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Thanks for all your support this month; hope you're all doing well! :)

Now's that magical time when you hit us with your HOT TAKES, UNPOPULAR OPINIONS, and TOUGH QUESTIONS! Drop 'em in the comments below and we'll look through them next week. Let's go!

In case you missed last month's episode: https://www.patreon.com/posts/lets-argue-my-on-49296214

Comments

James Carlisle

What are your top five David Bowie albums?

Noah Atkinson

The only good national anthem is the Samoan national anthem

Yusuke Starkey

You can start a new music genre with just 5-10 artists if its viral enough. For example every hyperpop article names the same 5 artists yet its the most happening sound this year.

Daniel DeGeorges

Rush ended their career the best way any band of their age possibly could. Quietly, with noted respect to their fans, and a decent final album.

Atom Weiler

How would you rank the decades of music from the 50s up to the 10s?

Kevin Shaw

Spongebob is the best cartoon ever made. no cartoon has ever been able to strike such a good balance between comedy and genuine heart that can be enjoyed by a wide age range

TraJay

Vaporwave’s impact on modern music is greatly understated.

Yusuke Starkey

Would you watch a dance about architecture?

Jackson Ells

Would you have considered giving "Charli" a 10 if "Warm" wasn't on the tracklist?

austin

In terms of gimmicky music, hyperpop is like nu-metal for zoomers.

Jacob Dickens

I miss when your year end lists included your favorite music videos. Any recent music videos you want to shout out king?

Yusuke Starkey

The reason there's Kgpop and J-pop but not C-pop in the human rights violations by the CCP makes the whole country look bad.

Tyler Gregory

MC Ride would make a FANTASTIC Duke Nukem!

Christina Kelley

How seriously are you taking Kevin’s tweets about Brockhampton ending after these next two albums?

BlueZones

Do you ever go back to smaller bands that got buzzed about in the early 2010s but never really took off? Especially ones you reviewed highly like No Joy’s “Ghost Blond”, Weekend’s “Sports”, or Dumbo Gets Mad’s “Elephants at the Door”? Etc.? I guess my argument is that these albums are still really good.

jay-oh-ess

Does being a music critic affect your casual conversations about music (ie. with friends/family)? I worry that friends avoid talking about music with me because I might judge their more ‘basic’ taste. I imagine you have similar and even more clear experiences with this and do you have any suggestions for overcoming it?

Owen W

Why do you have a separate List Week video for EPs, but lump mixtapes into the albums video rather than giving them their own video?

Ibrahim Daily

Teflon Don aged better as an album than The Marshall Mathers LP

Rayan Saoud

I love shoegaze but I really fell like it's a "speaker" genre, I know many people like to enjoy it with headphones but I just get ear fatigue. What do you thing about certain types of genre being more enjoyable with a specific audio device ?

Julian Balboa

Mathcore is just faster Midwest Emo with some gain and screaming.

Adam mezzarone

Black metal has the potential to be one of the most interesting sub genres in metal and really music as a whole, but no one aside from a few exceptions(liturgy, deafheaven, etc) are willing to really experiment and push boundaries

Gustav Olsson

Queen is absent of classic albums

Griffin

Religion is NOT GOOD

Paul

I can't imagine Bernie Sanders being a better president than Joe Biden considering how shitty Republican opposition in Congress is.

tryhard

Why do you start laughing so often at the beginning of your videos or after you say “internet’s busiest music nerd?” Is Cal telling you jokes?

bressig

Born to Run or Born in the USA?

Mark DeMoranville

Britney Spears isn't talked about enough in the critical music community despite her solid discography and clear influence on modern pop.

bressig

Duel of the Fates is a certified banger

oscos

Where do you think hiphop needs to go artistically in order to evolve in the next 10 years to keep being this powerful genre that has stayed on top of the mainstream for years? Kind of like how trap music ruled the last decade in terms of streams and sales, or do you think if it stays the way it is it’s gonna keep being as popular as it is?

bressig

have you read Robert Christgau's positive reviews of albums you despise (Professional Rapper, The Big Day, Southside)? do his opinions give you a different appreciation for those records or do they make you feel like the Dean of Rock Criticism is way off base and/or out of touch?

Andrew Shaktah

One of the most annoying trends in music is adding a clip of yourself smoking and coughing. There are rarely times where it makes sense for the song and isn’t completely annoying.

oscos

What are some examples of artists that completely redeemed themselves artistically and you went from not liking their older stuff to start fucking with their more recent material a bit more?

James Carlisle

Sgt. Pepper has to be the most overrated album of all time. It’s a good record, but the Beatles have three better ones (Revolver, White, Abbey Road). It isn’t the gold standard of music it’s been said to be.

Cameron Diman

This isn't a hot take at all. I really just would like to hear your opinion on the group Coil, they're an incredibly experimental band that did a hell of a lot within the time they existed. Along with Throbbing Gristle who "Sleazy" emerged from there weren't many bands pushing the norm the way they were when they first came out. Also the fact that "Sleazy" did some of the art for Pink Floyd and if I'm not mistaken even Paul McCartney, it just proves to show their artistic range.

oscos

Tupac was more inspiring due to his story rather than musically influential.

Samuel Baron

/Mu/ core is actually really good, and only gets hate because people base their entire identity on a select few albums, rather than continuing to explore music from there

Señor C

Calle 13 is a top 3 rap group of the 21st century

Julian Balboa

Post-Rock also comes to mind tbh

Abe Froman

This recent wave of UK-based, experimental post-punk bands (Black Midi; Black Country, New Road; Squid; to a lesser extent, Fontaines DC) are the best thing to happen to the genre in decades. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of post-punk and post-punk revival bands that have made incredible music over the past several years, but this surge is legitimately exciting, and a much-needed shot of adrenaline into a genre that seemed to be running out of steam overall.

Josh

The new black midi single is the closest anyone has gotten to sounding like Primus without being in Primus

Trevor Young

The Hard Rock Cafe is S tier dining

Julian Balboa

I can kinda get down with this. Albums considered /mu/core are good, but /mu/ itself is an insufferable circlejerking echo chamber filled with gatekeeping assholes.

mario_incandenza

What music do you listen to in your personal listening time? Are there any particular records that you find yourself listening to again and again?

ElephantofDoom

The only time the song Hallelujah has ever been used appropriately is in Shrek. Every other time its been used in movies, tv or at awards shows its always used as a dirge, even though it clearly is a song about romantic betrayal.

Cole Downey

Cars having radios is keeping the music industry from advancing. The radiobroadcast format is antiquated, and distorts the actual statistics of total plays/listens. They drive up the price of my 2011 Ford Fiesta, and all the buttons make me nervous. I'm afraid my tin foil hat is no longer preventing my brain from being fried by Maroon 5.

Elisha Rockson

I know it’s crazy, but I feel like Hyperpop is really taking storm right now In the music industry, but people still gotta get use to it

Ryan The Great

Have there been any 9s you've consider to be a 10 at this point like david bowies blackstar

Elvis Fritz

Velvet underground & Nico is mediocre or worse. Venus in furs is unlistenable. Yes the record has great lyrics, a couple songs have decent melodies, but why are we pretending it's even comparable to other 60s influential classics? It literally sounds like shit

Brendan James

Releasing the final track on an album as its lead single is the single worst promotional tactic in the music industry. It completely undermines the journey the artist wants to take you on in their full-length project. It's like releasing the ending to a film as a trailer.

Macy M

PETA was made by the meat/dairy industry as a way of making veganism look dumb. It's the only explanation

Michelle Goldchain

Godzilla vs. Kong is a masterpiece and deserves an Oscar for Best Monke

Stephen Hoops

Unless the album is 1hr+, there's no reason the vinyl release should be pressed on multiple discs. Having to constantly flip and change the records out is a terrible and obnoxious and listening experience.

LIfeinthezone

CT doesn't get enough appreciation in music as a whole. MGMT, Have a Nice Life, Horace Silver, Kenny Beats + dozens more (esp in the underground). Sure, we don't have as many as New York, California, Georgia, Louisiana, New Jersey, Washington, or Kentucky, but STILL.

Alberto Satta

Despite acknowledging American Football's s/t's influence i think the album is actually really boring and repetitive. There are a lot of emo projects that were influenced by American Football that took that formula and made it much more interesting and diverse like hospital bracelet, brave little abacus etc etc

Vipul Konnur

VENUS IN FURS IS AMAZING HOW DARE YOU

lowkeymatt

Nashville is called "Music City" but it's literally the worst city for music. It's just a bunch a pasty white dudes making shit country or pasty white dudes making shit folk. Even the other genres artists suck. I live here and I can't fucking stand it

Stefan Lal

Absolutely agree! FlyLo’s 38 minute You’re Dead! is on 2 discs and for the life of me I can’t figure out why

Henry Pissinger

Soul coughing is an underrated late 90s band and I wish more people knew about them. there’s some some really fun, really absurd stuff in their 3 album run

Jackson Moeller

After all these years the jay z ft. On holy grail still slaps

Wyatt Granger

Eddie Vedder gets a lot of understandable ire for his voice and the influence his voice had on the post grunge bands. However, his singing on albums following the debut go way harder than most people give him credit for, probably due to how long the singles from Ten got airplay, but every time I show someone Spin the Black Circle or Do the Evolution, they're like "This Is Pearl Jam?!" Do the Evolution is best PJ song also

David Pedron

What made you switch from the conventional “track review” video titles to the new, more fluid title format?

Stefan Lal

I know your main thing is reviewing and covering new music, but I think a cool segment would be to give some recommendations on older stuff on the regular. Tier lists and starter packs are too few and far between.

Mark Attenborough

With bands like Jinjer, Code Orange, and 3Teeth building up steam and releasing modern metal classics. As well as older artists like Fleshgod Apocalypse, Gojira, and Body Count releasing really strong material and classics in their own right. And artists like Ghostemane, Ho99o9, Scar Lxrd creating a strong genre fushion that will bring more people into the genre. The next five years are set up to be the strongest time period for metal music since the ozzfest/early metalcore era!

Jason Bailey

Ski Mask the Slump God is the new generations version of Busta Rhymes

Shady Fazbear

Here's a thing I've been thinking about for your next LA Do you think Raps top lyricists could still hold their place against some Rock/Metal lyricists? Like punchlines/story telling ability ect

Aaron Kuntz

Hallelujah in The O.C. was great.

Aaron Kuntz

Golden Hour by Kacey Musgraves absolutely slaps and deserves a re-look. I think you need to take a nice summer drive with that album on and do a redux.

Gerard Kenah

college radio is dying, maybe even dead and its really sad.

Trevor Hook

We're going to look back at the pandemic as not that influential of a time period on popular music, or even music broadly. There have been a few good pandemic-themed albums, sure, but it won't have the lasting impact that some thought this time last year.

Gus Vaughn

When it comes to Pink Floyd I find Animals and Even thought it’s a little more popular Wish You Were Here to be extremely underrated. They are my 2nd and 3rd favorite Pink Floyd next to the wall and I find Dark Side of the Moon to be overrated I don’t think it’s on the same level nearly as the other three albums

Larry Johnson

funk and jazz fusion are the most fun genres of music to play and no one can tell me otherwise. Even jam band stuff pales in comparison to locking down a nasty funk groove

John Lestrade

Part of the reason Fear Innoculum was such a non-event was the lack of visual identity. The cover art could fit with any album post-Undertow & there were no music videos released. The standard & special editions are admittedly pretty cool, though as they cost $80 & $100+ here (NZ bby) it seems kinda exclusive.

Skylur

Nicki doesn't need to come back

Lasse Lehmann

As great as albums as the glow pt 2 or A crow looked at me are, nothing beats the overwhelming and raw emotional power of Phil's best album Lost Wisdom.

Linus Lindqvist

I think in the following years, due to the tension between record labels and artists, we are going to see a resurgence in Indie music. Artists who feel like they are being used by their own labels will be starving for creative freedom and as such, more artists will go independent and it will make the genre more relevant in the music landscape.

Benjamin Lisboa

This isn't an argument but my boss keeps playing Tom Macdonald on speaker and sings along to his songs, how do I deal with this?

Cory P

Kid Cudi should make a short album/ep where he just vocalizes and hums over beats/instrumentals (kinda like The Great Gig in the Sky)

Emerson B

Train's "Sail Across the Sun" cruise extravaganza sounds like the worst vacation ever

Franco del Rosario

CupcakKe’s “Discounts” and “Bird Box” are among some of the best rap songs in the past 5 years. It’s a shame that with the explosion of great female hiphop artists in the mainstream in 2019, cupcakKe somehow got lost in the shuffle.

Stefan Lal

If the first few tracks on an album were shit, would you still listen to the record all the way through? (If you weren’t reviewing it of course)

Jeff Hauck

People hold widely popular misconceptions about music and cultural moments that I find to be incorrect.

Zach Wiltgen

Peaches would be better without Justin, change my mind.

amiel ang

your next redux review should be Joanna Newsom’s Have One On Me, since it was an early 2010 review that got taken down.

amiel ang

i think that zach de la rocha should be considered as one of the best rappers of all time. de la rocha revolutionized rap metal and is an important voice in the grander view of hip hop — the same way MC Ride and MIA are considered greatest rappers of all time.

amiel ang

true, bad for the environment too!

Ryan The Great

Pitchforks rating score for Amy Winehouse's Back to Black is Badly Rated and deserves a higher score

Ryan The Great

Digable Planets Blowout Comb and Portisheads Dummy are both spy themed albums

amiel ang

overall i think you should do redux reviews on older reviews that got taken down prematurely, there are a whole lot of gems like fever ray, jay reatard (gone too soon) and beach house

Zachary F Parker

The drip meme is just the OBEY hat + pixel sunglasses meme for a younger generation of memers.

Sam Bird

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club is the most underrated band from the early 00s Garage Rock Revival scene.

Patrick Pillow

Chris Webby is one of the best freestylers in modern hip-hop. He is vastly underrated and his references are top tier!

Anthony Showalter

Metal is experiencing a creative upswing with recent albums by bands like Pyrrhon, Imperial Triumphant, Portal, Ad Nauseam, Artificial Brain, Liturgy, Oranssi Pazuzu, Horrendous, and Suffering Hour, and not enough people are paying attention to it.

Kelly Milner

Big Melon has become intolerably woke and is getting worse with every passing day. (Buku small nitpicky buzzkill cringe bs, but especially making a video chastising YG for the silliest of reasons I could imagine.)

Max FK

Have you ever been concerned about your opinions changing pretty drastically on songs/projects? For ex. you weren't a big fan of Pyramids by Frank in your Channel Orange review but it made it onto your decade list, you also had put that one Mitski song in your best of the week but in your review you said you weren't a big fan of it. Do certain songs just take longer for you to form a final opinion on?

jonah branz

Raditude by Weezer has some unironically (and ironically) good songs and it is definitely not their worst project.

jonah branz

Every project DOOM ever released that wasn't under a DOOM name was mid and they only have one or two good tracks.

Roland Webster

The US still has one of the most close minded musical scenes and doesn’t open up to music from around the world like most other musical scenes around the world

Nick Denhalter

I have made a lot of replies in the past trying to get your opinion on Billy Joel. He is an artist I have seen memed, slandered and respected all at the same time. I really want your overall take on him. I feel like his popular singles slowly cause me to rot yet songs like Downeaster Alexa, Vienna, Scenes From An Italian Restaurant, Captain Jack or plenty of his slightly less popular tracks are truly well crafted and creative songs.

astroguy27

"Greatest Albums of All Time" lists are almost always meaningless (I don't mean "personal favorite albums" lists, I'm talking about lists made by music publications). How do you rank albums that were made across completely different time periods, involve completely different genres, and utilized radically different recording technologies and production techniques? Like how do you compare an album like "Highway 61 Revisited" to an album like "To Pimp a Butterfly" and then state that one is "objectively" better than the other (*cough* Rolling Stone mag *cough*)? Plus, most people don't even read those lists to discover new music they haven't heard before, they just check to see if one of their favorite albums made it to the top 50 and ignore everything else.

Bentheath

Migos are the rap version of AC/DC

woolman grundy

Daylyt>>>>Kendrick, Eminem, Cole, Pac, Big, and ALLUMM. The impact and glitch he’s plagued the internet with has changed the culture for rappers in the social media age. Not to mention no one raps better than him. In any aspect.

Cykacabra

Music sounds best when I should have gone to bed like an hour ago. Music that is usually decent becomes god-tier when I'm tired. This probably isn't a hot take but DAMN I love sleepy listenin.

Lauch1337

Some songs get worse when you listen to them in cars

Macy M

I think I read somewhere that putting more than ~44 minutes on one record is when the sound quality starts do become noticeably worse, so I'd disagree with the 1hr mark, but otherwise agree

Hunter Eggers

The rawest talents to come out of Connecticut goes 1. Michael Bolton 2. MGMT 3. Melon

Rose

Colored vinyl sounds better than plain black vinyl. That’s why they cost more.

MeowmiXX

i feel like you've always counted similarity between artists way too heavily against people in your reviews. like obviously if artist b is just a shittier version of artist a it should be mentioned, but personally i care WAY less about if somebody sounds like young thug than i do if the music is good

JWY

As someone who has followed your channel for years and years, it has been fun seeing different segments come and go (ex. letters from fans, Not Good reviews, It came from bandcamp). How do you decide what stays or gets cut? Are there any segments which surprised you in that they were more popular (or less popular) than you expected?

Drake Parker

Your review agenda is a bit confusing, if your main intention is to persuade people to try new albums then why review and break down every track? It almost comes off as spoiling it for your imaginative audience and ruining your own intentions, especially considering that you want us to form our own opinions

Cason Handy

Ride the Lightning walked so Master of Puppets could run

GraydonS99

AJR's songs wouldn't be worse than any other pop if they didn't make the lyrics the embodiment of Adulting is Hard posts

Jack

You da man x

josh

J. Cole is definitely the most overrated rapper in mainstream rap. I mean, I get it the guy can rap as good as other people and does not only talk about cars, drugs, etc. But it is ridiculous how often he gets compared to Kendrick for example. He is not up there.

Alex Alcalde

Social media has destroyed our patience for the ability to appreciate and have patience for books. In this day and age, it’s faster and easier to learn something from a YouTube video or a Twitter thread than it is to read it from a book, the age of books is coming to an end.

Austin Gaines

The Rise of Hobo Johnson is the zoomer Pinkerton - both are lonely, desperate, passionate, and a little bit creepy portrayals of a young angsty white boys struggles with getting sex and love, receiving largely negative reception on release but simultaneously developing a strong cult following

KGB

Who do you prefer: Tierra Whack or Koffee?

Bryan Casas

What is your opinion about Future Funk? Do you think it has potential? Or is it dying out. I think that the genre has potential to hit big if there is not a plethora of lazy production and blatant rip offs.

Christian Lourenco

What would be your dream smash bros final dlc characters? I would pick Spyro and Crash Bandicoot. P.S. I wanna see more of your sweaty Pac-Man gameplay melon

Rossyp

The South Park Chef Aid album is one of the best collaboration projects of all time. Check out that tracklist.

Liam Higgins

Mac Miller is the greatest white rapper of all time. Eminem's last four albums show that he clearly has lost his way, while Mac was on a consistent upward trend in his career (also sidenote please do a redux review for Swimming there was no mention of the lyrics at all)

Toblerone

Supa Hot Fire is the best battle rapper and would body Pusha T

Callahan Hirrel

Everything Josh Homme has done since Them Crooked Vultures just sounds like Them Crooked Vultures.

Jackson

No pen no pad is Denzel Curry’s best song. Sorry, its the best beat he’s ever been on

superdude75561

i know you're not the craziest AnCo fan, but what is your opinion on their debut? (spirit they're gone, spirit they've vanished) to me, it is one of the most original sounding albums i've ever heard, and definitely my favorite AnCo album. avey tare's musical embellishments, from pianos to jarring electronics, to his fragile and youthful voice, crosses with brilliant and invigorating percussion from panda bear. it can be difficult to get into at first, but there is so much beauty and splendor if you listen close. and the fact that they were both only around 20 years old when they made the album adds to its unmatched eccentricity.

Sam Bird

Australia has the best current music scene (artists from the last 10 years or so)

Stefan Lal

That’s just a fact though

Crablord

Failures fantastic planet is easily one of the most underrated albums of all time.

TraJay

Your views on vocal processing seem to be inconsistent. There are times where you praise it (examples: Saturation 1, Charli XCX) and times where you say its to a songs detriment (example: some of the songs on Roadrunner). I’m curious how you define what context its bad vs good.

Callahan Hirrel

Are you aware of Ruff Criminal and if so what're your thoughts?

MyNameIsJeff

The Oscars (and the Grammys, all those “industry” awards, really) are fucking stupid and I can’t help but judge the kinds of people who take them seriously.

Paul

Don’t 👏 call 👏 an 👏 album 👏 derivative 👏 unless 👏 you 👏 literally 👏 invented 👏 calculus Thanks

John Tatara

Do you think you’d have more 10s if you reviewed music in a different decade like the 90s or 2000s? In other words, do you think there were significantly more than five 10/10 records in any of those decades and are the 2010s weak by comparison? Do you think any 2010s albums that received a near-perfect score will possibly grow on you to become a 10 since their flaws are becoming less apparent?

Connor Zicari

Its not that Queen is necessarily overrated; they have at least 15-20 bangers. However, I feel that they lack deep cuts in their discog. I find their albums to be forgettable minus a few hits.

Nathaniel Zaccagnini

If you were to rank an artist by track record and album releases, Nick Cave would be number 1. He has like 14 good albums, on god.

Gustavo Suzuki

Albums are dumb. In order to finish an album and make it coherent, artists end up repeating themselves and making lots of fillers. Musicians should just release songs whenever they create one. I bet we would have better and more genuine music that way.

Ryan The Great

MF DOOM POTHUMUES ALBUM OR KENDRICK LAMAR ALBUM

buckfastbjork

Many hip-hop fans place too much value on lyrical complexity, while I would never deny that these artists are great lyricists in fact they are some of the most skilled and intelligent writers in HH but a lot of times, less is more and a simple but clever or poetic bar or set of bars can be much more profound and engaging than an ultra complicated and almost saturated level of wordplay and metaphors

Elvis Fritz

How do you manage your time??

amiel ang

i really like this question and i hope he responds

Kyle Cahill

You should consider doing focused/topic based let's argue videos on your patreon account