Toward a Review of Montero
Oct. 26th, 2021 12:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitoutI posted over on FB some brief thoughts on Lil Nas X’s album _Montero_. Short form is simple: it is really awesome, and stands up incredibly well to heavy repetition.
Here’s my once-revised post from FB:
“ I’ve been spending more time listening to my stereo (that Bluetooth Receiver by Denon that R. found turns out to have been Just What I Needed to find time to actually listen to music again at home).
Lil Nas X’s album _Montero_ is unbelievably awesome. There is such a broad emotional and musical range, and all of it feels so goooood to listen to. I wish I had a better vocabulary to describing what’s going on, and why it feels so good, but for whatever reason, I lack that vocabulary. Fortunately, not being able to detail it in no way interferes with my ability to find joy in it.
Heartily recommended.
ETA:
I have now read several reviews of _Montero_ and for the most part, they are talking about his twitter activity, that shoe prank thing with MSCHF, collabs with famous people (long list) (also, the Uber Eats ads are hilarious, so I understand the temptation to mention), and generally not engaging much with the content of the album beyond Oh It’s Not Just New Celeb Complain-y Songs. Now, to be clear, I actually _love_ I Got Famous And It Kinda Sucks Sometimes songs, and I always have. To put some meat on this, one of my ring tones is a clip from AJR’s I’m Not Famous. _Even if half this album was just Being Famous Has Problems_, that would probably only make me love it more. However, this is a very superficial level of engagement with the material. I’ve listened to this album at least 30 times at this point, and I’m still actively looking forward to the next listen … and I still can’t sing along to all the lyrics, so at least this once, it is not _just_ about the lyrics. The sound is so layered on this thing that it feels symphonic / operatic at times; I wish I could find even one review that got into that aspect of it.”
But that is still only scratching the surface.
There are genre issues. The album and the artist are broadly recognized as “queer” and “rap”, which is great. I mean, who could argue, look at the people working on the album with him. Duh. But the album and the artist are also really clearly “country”. But given what happened with Old Town Road, hardly surprising that there has been a general agreement among all parties not to mention the “country” part. The reviews definitely mention Outkast, which is a way of gesturing at it, I suppose? Another thing that comes along with the Outkast mention is the outsized persona, and the careful organization at the album level, which in turn is part of why I keep thinking of it in operatic terms.
But none of that really does an adequate job of conveying all the layers to the music. There is so much _sound_ on this thing.
There’s a certain kind of person out there who can be relied upon, when asked what kind of music they like, to name not a band or a singer or a genre, but rather to claim they like all kinds of music “but not”, and then a list of things that includes one or more of rap, country and opera. I love the idea of monetizing heavily the intersection of all the things that the people who can’t tell you what they like, but only list of what they don’t.
ETA still more:
This is a much better review than any of the ones I read but did not link to:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/alessadominguez/lil-nas-x-montero-album-review
Here’s my once-revised post from FB:
“ I’ve been spending more time listening to my stereo (that Bluetooth Receiver by Denon that R. found turns out to have been Just What I Needed to find time to actually listen to music again at home).
Lil Nas X’s album _Montero_ is unbelievably awesome. There is such a broad emotional and musical range, and all of it feels so goooood to listen to. I wish I had a better vocabulary to describing what’s going on, and why it feels so good, but for whatever reason, I lack that vocabulary. Fortunately, not being able to detail it in no way interferes with my ability to find joy in it.
Heartily recommended.
ETA:
I have now read several reviews of _Montero_ and for the most part, they are talking about his twitter activity, that shoe prank thing with MSCHF, collabs with famous people (long list) (also, the Uber Eats ads are hilarious, so I understand the temptation to mention), and generally not engaging much with the content of the album beyond Oh It’s Not Just New Celeb Complain-y Songs. Now, to be clear, I actually _love_ I Got Famous And It Kinda Sucks Sometimes songs, and I always have. To put some meat on this, one of my ring tones is a clip from AJR’s I’m Not Famous. _Even if half this album was just Being Famous Has Problems_, that would probably only make me love it more. However, this is a very superficial level of engagement with the material. I’ve listened to this album at least 30 times at this point, and I’m still actively looking forward to the next listen … and I still can’t sing along to all the lyrics, so at least this once, it is not _just_ about the lyrics. The sound is so layered on this thing that it feels symphonic / operatic at times; I wish I could find even one review that got into that aspect of it.”
But that is still only scratching the surface.
There are genre issues. The album and the artist are broadly recognized as “queer” and “rap”, which is great. I mean, who could argue, look at the people working on the album with him. Duh. But the album and the artist are also really clearly “country”. But given what happened with Old Town Road, hardly surprising that there has been a general agreement among all parties not to mention the “country” part. The reviews definitely mention Outkast, which is a way of gesturing at it, I suppose? Another thing that comes along with the Outkast mention is the outsized persona, and the careful organization at the album level, which in turn is part of why I keep thinking of it in operatic terms.
But none of that really does an adequate job of conveying all the layers to the music. There is so much _sound_ on this thing.
There’s a certain kind of person out there who can be relied upon, when asked what kind of music they like, to name not a band or a singer or a genre, but rather to claim they like all kinds of music “but not”, and then a list of things that includes one or more of rap, country and opera. I love the idea of monetizing heavily the intersection of all the things that the people who can’t tell you what they like, but only list of what they don’t.
ETA still more:
This is a much better review than any of the ones I read but did not link to:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/alessadominguez/lil-nas-x-montero-album-review