so Trump era music and musically a little too Prince derivative.

I loooove all her music, but lbr and not try to paint these reviewers (who are queer mostly) as anti-queer or Black when Beyoncé put out Renaissance and lemonade to pitchfork acclaim specifically for those elements you’re citing.

Imo this album deserves higher than DC as I think it flows a bit better and she loosens up a little more, but if we’re being critical and observing the themes she explores across her albums, AA definitely did it with the most finesse and originality. I mean, just because the politics are explicit doesn’t make it good lol some of the issue with past albums after AA were the politics became pop sloganeering. They didn’t always have a tooon to say that wasn’t already being said. Compare that to AA where she synthesized a lot of the themes she’s still treading in a much more original manner.

but I’d put this as my #3 album for her rn. I wish it were longer and that’s about it :messga:

Right so firstly, I never said that her other albums were more or less queer/black/complex. All I said was that her later albums were more explicit - plus there's the undeniable fact that she is clearly more comfortable owning her queerness as she no longer takes on a persona and dances around her identity she publicly states who she is and owns it. Hell her very first EP that kicked of the Android alter ego era she was painted white on the cover - the Android wasn't black. 

I'd hardly call the AA original given how much of it's themes are borrowed from other media like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep etc - essentially AA is just a concept album of that book if you take a step back. 

Also I don't think you quite realise what you highlighted by pointing out Beyoncé's larger success in the same styles of inherently black queer music - Beyoncé is a straight cis-woman being given more praise for producing music in the same genre & style as a black queer non-binary person. There's no denying Beyoncé set out to celebrate queer black culture and did a great job, but lets not ignore the fact we're putting a straight cis-person's version of queer culture on a higher pedastal than a queer black person's. 

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Ziggy
1 minute ago, Bronco said:

Right so firstly, I never said that her other albums were more or less queer/black/complex. All I said was that her later albums were more explicit - plus there's the undeniable fact that she is clearly more comfortable owning her queerness as she no longer takes on a persona and dances around her identity she publicly states who she is and owns it. Hell her very first EP that kicked of the Android alter ego era she was painted white on the cover - the Android wasn't black. 

I'd hardly call the AA original given how much of it's themes are borrowed from other media like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep etc - essentially AA is just a concept album of that book if you take a step back. 

Also I don't think you quite realise what you highlighted by pointing out Beyoncé's larger success in the same styles of inherently black queer music - Beyoncé is a straight cis-woman being given more praise for producing music in the same genre & style as a black queer non-binary person. There's no denying Beyoncé set out to celebrate queer black culture and did a great job, but lets not ignore the fact we're putting a straight cis-person's version of queer culture on a higher pedastal than a queer black person's. 

I’m not putting it on a higher pedestal lol I’m just saying that pitchfork is not really biased against the type of music you’re talking about. Like I said, I loooove janelle’s music. Even my least fav of her albums has more plays for me than basically anyone’s stuff. Im just also saying that she’s gotten more pop for more mainstream appeal and in the process her music has become a little more on the nose and slogan-y at times. Her best on Dirty Computer (Pynk imo), was praised the world over for its black queer rep *and imo did a great job balancing her nuanced conceptual thinking of early work with pop appeal. And when she did that (and with make me feel) she got praised enormously for it.

all I’m saying is that I don’t think the correlation you’re talking about has a lot of causation behind it. I just think the albums have gotten a little less refined and have shifted focus to mainstream appeal. That said, I think this new album blends the pop appeal in very naturally 

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AURAOFSHEISSE
3 hours ago, Wolf Boy said:

Half the album is 1 minute songs…

 The one minutes songs were continuations of the previous song 

“Hands on your knees, I’m Angelina Jolie”
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AURAOFSHEISSE

It’s enjoyable, I agree with pitchforks score, some of the writing was iffy

“Hands on your knees, I’m Angelina Jolie”
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Bronco
1 hour ago, Ziggy said:

I’m not putting it on a higher pedestal lol I’m just saying that pitchfork is not really biased against the type of music you’re talking about. Like I said, I loooove janelle’s music. Even my least fav of her albums has more plays for me than basically anyone’s stuff. Im just also saying that she’s gotten more pop for more mainstream appeal and in the process her music has become a little more on the nose and slogan-y at times. Her best on Dirty Computer (Pynk imo), was praised the world over for its black queer rep *and imo did a great job balancing her nuanced conceptual thinking of early work with pop appeal. And when she did that (and with make me feel) she got praised enormously for it.

all I’m saying is that I don’t think the correlation you’re talking about has a lot of causation behind it. I just think the albums have gotten a little less refined and have shifted focus to mainstream appeal. That said, I think this new album blends the pop appeal in very naturally 

I didn't say you were specifically - we've been talking about pitchfork all I was pointing out is I didn't think you'd noticed the actual issue you'd drawn attention to by highlighting Beyonce's success in pitchfork reviews. 

Pitchfork has a history of undermarking queer acts producing authentic queer musics and political themed pieces when compared to straight counterparts producing music in the same genre or style and making pro-LGBTQ+ politically stanced tracks. 

Beyoncé is praised and her work treated as a masterpiece by a mainstreamed focused site because fundamentally any pro-LGBTQ+ message from a straight person is non-threatening. It's the same over in country music as another example where actual LGBTQ+ acts like Orville Peck are marked down by Pitchfork for the same style & message as straight acts like Kasey & Maren - Orville Peck was accused of being unable to sing in the latest pitchfork review of his work. 

I don't think Age of Pleasure is Janele's best work - it's too short, but the fact that albums of hers that were considerably less authentic & derivative are held up as better standards of work than even Dirty Computer which continued her conceptual world design and was lyrically and thematically harder hitting speaks volumes about how Pitchfork approaches queer music. 

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