Comments

You must log in or register to comment.

SlantLogoEPU t1_j6nclwf wrote

Bruce Dickinson

Can fly almost anything

Olympic class fencer

Speaks 6 languages

Beat cancer

Was smuggled ito Sarajevo for a concert during the Bosnian war

Best selling author

11

blay12 t1_j6nbj2k wrote

Lol since when are musicians considered the least intelligent of those in the arts?

7

[deleted] OP t1_j6nf1z8 wrote

[deleted]

−12

blay12 t1_j6nkf6d wrote

So what, you're limiting your pool of "musicians" to modern musicians you've heard give interviews? No classical/broadway/film composers? No jazz or classical instrumentalists? No dead musicians?

At the very least go listen to some interviews of modern greats like Sondheim or Bernstein talking music theory/composition/conducting/etc, because they definitely don't come across as unintelligent lol.

5

[deleted] OP t1_j6nm5zf wrote

[deleted]

−2

blay12 t1_j6nphiu wrote

It honestly just feels like you've got a pretty limited view of "musicians" and are just running off of an assumption you've made based on the music you listen to specifically (and interviews with those artists), rather than the wider world of music as a whole.

I can keep listing intelligent musicians for you (hell, take literally anyone from the album I'm currently listening to and they'll all tick that "intelligent" box, as well as articulate, which is apparently more important to you - album is Goat Rodeo Sessions with Chris Thile, Yo Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, and Stuart Duncan), but reading your other comments it seems like it would be an exercise in futility.

2

[deleted] OP t1_j6nqgws wrote

[deleted]

−2

blay12 t1_j6nrjjl wrote

I am literally a musician and production engineer with multiple degrees in the field and over a decade of professional experience, don't default to such a lazy assumption about how much music I listen to in order to start a useless pissing contest to try to change the subject.

I'm sure next you'll just say that a decade of working in the field is nothing, and that because you're far older than me I don't really understand music like your generation does and still ignore the point that literally all of this is based on assumptions you've made.

2

[deleted] OP t1_j6num7h wrote

[deleted]

0

blay12 t1_j6nvim5 wrote

Lmao this coming from a guy that probably doesn't even know who Pearl Jam is. Get on my level sweetheart.

1

[deleted] OP t1_j6ny7mx wrote

[deleted]

0

blay12 t1_j6nyf6j wrote

probably don't even know the words to their famous song "smells like toon sprite"

1

[deleted] OP t1_j6nzebc wrote

[deleted]

0

blay12 t1_j6o2ot5 wrote

Probably the same way I memorized the full score of Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique or performed Escamillo in Carmen or arranged/composed 100+ songs for various jazz/vocal/rock/indie/etc ensembles lol - with a bit of time and effort. I'm very happy for you that you're so proud of yourself for having an eclectic musical knowledge, but you're far from the only person in this world (or even on this website) who does.

I hate to break it to you, but there are thousands (likely more) of people out there in this world with a deeper and more complete knowledge of music and musicians than you'll ever have. Maybe I'm one of them, maybe I'm not, but the fact that you haven't met someone like that is in no way proof that you never will, nor is it proof that they don't exist and you're the king of musical knowledge.

1

[deleted] OP t1_j6o4xpl wrote

[deleted]

1

blay12 t1_j6o8op1 wrote

Well if I've learned one thing from living in the world of professional musicians and musical scholars, there's always someone who's put in more work, is more naturally talented, or a combination of both. In this particular example of "random music knowledge", I know at least two people with an encyclopedic knowledge of virtually every piece of recorded music in the past century - one is a production professor with 40 years of experience touring, running live sound, and producing albums for everyone from Dave Matthews to the Tallis Scholars, the other is a music historian and jazz pianist who makes it a habit to listen to every version of a piece he's going to play (along with the full discography of that artist just so he can have an "informed background" on why they did it that way) while keeping up to date with everything from post-hardcore prog rock to alt-pop and hip hop because "you never know what'll help."

If you haven't met anyone yet who can challenge your knowledge, just go out and meet more people - you'll find them eventually.

1

[deleted] OP t1_j6nsglj wrote

[deleted]

−1

blay12 t1_j6nu85u wrote

Oh yeah I totally believe you, internet stranger with no proof of their habits and no compelling evidence other than "well I'm telling you that none of the people I know has spent as much time as I have not working and consuming media, so obviously you couldn't have either".

Like I said, this is an exercise in futility lol. Thanks for proving me right!

2

[deleted] OP t1_j6nvjt2 wrote

[deleted]

1

blay12 t1_j6nvp0d wrote

THERE'S the age remark haha, knew it was only a matter of time. When you're done pushing conversations off track with fallacious arguments maybe we can talk, but you seem like an absolute headache so probably not.

2

[deleted] OP t1_j6njx2s wrote

[deleted]

1

[deleted] OP t1_j6nkfvz wrote

[deleted]

0

[deleted] OP t1_j6nknrd wrote

[deleted]

3

InkBlotSam t1_j6no1j0 wrote

Tell me what the "most" intelligent of the arts is so I can cherry-pick a bunch of dumbshits in that arena as well.

1

[deleted] OP t1_j6ntsz4 wrote

[deleted]

1

InkBlotSam t1_j6o6qim wrote

Woody Harrelson, Charlie Sheen, Janice Dickinson, Tommy Wiseau, Anna Nicole Smith, Andy Dick, Dustin Diamond, David Hasselhoff, John Travolta, Alana Thompson, Amanda Bynes, Jaden Smith, Tara Reid, Randy Quaid, Kevin Sorbo, Denise Richards, Pauly Shore, Gary Busey, Rob Schneider, Pamela Anderson, off the top of my head.

1

[deleted] OP t1_j6o7pbx wrote

[deleted]

1

InkBlotSam t1_j6oa1b3 wrote

And also intelligent ones. Classical musicians tend to be incredibly smart. Ignoring the geniuses of the past, current performers like Yo Yo Ma, Josh Bell, Martha Argerich, Daniel Barenboim, Gustavo Duamel, Itzhak Perlman, Bright Sheng etc, - a small fraction of the literal geniuses in the field - matter of fact you'd have to work real hard to make a list of dumb classical performers. Same with Jazz, really: from older guys like Herbie Hancock to up-and-coming geniuses like Jacob Collier there's a big difference between true musicians who have spent years or decades mastering the complex theory of their craft and some YouTube "finds" dropping computerized beats in Fruity Loops.

I don't actually get the point of your generalization or thread, really. There are lots of geniuses and lots of dumbshits in all the arts, just like every other facet of society. For every Oscar-winning drama with brilliant writing and performances by masters of their craft, there's 500 straight-to-video or streaming garbage loaded with dumbshit actors.

1

[deleted] OP t1_j6oblt9 wrote

[deleted]

1

InkBlotSam t1_j6of7m2 wrote

It's not consistent with what you're saying at all. Your post called music (not any particular genre) the least intelligent of the arts, and that doesn't check out. Cherry-picking certain genres is also of no use to you, because it's just as easy to cherry-pick movie/film genres. Reality TV? Porn? Instructional videos? Straight-to-video-comedies? Kid shows? B movies? Old horror flicks? I could make an endless list of movie genres certainly not know for their "geniuses" just like you could with music.

That said, there are lots of highly intelligent musicians in every genre. I just didn't want to cover ground already covered in this thread. From Madonna and Shakira (both members of Mensa), to Mark McGrath from Sugar Ray, or Neal Peart, Tom Scholz of Boston, Prince, Dexter Holland of Offspring, Rivers Cuomo of Weezer Jeff Baxter of Steely Dan, Leonard Cohen, Weird Al, Ke$ha, Childish Gambino, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, Lupe Fiasco, Bjork, Greg Graffin - tons of metal performers (like Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden or Dan Spitz of Anthrax), for the same reason as the classical musicians. As for Michael Stipe, he's not even the smartest person in R.E.M. That would be Peter Buck.

It doesn't sound like you really want a list of smart musicians at all, you're trying to make some point that you're not making well.

1

[deleted] OP t1_j6ofxox wrote

[deleted]

1

InkBlotSam t1_j6ohyvh wrote

Also with all due respect, but you're over here nominating Billy Corgan as your representative for the smartest musicians, and have been shitting on lists of actual geniuses all over the thread, so I don't know how much credibility you actually have here, lol.

Your general dismissal of musicians as of low intellect is so absurd and naive that most of the joy in this thread isn't identifying brilliant musicians, it's watching you twisted up your back trying to simultaneously shit on all musicians, create strawmen arguments about how now you're only talking about "certain genres" (while ignoring brilliant musicians in those genres), and shit on brilliant musicians with glib, "nope" kinds of comments, as though you're the arbitator of who is, and is not, intelligent. I haven't found a thread more worthy of cross-posting to r/gatekeeping in a long time, tbh.

1

PatternNo928 t1_j6ngz64 wrote

what a stupid post

7

[deleted] OP t1_j6nkafy wrote

[deleted]

−6

PatternNo928 t1_j6nl81e wrote

lmfao you know nothing about that. you probably can’t even tell me which mothers albums were released in what year and which are the best

0

[deleted] OP t1_j6nml93 wrote

[deleted]

−1

PatternNo928 t1_j6ns7u5 wrote

god you’re daft. you bring up zappa but don’t even know the mothers of invention? gotta give you credit for knowing acid mothers temple though, great group

2

[deleted] OP t1_j6nt4jd wrote

[deleted]

1

PatternNo928 t1_j6o1yt9 wrote

is that so. i don’t know how much “depth” someone who thinks musicians aren’t intelligent can have. listen to david thomas, derek bailey, john zorn, robert wyatt, karlheinz stockhausen, meredith monk, arnold schoenberg, john lurie, whoever the list goes on, listen to them talk or read any of their literature for five minutes and you’ll see how idiotic you sound, espveially if you’re trying to claim that billy corgan is intelligent

2

[deleted] OP t1_j6o6kru wrote

[deleted]

0

PatternNo928 t1_j6o85cn wrote

notice how your post has 0 upvotes

2

[deleted] OP t1_j6oat16 wrote

[deleted]

0

PatternNo928 t1_j6olyn6 wrote

this is reddit after all so i agree with you there, but unfortunately your statement that the majority of musicians are unintelligent is just blatantly wrong and paints you like an idiotic pseud.

1

PatternNo928 t1_j6om8ve wrote

and i’m not trying to claim the people you listed aren’t smart (other than corgan) but it seems you of all people should know that there’s more to intelligence than an MIT professorship

1

tirnanog22 t1_j6nbqa4 wrote

Brien May of Queen is the most intelligent musician on the planet . he 's a astrophysicist.

3

whatistheformat t1_j6nbqgx wrote

>They're known as the least intelligent of the arts.

They are?

I'd nominate Julia Holter. She's classically trained and her songs reference Greek tragedy and authors like Virginia Woolf, and every album of hers has an underlying concept.

3

mattisdum t1_j6nex66 wrote

Ironically, she’s on record as hating being typecast as “academic”. She probably just reads a lot and it happens to inform her music, which I think is to her credit in that she isn’t referencing heady things for the sake of being perceived as smart or whatever. There’s a big difference between this versus doing the same thing for ego reasons. Not to mention her music is extremely unique and not a sterile imitation of really anything. She’s cool!

1

[deleted] OP t1_j6nekiq wrote

[deleted]

0

pangaea1972 t1_j6niyqi wrote

"He can barely string a sentence together."

Not surprising considering he's been dead for 5 years.

1

LosRiaso t1_j6nn1um wrote

Mark E. Smith, were he still around, would utterly humiliate you on literally any topic judging by your comments in this thread. Pseud's Corner over here.

Anyway, an answer to your original question is Shane MacGowan.

1

[deleted] OP t1_j6nnfeq wrote

[deleted]

0

LosRiaso t1_j6no4t1 wrote

At the age of 10 or 11, Shane MacGowan was writing essays on the works of Joyce that most adults wouldn't be able to muster after finishing an English Lit degree. You don't know what you're talking about.

Anyway, have fun imagining you're infinitely smarter than people you've never met and don't know from Adam.

2

[deleted] OP t1_j6noz1r wrote

[deleted]

1

LosRiaso t1_j6npuac wrote

>So he says

No, so his old school teachers and his family say. He's not insecure about his intelligence and ultimately doesn't value it as any kind of just hierarchy, which is why he doesn't feel the need to present as an idiot's idea of a smart person. Same with Mark E. Perhaps there's a lesson for you there.

1

BrunswickToast t1_j6ncidr wrote

What are your parameters for intelligence? Brian May has a PhD in astrophysics. Bruce Dickinson flies the plane when Iron Maiden tours

3

mrmilesmalone t1_j6nd68k wrote

Dexter Holland -offspring PHD molecular biology

Jacob Collier- musician wizard

3

NKevros t1_j6ndkxf wrote

Greg Graffin is an evolutionary biologist and has a PhD in zoology. (Bad Religion for those unaware of who Greg Graffin is)

3

maverick57 t1_j6nfbl0 wrote

I've interviewed Tom Morello twice and both times I was really struck by what an intelligent, introspective, well-spoken clever person he is.

3

GrooseandGoot t1_j6nboe9 wrote

Seems wrong to not include Brian May with his PhD in astrophysics

2

GriffinTurtle t1_j6ndc6h wrote

The issue with intelligence is the difficulty in actually meaningfully quantifying it.

I would say all musicians obviously have to be decently intelligent in some areas in order to do what they do, whether they play an instrument, write their music, or even just navigating the industry.

It's also really hard to tell if someone is intelligent from their music. Do thoughtful lyrics make a song intelligent? What if there are thoughtful lyrics but the composition is simple? See what I mean?

I think that's why so many people are coming up with Brian May. He has an obvious thing to point to outside of his music. He's an easy answer.

To answer your question, everyone and no one... But also everyone.

2

_Abe_Froman_SKOC t1_j6ne2sn wrote

Tom Morello (Rage Against The Machine/Audioslave) has a degree from Harvard, and is a prominent social activist.

Greg Graffin (Bad Religion) has a PhD from Cornell in zoology and is a guest lecturer at UCLA when not on tour.

Edit: While he lacked much formal education, Lemmy was a prolific reader who was known to always be reading something, and was apparently well versed in WWII history specifically. Ozzy Osbourne once said that Lemmy crashed at his house for a week and he "drank all my booze, snorted all my coke, and read all my books."

2

stuminus3 t1_j6nfizg wrote

Alice Cooper. I learned everything I know about Milwaukee from him. Actually, it's pronounced "mill-e-wah-que", which is Algonquin for "the good land”.

2

IdiotsThrowaway1984 t1_j6nerha wrote

Sabaton's historical knowledge alone could put them all up here imo

But it also depends on what kind of intelligence we're looking for. If we're looking for book smarts, then that would be the aforementioned Sabaton, and Brian May of Queen

If we're looking for Intelligence in experience, then that could be Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden considering how many side quests the guy does alongside being a vocalist

Or maybe musical intelligence? If that's the case, then someone like Jacob Collier absolutely qualifies. Same with pretty much every prog band, Rush and Dream Theater in particular. Hell maybe even Tuomas Holopainen of Nightwish could count for this as well.

1

FunkIPA t1_j6nhes4 wrote

Dexter Holland from the offspring maybe?

Edit: I definitely disagree with the assumption in the post.

1

[deleted] OP t1_j6njby9 wrote

[deleted]

0

FunkIPA t1_j6nor5i wrote

I disagree with basically all of your statements in this post and in the comments. Musicians are not the “least intelligent” of anything.

Lol “everyone in post punk everyone in rap” someone thinks they’re the smartest person in any room.

1

[deleted] OP t1_j6nptlc wrote

[deleted]

1

FunkIPA t1_j6nq2i0 wrote

Jesus you sound so weird. Just listen to music and enjoy yourself.

2

morrisa086 t1_j6npv8i wrote

Ville Friman from Insomnium, Finnish death metal band.

He had a PhD in evolutionary ecology from Helsinki University and is a Research Associate at University of York.

1

Pale_Elephant123 t1_j6nu0c2 wrote

Lmao who thinks musicians are least intelligent in the arts??

Glenn Gould was a true genius in putting Bach onto piano

Nina Simone undoubtedly up there

Kurt Cobain in this very raw, direct way

1

[deleted] OP t1_j6nvtzy wrote

[deleted]

1

Pale_Elephant123 t1_j6o8rr7 wrote

Haha no I’ll have to check it out

Who specifically pops you in the twilight zone? I’m intrigued

1

Freddy_Rican_11-3 t1_j6nz0g8 wrote

Bryan May - Astrophysics Tom Scholz - EE from MIT Neil Peart - The Professor ‘nuff said! Bruce Dickinson - Aircraft pilot Ruben Blades - singer, composer, lawyer graduated from Harvard

1

KingShish t1_j6o2q7s wrote

Bach

Tom Waits

Geddy Lee

John Cage

Rachmaninoff

1

ReptilianLizardi t1_j6ndw6t wrote

Peter Gabriel

Robert Fripp

Frank Zappa

Jordan Rudess

Mike Oldfield

0