Snobs, RH fans?
October 19, 2007
According to McCabe (2007) “at least 99.9 per cent of all Radiohead fans are the worst kind of musical snobs” [1]. There are two points of this claim I disagree with. Firstly, where is the evidence to back this claim? Secondly, “99.9%”? Who uses that pseudo-quantifier anymore?
McCabe, founder, editor and publisher of the subscription travel newsletter, Dream of Italy, goes on with equally baseless claims as “these pseudo-intellectual cultural elitists still pretend to like the unlistenable and inexcusably indulgent Kid A and Amnesiac records”.
I ask, why is Kid A –for instance– being falsely dubbed, by McCabe as unlistenable when its average peak chart ranking out of 18 countries music charts is 2.78 [2]? To me, that’s the indication of a pretty good album. Furthermore, it holds a position on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time [3].
I say three things about this journalist:
1. With her writing style she’s trying to deliver an objective view that represents a good portion of the interested public. However, she comes across as poorly educated, closed-minded and subjective.
2. She needs to lose the cliche, factless facts.
3. I take it her interest in music is quite basic and the complexity and meaning of albums like Kid A and Amnesiac was too much.
References:
[1] McCabe, K (2007). Most Radiohead Fans are Music Snobs.
[2] Wikipedia, (2000). Kid A: Charts.
[3] Wikipedia, (2007). Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
