you can't compare them to U2 or sting. They were just doing their thing man.

And U2 and Sting aren't doing theirs?


In my opinion being pretentious is making music that you yourself don't enjoy and can't get behind. If you put out 20 minutes of tape hiss but you love the **** out of it it's not pretentious, if you write pop songs because that's what you like than fine. I don't think pretentiousness can be accurately measured from the listeners point of view.

Personal stuff? You will not find any personal antagonism from me at all. Merely a pointing out that you know absolutely nothing about music and an opinion that has been formed that you are narrow minded musically, therefore depriving yourself of music that may appeal to you.

That is true.
Like bands that sing for profit to a large extent.
But making gestures about lofty issues and doing charity gigs then doing exactly what they say we shouldn't is pretentious to me.
Like all these shows to save the planet when they put themselves up like that and then a music journo finds they fly loads and do stuff they don't need like fly their food in from abroad like U2 Madonna and Sting.
And they write songs about these issues too!

Sounds like anyone in a state of privelege

Not when they tell kids to do one thing then not do it themselves and gain self glory as been like holier then thou.
And sell records about bhow much they care and have PR people hiding stories about plane's bringing them in their favourite food because the UK doesn't supply it.
That is pretentious.

Wow, I was going to post something exactly like that! I'm not a huge fan of the word 'pretentious' for those reasons. People misuse it.


Quel blagueur!

Je n'ai pas su que j'ai été entouré des francophones!


Translation: What a joker! I didn't know I was surrounded by French speakers.

I don't find anyone as pretentious, or as contrived as Stevie Ray Vaughan.

As for least pretentious, I'd have to say a band that seems somewhat self deprecating like Alice in Chains, or maybe Radiohead-they're really good, but not really full of themselves.

I'm the most pretentious band in the world.

This is true.
But you're not really good enough to be considered pretentious.

QFT

I'm curious and I often wondered why Americans spell then 'than'.
It can't be a spelling error...it happens a lot...why?

it is just a grammatical mishap

affect and effect causes lots of problems too

Yeah man, Radiohead definately. Good one.
The intellectuals band!
I agree with that.
They keep a low profile and don't preach to kids about stuff as part of their image then do the opposite and have PR people covering it up.
Nice one!:thumb:

I can't think of any bands i'd call pretentious, thats a job for fans usually.

Are you not a fan of music?
Do you live in camden London??

It may be the case that they reveal their pretentiousness by explicitly making self-important statements and whatnot. Which is often the case.

On the topic, Maynard James Keenan was always pretty pretentious.

I meant as in its usually the fans who are pretentious.
I don't no, i'd like too though.

I thought being pretentious meant trying to appear more smart and cultured than everyone.... or maybe I should invest in a dictionary.

most pretentious that i can recall is easily creed. prior to releasing their last album they made the claim that they had surpassed led zeppelin and were about to make the world forget about the doors.

least pretentious - nick drake.

How does what I say go against that? I think in music it goes on to take the connotation making music you don't enjoy. Whether it's highly technical or three little chords.

pre·tense /prɪˈtɛns, ˈpritɛns/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[pri-tens, pree-tens] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun
1. pretending or feigning; make-believe: My sleepiness was all pretense.
2. a false show of something: a pretense of friendship.
3. a piece of make-believe.
4. the act of pretending or alleging falsely.
5. a false allegation or justification: He excused himself from the lunch on a pretense of urgent business.
6. insincere or false profession: His pious words were mere pretense.
7. the putting forth of an unwarranted claim.
8. the claim itself.
9. any allegation or claim: to obtain money under false pretenses.
10. pretension (usually fol. by to): destitute of any pretense to wit.
11. pretentiousness.



As to how this relates to music... here's an example. People might accuse a musician with a lot of technical skill of being pretentious because he/she thinks that technical skill makes them a superior musician in general. But there's the problem right there... in order to fairly accuse someone of being pretentious, you need to know their intentions first... and that's where a lot of people incorrectly assume.

Just because a musician is very skilled doesn't mean they think they're some sort of superior being. Making that assumption would be foolish, but you'd be amazed at how many people do it.

Prog catches a lot of flak for supposedly being pretentious due to the complexity/length/technicality. Indie catches accusations of pretension due to long song names, fashion and underground status etc. For some reason, some people seem to think that jazz fans consider jazz superior to most popular music because of the sophisticated chord progressions. Ditto for classical for various reasons.

These are all silly accusations of pretension in music. For example, you can call a band like Meshuggah pretentious for using complex time signatures in every song, but unless you know their intentions, you're most likely sorely mistaken. If they're making the music they want without pretense, more power to them. There will always be people bringing them down for being more skilled than the average Joe, but that's life. You can look at the guy who makes straight As and assume that he considers himself superior to other humans because of it, but again, that is severely flawed judgement.

Most pretentious.. probably Smashing Pumpkins. I'm sure there was a point in time where Billy Crogan did nothing but stare into a mirror all day.
Least.. This probably sounds like a generic MB answer, but I'd have to say Elliott Smith. He never thought he was bigger than his music even though he, for the most part, progressively got better.

Nirvana was pretty unpretentious, Kurt Cobain called the hysteria surrounding them a load of shit and then said there were 15 bands who were just as good if not better than them that deserved equal/more attention. As well as Elliott for reasons listed above.

I'd say Angels and Airwaves is extremely pretentious because Tom has said things like they're saving rock and roll and are the best band out right now and even said his album was one of the best of 2007.

Most critics (who themselves are incredibly pretentious) will tell you pretentious is a bad thing.

But in reality, I find that most music is pretentious in some way or another, and that artists who are not pretentious or at least try not to be tend to suck ass.

I don't think Jim Morrison was any more pretentious than Lou Reed or Leonard Cohen, or that ELP are any more pretentious than Pavement. I think that overall, any music that tries to be artistic in anyway is automatically pretentious, because art is always pretentious.

And one reason I hate Indie so much is that unlike so called pretentious genres/movements/labels like Prog and Metal. The whole selling point of Indie is that its supposed to be un-pretentious. But is in fact the most pretentious music imaginable, in my opinion.

The only bands I'd say are not pretentious are bands that make music purely for entertainment. So no, AC/DC would not qualify as pretentious, in fact they are less pretentious than John Lennon, this dosen't make them better of course.

Spoken like a true progfan ;)

I think pretentiousness is overall a good thing in music. I think of music more as escapism than poetry, which I know some people don't like. So overall, I like my music the same as my movies, relating more to fantasy than reality.

I like my movies, literature and video games with elves, fairies, dragons and ogres, so whats wrong with music that has elves, fairies, dragons and ogres?

Somebody above used a dictionary entry for the word "pretense" - that's very misleading. Just because "pretentious" is a derivative of "pretense" doesn't mean you can gauge its most regular meaning from the latter.

The most frequent and commonly intended meaning of "pretentious" is the meaning of assuming an air of dignity and self-importance. This is also incidentally what is generally meant in the music press (and all art press) when some artist is deemed pretentious.

In that case, you can only really say that an artist is pretentious if they make that clear through what they say or how they behave.

Well, I think when critics talk about artists being pretentious, it has more to do with their music than them personally.

Ironically enough, the only thing critics EVER want to talk about is the artists personally, rather than their actual f*cking music.

I've always hated that.

They call the music pretentious because they deem the musical format (typically prog and the likes) to be associated with a self-important character and demeanour. That is to say, the supposed "pretentiousness" of the music is only characterized as such inasmuch as it is seen as a reflection of the personality behind it.

That way of thinking is just retarded. If critics base their reviews on lame stereotypes of what all musicians in a certain genre are like then they don't deserve to be taken seriously. Besides, many great artists throughout history were pricks.

I judge music by judging the music, not the people making it.

Fair enough, it is true that pretentious intentions do not necessarily make music (or anything else) artistically bad. It does have quite a strong influence though on the opinion of listeners.

I thought it was a fairly decent definition. 'Pretentious' is hard to define because people misuse it so much now, but some of those sub-definitions are correct. But I did clarify it in a music context anyway.

Sorry, my bad.

I agree with what you were saying, too - you can't know for sure of any musician's pretentiousness from the music alone, but only from what they might say in interviews etc.

Well in that case.

Oasis.

Agreed. Noel's a total twonk who feels he fronts the greatest and most important rock band on earth. It's actually at the present moment one of the blandest, most derivative, uninspired bands in the universe.

Don't you mean Liam?

Does it matter though? It always ends with them kicking the sh*t out of eachother XD.




I'd have to go with Iron Maiden on this one though.

Noel often says those sorts of things. But yeah I guess strictly speaking you'd call Liam the frontman as he's the singer. My bad.

Yeah but it is Noels baby...for better or worse!