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Originally Posted by clutnuckle
That's not what pretentiousness is. That's just inaccuracy misleading you. Because the song in question NEVER told you it was going to be mind-blowing. Perhaps a pretentious artist did. That artist is likely pretentious in that context when discussing that particular song/album/whatever.
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An artist can only tell me that through his song. I don't see the artist, I only 'see' his song. Therefore song tells me it's going to be mind-blowing or whatever. I can call the song pretentious if it doesn't achieve what it/he promises. The artist put the pretense in the song. I don't care about him or how he acts outside of what he shows in his art. The song is his creation, it becomes a little world of its own, separated from him after it's finished. Everything he put there is now a part of it and that includes pretense.
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Terms like 'emotional' and 'sad' I can sort of see being applied to music - they're so utterly general. But it's like calling a song something incredibly specific like 'jealous', not based off of angsty lyrics, but just off some sort of arbitrary decision. Such specific, situational terms never work for musical analysis.
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This is very interesting that you brought up 'situation'. Yes, you can't say the song is jealous, because the situation for that feeling to emerge is not in the song. Emotions like 'happy' and 'sad' are also related to situations, but those situations are more general, I agree. But, you see, the situation for 'pretense' can be found in a work of art, in the form. Big statements on the surface (I'm talking about formal, musical statements) that leads you to anticipate some great depths of inner levels, but nothing happens actually, there are no inner levels. It's the same thing like when someone gives a speech, talks a lot in big terms, but doesn't say anything. That would make a speech very pretentious, speaker too (in relation to it), but I'm interested in speech. Everything that has an aesthetic form also has a perfect environment, or situation for pretense to appear. You may call it misleading, inaccuracy or simply a lie, it's the same thing in aesthetic terms.
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If people are complex, why are we applying such nit-picky, overindulgent terms like 'pretentious' to music and not the artist? Don't the artists need the extra description if they're so much deeper and complex than what they create?
I don't really know what to tell you for that last part - pretentious IS a character trait by definition. Yes, a person won't ALWAYS be pretentious, the same way they won't always be jealous about something, but they've still exhibited the trait.
Though I will admit I like the bolded point, just not in terms of how music gets to carry all of the artist's personal problems; the music is pretentious because the artist was an ******* for a week? Not very fair at all.
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Precisely because people are complex, living, always changing, I can call someone pretentious only in relation to some act. Work of art, however, is a finished product, and if an artist put some pretense there, it remains pretentious forever and ever...It becomes its defining characteristic.
Speaking of which, what is a character trait by definition? Actually don't answer this, it's a rhetorical question that will lead us too far. I was deliberately nitpicking trying to show the other side of the coin, that it's not a given truth that people are pretentious outside of their acts. That, and I don't really believe in defining character traits. But that's beside the point.
I never said music gets to carry artist's personal problems. That's something that can maybe motivate him, but what he actually puts there is more universal, deeper and abstract. He has a longing to express something. He doesn't always know how to do it, so sometimes he will
pretend to know. That doesn't make him an *******.