Authenticity
What does it mean for something to be 'authentic'?
Keely Adler and
Authenticity
“[On one end, you have] auto-tune that perfectly puts music into tune…which is sort of flawless and faultless. [In contrast, the other side] is clumsy, awkward, crude and unfinished things that we all actually like in the right context.
The reason we like the Velvet Underground is not for their gloss. It's for their roughness. For the feeling we... See more
The reason we like the Velvet Underground is not for their gloss. It's for their roughness. For the feeling we... See more
Brian Eno on why we’re drawn to the new and authentic
‘Do not try to be the best. Be the only.’ It helps me believe in a positive-sum world—where my success does not hinge on the failure of others, and I am not in a rat-race.” — Nishant Jain
Caroline Cala Donofrio • The Best Advice I've Ever Heard
Donald Glover in an interview with The New Yorker: “Authenticity is the journey of figuring out who you are through what you make.”
Meanwhile, a fixation on honesty continues to pervade popular arts discourse, music included. Indie scenesters have historically been the ones to agitate most over authenticity, but in the golden age of confessional pop music, the aesthetic concern with honesty isn’t limited to subculture anymore. Direct access to artists’ personal lives seems more
... See moreDirt • Dirt: The Decay of Lying...
Confessional art can be beautiful, and it can be terrible; either way, to love it only as a representation of what we already know is to deny it, and ourselves, a much richer complexity. Pop music is where fantasies are played out, turned into mansions and lived in, where five hundred people can tumble out of a clown car and every dream comes true.
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