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Comment by 6stringmerc | Hacker News Reader

In some circles, sure, but in other circles he's known as the guy who tried to unapologetically rip off Aphex Twin[1], ruined a perfectly good Daft Punk song, and is pretty much a punchline. As in, I don't think he ever got beyond mediocre. Mediocrity and accessibility are significant elements to success in popular music; kind of like the other side of the coin to Max Martin's genius when it comes to the perfect song formula which is complexity posing as simplicity.

[1]http://pitchfork.com/news/56459-aphex-twin-speaks-on-his-new...

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Really good pop is almost never mediocre. If it was mediocre, it wouldn't break through. The difficulty and sophistication of ongoing pop success is underestimated.

There's an important distinction between "I don't like this", and "This is not good". Most people fail to make that distinction - they think that if they don't like something, it must be bad. Taste and quality aren't particularly congruent. (As a corollary, sometimes we like things that are actually bad.)

Well I'll have to disagree with you in that my belief is really good pop has to be mediocre otherwise it will alienate its intended demographics for maximum monetary gain - the 14 year old girls & their mothers group. That's what drives pop music sales. They don't dig complexity, they latch on to simple things. While the theme song for 'Frozen' is most definitely a well crafted tune, it's absolutely engineered to not be challenging or revolutionary.

Regarding quality, subjectively speaking individual composition/talents/efforts tend to influence one's opinion of the work seen/heard/etc. This is why music does, in some avenues, resemble a competitive avenue in the collection of skills and techniques. For a not-insignificant number of people, Kanye's music is subjectively bad in quality, which is irrespective of popularity.

> ruined a perfectly good Daft Punk song

It's not like he painted over the Mona Lisa. You can still go listen to the original Daft Punk song if you prefer it - it sounds just the same as it did before Kanye sampled it.

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