This word doesn't mean a damn thing anymore honestly. There are actual cases of being pretentious, but for the most part, it's a misused word. Maybe you don't wanna actively engage with whatever is getting put out by the artist. That's perfectly fine. It's doesn't make them pretentious.

Idk if i’d call these people pretentious id sooner just call them stupid

Really long song/album titles like fiona apple’s when the pawn immediately come to mind when i think of pretentiousness in music

merzbow goes hard

Artists with no taste or real sense of direction replacing good songwriting with ideas and aesthetics that add nothing to the music

so jaden smith

doesn’t make sense when people try to pin an artist as pretentious either cause of their fanbase

reminds me of how someone called Radiohead pretentious and their reasoning was also ‘cause of their fans like nigga what

they’re just making music bro

Came itt to say this. I like some of Jaden music but he lowkey is pretentious

he would definitely fit the word pretentious, one of the few that warrant it

SYRE has vague mythological/Biblical imagery and some s*** about Icarus, being a rebel child but it doesn’t really contribute or mean anything over the course of the album

99% of the time I feel like the term is used as a get out of jail free card for listeners who can't engage with music outside of their comfort zone

But yes

a lot of people ITT defined it correct but I can’t help but think that some users who constantly use pretentious would be calling niggas like Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye post Let’s Get It On pretentious and would unironically stan Disco Duck and s*** if this were the 70s lmfaoo

Hate how the word is thrown around now but I get it

A lot of the greatest artists are pretentious though on different levels lol

there is no pretentious music

only pretentious fans

wait

I think most pretentiousness in art apaces is in the audience.

Even the most pretentious of artists ultimately just want to cook and express which comes with enough authenticity to let slide imo. There are exceptions.

But the audience who uses someone elses art as social currency or to somehow boost their own ego is what i think of. (Rushing to call something pretentious is a relevant example) This obviously is most common in music fandom.

Then off that i think the stench that comes from the fan spaces sometimes latches on to the artist then boom they’re seen as pretentious (or any other relevant (adjective)

Theres more to being pretentious than just being a know it all smartass imo. Its about the intention and the role of the ego. The ego is naturally a part of the creative process. Not as much as an audience member.

Before anyone jumps to hate, I'm a huge Kdot and Tyler fan, and when I think of pretentious those are the two artist that come to mind. For Tyler I think it's pretty self explanatory since quite a few mentioned him, for Kendrick, I always thought sometimes he come's off as pretentious but this recent interview where he explained what NLU meant, I had to roll my eyes reading that explanation.

But also

pretentious for the meathead anti intellectual niggas on here just means anything they don’t understand and feel bad for not getting, no matter how much they cope otherwise

i also think that maybe they were made to feel bad about it by someone which i don’t agree with, if you don’t get something i like i would make an effort to explain it in a reasonable way and not patronize but i know that most people wouldn’t do that. but that doesn’t excuse you being an ignoramus

i for one very rarely use pretentious to describe anything. pretentiousness often intertwined with corniness and inauthenticity for me. I would have to think about it for a bit to even come up with an example of something that I feel is like straight pretentious… i guess like most music reviews by pseuds on RYM or pitchfork

Yooooo I couldn’t put my finger on it but I did the same thing when I read that interview.l

Dude is great but when ever I get a glimpse into who he is through interviews he’s way too subtle and calculated.

When the pretence is in baseless claims

Assuming someone is stupid for listening to Pop
Intelligent for listening to Jazz
Etc.

At one point Rocky was a little pretentious but he’d actually deliver so it ruled it out.

see this to me is the kind of dumbass im talking about. this guy says that music that is just existing is somehow pretentious. like they just throw this word around and don’t even know what it means or have their own stupid definition for it.

by no metric is DG pretentious. they literally just make their art and don’t bother anyone about it, you can choose to listen to it or not. they don’t exaggerate its importance or try to come across as better than anyone else. when they’re interviewed about their music they don’t try to make it into a bigger deal than it actually is, they just talk about their art and that you can listen to it if you want and if you don’t like it that’s fine. how the f*** is that pretentious

it being difficult for you to understand doesn’t make it pretentious, you’re just stupid/close minded/conservative/immature or whatever it is. you don’t have to like it or even understand it, but that doesn’t make it pretentious. if anything people like this are pretentious for exaggerating the importance of their opinions in their “objective” appraisal of what the essence of someone else’s art is. you’re no better than some anti-art republican at that point.

watch a meathead call me pretentious for even writing out this post.

p4k

it insists upon itself

yeah i’d say these mfs are pretentious too. you can prefer certain styles of music but thinking they’re objectively better because or something is some nazi s***