let me use an example. fine dining just for the purpose of showing off wealth or status is pretentious. wearing all over monogram logo crap for no reason other than showing off your wealth and status and that you wanna be seen as cool and fashionable despite not really caring about the medium of fashion itself is pretentious. reading a book at a coffee shop in a conspicuous way so that everyone can see how smart you are. doing something just to impress upon people how impressive you are. so it very much involves authenticity

this is why i’d hesitate to call an earnest work of art by itself pretentious. it’s more if the artist said something like "only intellectuals will understand the true meaning of my piece." im just not sure the lyrics of the song themselves can necessarily be pretentious unless they betray actual pretentious sentiment

pretension is kind of like elitism, you feel me? so if Prince came out and said “you need to have a certain IQ to understand these lyrics. they’re not for the masses” when they really can be understood by anyone then yeah, that’s pretentious. but if he says “i wrote that so that all people could hear my message because i desperately want to make the world better”, being completely earnest, how can that be pretentious? it might not be your cup of tea, it might be corny, the lyrics might be bad to you, but he’s not being elitist about it, and he’s not trying to impress anyone, he’s trying to help people and get his art out there. that’s not pretentious if we’re going by the actual definition of the word

i think the definition of pretentious has gotten confused from ignoramus niggas throwing it around way too much. pretension seems to be directly commenting on the artist’s intention, which is really hard to get out of a work itself unless it explicitly states it. kodak calls death grips pretentious because he doesn’t understand them and they don’t make unchallenging music for the average person, but whenever they’re interviewed they’re down to earth and humble about their art and just hope people get something out of it or just don’t care what you think at all, and how they’re gonna do it regardless. they might talk about high minded concepts here or there, but that’s not pretentious, that’s just what their art is about. people just call it that because they don’t get it, feel insecure about how they don’t get it, and thus respond rebelliously by being an ignorant a****** about it instead of sitting down with it and giving it a chance. because i mean death grips is really not that hard to get into lmfao. calling them or jpegmafia pretentious just tells on yourself about how little music you actually listen to, really. these niggas are calling music or people pretentious for just existing

so yeah, you might find them cringe, bad, preachy, not very well written, not very original… all that. but pretentious is a very specific kind of criticism that is thrown around way too much and it is very much misunderstood IMO. i just don’t think it’s something people should be using unless they really know it for a fact, and the only way you can really know that is by interrogating what the artist themselves has said, or whether there is like blatantly pretentious s*** in it.

i notice people use pretentious to describe any music that takes itself serious

same with calling it critic bait or award bait, it’s the penalty you receive for showing effort lol

👆🏾

That’s a bit too narrow definition to me, personally. I don’t think it necessarily needs to be “elitist”. It certainly can, but I don’t think it needs to take on that specific characteristic to qualify as pretentiousness.

In this song, Prince acts as if he’s lifting the veil for society, showing them how media has them all fooled. Is there a level of truth to it? yeah. But he’s not some 3000iq individual for saying it. He’s not saying anything groundbreaking here with his “Truth” — and thats what I find particularly pretentious about it.

It’s a word that gets thrown around way too much imo

that’s pretty much objectively true tho lol

if your basis on not liking it is that it’s “pretentious”

you probably think it’s some over the top experimentalism but if you’re hip to any 80s rock or rnb you wouldn’t be saying that at all lol

i mean i don’t wanna come off as rude, but that’s just kind of the definition of the word in every dictionary and resource i look at. i didn’t dictate that, that’s just what it is. it’s right there in the definition, “attempting to impress”. it’s not really arguable imo, kind of why i said the definition has been confused by people over using it. if you choose to use it differently i mean that’s fine i guess, i don’t agree though. so i guess we just have to agree to disagree.

even with what you’re saying here, i think what you’re really trying to say/a more accurate turn of phrase here would be “pseudo intellectual”. he’s not trying to impress anyone, but he is speaking on s*** he doesn’t really know that much about (maybe he does, just for sake of argument let’s say he doesn’t) but i wouldn’t necessarily agree with that either. like it’s not like he’s trying to cram verbose language in there. sounds like he’s spinning a blues number you might hear at a dive bar, if anything, which is the opposite of pretentious lmfao. i’d also say the song is about more than just what you said, not that that matters that much.

preachy, sure, but pretentious? nah

I’m not saying you’re defining it wrong, but I think being “elitist” is just one way of being pretentious. I would describe what Prince does in this song as trying to impress others with his “wisdom”. I think “pseudo-intellectual” is sorta inherently pretentious for that exact reason.

yeah but that brings us right back to his intention with the song, which neither of us know unless he discussed it at some point. how can you know he’s trying to impress people? im not reading that at all, im reading an earnest attempt to communicate with a universal listener

this is exactly what im talking about with this whole debate, i just feel like there are other words you could use that are far more subjective and would more accurately describe your feelings for the lyrics. you’re free to say whatever you want of course, im not trying to police your speech or anything, but i feel like you calling it pretentious is more reading into something that you can’t actually confirm, like a vibe you’re getting, instead of engaging with what’s actually here, which is basically an earnestly delivered sermon.

i think we just philosophically see the word differently. i see pretentious as a more objective description that is misused, and less something to subjectively describe my feelings/interpretations of art/an artist. and that’s kind of my point, which is that this word has been twisted into that when that was never what it was meant to be used for.

also you said earlier that a lot of these lyrics are just obvious s***. but maybe it’s not obvious to some people listening you know? in which case the song is just not for you, which there’s nothing wrong with of course. you also gotta consider the time period it released in

This is not what pretentious means

I agree with your last point. I don’t really see it as an objective description whatsoever. That would be like calling something objectively “cool” to me.

im glad we can agree on that but how is that like calling something cool? the definition of cool is basically something fashionable or attractive within a certain period of time or just whenever. it’s actually a little hard to define, but that would be the closest thing to a general working definition because it’s pretty amorphous.

whereas pretension is describing like an objective behavior or attitude people can engage in or possess. i don’t see the comparison at all

Because I think “pretentiousness” is subjective. I think very rarely could you use it in an objective manner. Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s how I’ve always interpreted the word.

Because I could say Prince is looking to impress with these lyrics, you could just as easily argue against that, as you did earlier. There’s no way for us to fully know if he’s being pretentious in a fully objective manner or not.

Ofc and you raise a good point in that second paragraph. I think I’m gonna agree with you there.

but that’s the thing, the burden of proof would be on you to prove he’s being pretentious. you could still subjectively think that, but unless you have proof he wrote this with pretentious ambitions, that’s just kind of your opinion. i understand you think being pretentious is subjective, and i can’t really argue with your opinion i suppose, but the way i see it is that people aren’t pretentious unless they’re proven to be or the text is self evidently pretentious based on these dictionary definitions i’ve been offering up, which these lyrics are not. again looks like we’re just gonna have to agree to disagree

sorry bro I deleted it because I saw your edits oh wait it says you didn’t edit it I think so I guess I just didn’t see the second part… either way my bad

LMFAO

But most likely we couldn’t prove he’s being pretentious, by any objective assessment. That’s why I would argue in favor of its subjective use as being a valid one.

Like you said, we sorta just have a different philosophy on the word. I don’t know what could be said to sway either of us to the other side, I think we both understand eachothers perspectives here.

but not being able to prove it doesn’t mean the word can be properly used subjectively. it still describes an objective thing, which is a pattern of behavior with a definable motivation. i do hate to tell you this because you’ve been such a good sport but you’re just kinda wrong lol. saying this is pretentious becomes kind of a baseless insult against prince’s character, because you have no basis to say whether he’s being pretentious or not because you’re speculating on his intentions with the song when there’s no way you could know them.

you have a right to speculate that he is pretentiously secretly trying to impress people with bluesy mumbo-jumbo, but that doesn’t change the definition of the word and how there is no evidence that he’s being pretentious. i just don’t get why you can’t just call it preachy or that you dislike it/it doesn’t do anything for you or any other criticisms that are better founded and more detailed, because based on everything you’ve said that’s what you actually feel about this song. when you call something pretentious you are directly addressing the character of the creator. why not just address the song?

to me as far as i can tell he’s just earnestly singing a song about wanting to help people open their eyes to the system and be more truthful with themselves and others and all that jazz, and that’s what the evidence says, the evidence being that prince was never elitist about who could listen to or be moved by his music and how the lyrics are clearly just trying to relate to people and speak to them, not to a specific elite demographic or individual.

to me it’s almost a bad thing to call that pretentious because it’s on its face a benevolent and even literally unpretentious song lol. i mean it’s literally an acoustic ballad, it’s unpretentious by design. you could argue that makes it seem fake or forced, but that’s a whole other topic and there isn’t even really a lot of evidence for that either, it’s just a guy playing a guitar really well and singing his heart out. sometimes artists really aren’t trying to trick you or manipulate you, they’re really just speaking their truth. the more people that try to do that the better in my book. i mean this with all due respect truly and still appreciate how this has been a civil discussion this whole time :) i do feel like im learning a lot about how people think about this

Yeah, I just can’t get behind this idea that “pretentious” is always used to describe an objective thing. I don’t think either one of us are bending the definition of the word here either, we just look at it differently.

and with art, I don’t think “pretentiousness” can only be attributed to the artist, and not the art itself. I mean, the art is just an expression of the artist anyways. I would also say your interpretation of him being “earnest” is subjective as well, and if by going by your logic, you also have a burden of proof there. And if we can only describe art using objectivity.. well, then we’re in trouble here. Shut the site down.

I sorta gotta resort back to a couple earlier points of mine. 1. “pretentious” can be used subjectively 2. pretentiousness isn't inherently elitist 3. I don’t know where we can go from here.

Like you said, it’s an interesting discussion. I do think people get carried away with the word, but just maybe to a slightly lesser extent than you.

“you don’t have the palette to consume it” is very pretentious lol

itt: pretentious music fans being pretentious about their pretentious music being called pretentious