tfw you're the Hubski user in question. Anyway. This was an incredibly interesting article to me. Adele is, at face value, one of the blandest and most predictable songwriters and performers in all of music. The point is made in the article that this done in "Hello" through the songwriting and production itself, which I think is a great point. Listen to "Hello". Does this sound like a song from 2015? Not at all, it has a complete lack of any influence from say 1980 on, there's nothing even close to hinting to punk, rap, electronic, anything other than pop music dating back to when 60s. And yet, when you talk to people who have liked this song, they all seem to have loved it. I've tried voicing displeasure with Adele and it's gone...okay. There is very much a unification among Adele fans, how else would she be able to sell out huge arenas in the West? From trying to articulate this to people, I've been met with a lot of opposition and friction, like it's not a natural thing to actively be disinterested in her and her music. If we are to say we enjoy Adele because of the purity and cleanness, the "natural" sound of her production, then what does that say about our valuation of white culture to other cultures? Even if it's not an explicitly "us vs. them" mentality when it comes to Adele, it does show a gravitation towards conservatism and "whiteness". I will grant that there are people who simply like a good pop song. But to dig deeper and look at why Adele is insanely popular while musicians like SZA, Shamir, etc. are not goes down to musical conservatism and favoritism of things that are safer, more in line with our expectations of music and culture. Relating it explicitly to White Supremacist might be going a little far, but the point is there.I stole this from another Hubski user who was foolish enough to put in on Facebook before Hubski.
"The problem with “Hello” and Trump is that they frame whiteness as the “natural” horizon against which all differences appear unnatural, disgusting, and unfit for inclusion in their “us.”"
People who respond emotionally to “Hello” share the same interpretive horizon, the same set of implicit knowledges, habits, patterns of communication, intuitions, and so on. If this response is so natural that it transcends language, culture, even species, then people who don’t share this response must have a defective, unnatural interpretive horizon—one that’s illiberal, incapable of the tolerance for difference that good liberal subjects and societies must demonstrate. (This parallels European stereotypes of Muslim immigrants as illiberal, intolerant of secularism and women’s rights.) Here, liberalism isn’t a consciously articulated political view, but a quality of one’s intuitive, affective, non-conceptual orientation to the world.
I effin hate "Hello." It makes me angry. People in my life kept coming up to me, going, "Don't you love Hello?" My response to it is that no, that there's no one in my life who I want to speak with that I no longer speak with. I don't know. The people I want to have in my life have always managed to come back into my life. I think the song is sentimental and seeks to pull emotion out of its listeners in a cheap way. That being said, I couldn't break down why or how I feel this way, but it's very similar to how I began to feel about the re-boot of Doctor Who after I got through the first 4 seasons of it or so. I began to feel used. I think it's because both are clearly going for the gut and the heartstrings...which would be fine, except if you take a step back, their aim is so clear. It's clear from the start both of these "items" (for lack of a better categorization) are winding up to leave you with a punch in the gut. But what I find is that it hurts a lot more, and a lot more really, when I don't see that punch coming.