innerspaceboy

Patsy Cline - Showcase

PREFACE: I’m a pretentious knob. I have absolutely zero contextual understanding of pop culture or of any world outside my desktop. I know maybe six people on the planet. And none of them listen to country. In 35 years of studying music history, I’ve never heard of Patsy Cline. As such, I cannot fathom what the hell anyone could possibly enjoy about this watered-down, tasteless excuse for an album.

FIRST IMPRESSION - Dear god. Okay, when the hell was this recorded? ... 1961… well, it’s cutie-pie music. I’m trying to understand what I’m hearing. I can’t detect any agony here. No desperate internal existential struggle. No artfulness or suffering, so that entire scope of music is out. There’s no depth or poetry about the songwriting either. So I’m still grappling to understand why anyone attributes any value to this bland nonsense. Authenticity is out the window with the incredible artificiality of the artist’s overly-polished performance, so there’s no chance for any relatability here. Okay… what else could be the motivation? There’s no musical proficiency. No mastery of musicianship in either instrumentation or compositional structure. It’s all just… samey… simple... and self-parodically formulaic. There’s certainly nothing intellectual going on... I’m really at a loss. I don’t understand why this music or its genre exists. It’s painfully transparent and evokes absolutely no response from the listener, neither cerebral nor emotional. What is the point of this stuff? What function does it serve? What need does it fulfill?

I’ll have to read everyone else’s reviews. I’m definitely curious to understand what I’m missing.

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