On the other side of the coin, The Flaming Lips and PC Music are overt: they give off the impression of being advanced, but the madness is too direct to mean anything.
THE LIFE OF PABLO HAS IT LEAKED MOVIE
As Klosterman also writes in his book, “The most advanced hard-rock album ever was Music from “The Elder” by Kiss, the soundtrack for a movie that does not exist”. Throughout history, there are have been countless artists who have advanced or been overt. Sound confusing? In his book, A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas, the prolific music journalist Chuck Klosterman described the two opposing sides of Advancement Theory in three succinct sentences: Overt artists appear to be advanced, but they are not. Yet if Lou Reed did the opposite of what was expected of him, then he wouldn't be advanced: he would be overt. Yet while different from the albums that birthed them into stardom, the future work from Reed and Bowie doesn’t stray too far from the sort of bold creativity one expects from both artists, which is an important factor in the Advancement theory. "Who were we not to give Bob Dylan the benefit of the doubt? If David Bowie wants to do a duet with Mick Jagger, isn’t it possible that he knows a bit more about what is good than we do?"
" opened up a whole world of music we had rejected before without truly listening to it," said Hartley in an interview. So is David Bowie, as only an advanced individual could release “Dancing in the Street”, his collaboration with Mick Jagger. He released Metal Machine Music in 1975, an album that was so ahead of its time in beckoning industrial rock and abstract noise that it flew straight over the heads of most critics, including his own label execs at RCA – one of whom described it as "torture music". a true genius – does not do what is expected of them, but also does not do the opposite of what is expected of them. (*Advanced Geniuses are also expected to have “at least a self-portrait on one of their album covers, displaying their sunglasses or hairstyle”, but as the theory has been taken on by a second generation and moved beyond the 1980s, this tenet has become less true and essential)Īs well as ticking the boxes for these five principles, an advanced individual – i.e. You must have alienated your original fans. You must have done great work for more than 15 years. Immortalised in Hartley’s 2010 book The Advanced Genius Theory: Are They Out of Their Minds or Ahead of Their Time?, the five basic tenets of the theory are: As time went on, the pair used Reed’s career advancement to develop the Advanced Genius Theory.Īs a progressive form of thinking, the theory can be used to ascertain whether well-established musicians like Reed, who are perceived to be terrible or have “lost it”, are, in fact, advanced beyond our level of understanding. One day, while eating some calorific pizza, they figured it out: if Lou Reed was ahead of his time when he was in the Velvet Underground, then he must have still been ahead of his time in the 80s, and they were just like all the people who didn’t understand Velvet Underground. At the time, the two founders of the theory, Jason Hartley and Britt Bergman, were two students who couldn’t understand how Lou Reed came to be so terrible in the late 1980s. The Advanced Genius Theory was created in the grand hallway of forward-thinking individuals (AKA – a Pizza Hut in South Carolina) in the 1990s. That’s the way West describes himself, and it’s the metric people use to decide whether to bow at his feet or to shrug him off as someone who is good, but not that good. No: I’m talking about these mythical figures who seemingly materialise from some form of rare matter and into our consciousness once in a lifetime. Any sentient, levelheaded person with an indiscriminative view will tell you that West’s portfolio bleeds serious talent. Yet between them, there’s been one consistent and just as debatable undercurrent: Is Kanye West a genius, an asshole, or is he both?Īt this point it’s important to state that I’m not talking about a garden-variety genius. These discussions are interesting, and they can subconsciously inform our world-view. So often throughout his career, West has been like a mirror we use to look back on ourselves. His canon is so wide-ranging that we can look to him as a portal to discuss topics from ass-play and reality TV, to race, depression, and personal debt.
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