I hear metal fans use the old “sales doesn’t equal quality” argument all the time. Quality of music is totally subjective but metal fans seem to take a dim view of certain pop acts outselling their favourite metal bands and then go on to say stuff like “we’ll all those people buying the pop stuff are just sheep and only buying albums because they’ve been told the artist is good and they are really stupid people”. It’s like some metal fans think they have a superior music taste to anyone who listens to stuff like Justin Bieber in your example. You don’t have a superior taste in music you just have a different taste in music.
someone like Justin Bieber is important in the world of music as he has sold over 150 million records. That means he has a lot of fans who like like what he does. Just because you might think his music sucks doesn’t mean that he isn’t important and significant to the world of music nor does it mean everyone who listens to him and buys his records are just dim witted idiots.
Disagree. First of all, I never said his fans are idiots or anything. I just disputed that quality and sales have any correlation. I also did not speak of importance. Bieber's music is in itself less detailed and less dynamic, basically built on cheap drumloops, most basic chord structure, lyrics without topics, samples and autotune galore. It is, from a composers point of view and in terms of production, a very cheap product.
Now you may say you like a cheap cheeseburger 1000 times more than fresh cuisine, and thats fine. Taste. But that does not change the fact that the cheeseburger is junkfood, even if it may taste better. Some days I prefer junkfood too, but I would never call it good quality.
Quality is objective. Taste is not.
I am not bashing TNOTB. It IS a good album, despite some terrible songs, because the rest is very good. It just does not live up to its reputation in my opinion. Neither in Maidens catalogue, nor in Metal in general.
And of course a filler can be chosen as lead single. It happened countless times. Black Sabbath's Paranoid (was written in 5 minutes to fulfill the albums running time). Extreme's More Than Words. Mr Big's To Be With You. Stranglers' Golden Brown. Visage's Fade To Grey. All of them were intended as fillers, all of them became massive hits. There are surely many more.
Now, if RTTH was written as a filler or not, I honestly don't know. Maybe it was intended as a possible hit all along, and in that case the term would not be appropriate. Okay. I used the term mainly because in my ears, that song does not reach higher level than a typical filler. But okay, then I apologize for calling it a filler and call it a turd instead. But then people complain that I am hating.
Abd here we come full circle: while you say Metal fans are high and mighty and think they are better, I say Metal fans tend to see certain opinions as some sort of natural law. Like you HAVE to love TNOTB when you are a metalhead.
I am interested in arguments of people explaning me why they think I am wrong and why something is good, but record sales really are no argument at all.
