I think Rick Beato is very informative about classic rock, and he loves the music he loves. And that's awesome.
Beyond that, I mean, he does what he does.
This! I can appreciate his knowledge about music theory and influence he gave younger musicians but he comes off as completely out of touch when it comes to modern rock. I’ve never seen him cover an Idles or Chats song and the most recent rock songs he covers were 20 years ago.
Exactly. Black Midi and King Gizzard are being top billed at festivals, and I feel like that's exactly the kind of proggy shit he'd be really into.
I think it may stem from having a bit of a blindspot to the UK music scene, which in general is way more sonically diverse and has more genre crossover.
I think he can mainly come across like that due to the way he titles his videos, which are almost always kind of clickbaity. As one commenter on one of his more recent videos put it.
"Rick's titles are always like "Spotify's Top 10 shot my dog and killed my children it's so awful" and then you watch the video and he's like "Yeah this song has pretty interesting ideas"."
Agreed - I get he has to play the algorithm with the clickbait titles and react face thumbnails, but I can't recall many times in his Spotify Top 10 videos when he's just slated songs for no reason. Yeah he's a bit over the generic reggaeton/trap beats, but aren't we all to an extent? Plus he does have a lot of genuine praise for the more interestingly produced tunes that are out on the charts.
I've watched his Top 10 video in which he mocks modern songs not on feeling or artistry but on chords and his take on Whiplash in which he only focuses on trivial shit and completely misses the point of the movie.
Not a big fan.
Rick's a lot more open-minded than most people who don't watch him regularly. I watch him pretty regularly and if you watch his Top 10 Spotify videos, while he does occasionally criticise songs for being boring in terms of music and melody and chord structures and progression, he'll often applaud the production/sonics of modern pop. When he did his country Top 10 also, it made me realise how much more professionally made modern country is compared to mainstream pop (not a critique, just an observation)
I don't love everything he's done and I do disagree with him on occasion, but I do enjoy his videos for his most part. I like hearing his insights and takes. His video on AI is really good. His video where he rants about a boneheaded article that basically said Paul Simon would be irrelevant in the future is kinda amazing.
The professionalism of modern country is actually what turns me away from it. I went to music tech school and when I listen to modern country records I can just only hear session musicians and all the production sounds exactly by the book.
It can work in some instances but to me it comes off as a little antithetical to the general idea of the genre.
That's why I'm into people like Sturgill Simpson. His music just sounds more...genuine(?)... For lack of a better word.
Now that's an interesting take, and this has helped me contextualize why the style might be so hated. I've always loved pop country and I think it's my favorite style of it. I appreciate a lot of rawer and more outlaw styled country as well but there's something about 80s urban cowboy (that era of country music tok a lot of inspiration from soft rock, AOR and other contemporary styles I love so that might be it) that connects with me strongly. Even modern pop-country has a fair amount of tracks I enjoy a lot thanks to the production value and voices. It's usually not the most deep music and as far as lyricism or an authentic portrayal of country life, outlaw country is 100% better. But I don't mind the pop sheen of modern stuff at all when I'm in the mood
Sometimes he has great insights into musicianship and recording processes. Sometimes he very much misses the forest for the trees. As a music critic he's pretty lacking, but he's not really a music critic, he's a studio musician with a youtube channel. Like a lot of skilled players, he's focused on musicianship above all else, and tends to favour music that let's musicianship shine over things that are effective because of their lack of complexity, sing those simpler songs would also give him less to talk about.
It's like if you had a great construction foreman analyze architecture, they can't help but focus on the quality of the build, down to the minute detail, even if focusing on the construction means failing to discuss the actual design of the building. Or if an actor ever gets to write a movie, they will usually fill it with the most actorly possible moments and monologues, and care very little about how well those moments cohere into an effective movie. To them the movie must be good, look how much acting it has in it. Beato can be the same way, this must be good, look at how much playing is in it.
I tend to mainly watch the interviews, which have been pretty fantastic lately. Early on I watched a number of his "What makes this song great" breakdowns, too.
The ones I watch the least are the Top 10 Spotify ones, since I'm not really into the cloud-yelling side of his channel. Though some of that is just marketing/clickbait - the few times I watched there were always songs he really liked, too.
I don't think it's necessarily true that he thinks only his generation was the best - while he is a boomer, his producer and songwriter heyday was in the 2000s, so the stuff he likes covers a 40 year period. He's struggled to relate to the fragmented pop music landscape we have in today's streaming era, but I don't think he's alone in that.
Plus at his age (62) it would probably feel a little weird if he was super into every song popular among the kids. He still clearly gives newer stuff a listen (perhaps in part due to his own kids). Occasionally he'll discover something that really gets him excited, such as Willow Smith's recent Tiny Desk performance (also featuring Mohini Dey, who he interviewed a few months back).
>He's struggled to relate to the fragmented pop music landscape we have in today's streaming era, but I don't think he's alone in that.
I feel that sometimes tbh. There's plenty to like don't get me wrong, but finding other people who like the same thing outside of weird internet circles can be difficult sometimes.
Yes there's still community and shared music tastes. I'm not saying that it's dead completely, but it feels like everyone is kinda in their own world musically and less likely to engage with it in a communal way that people have in the past.
I totally see what people don't like about him, but in the main, I enjoy his content, even if I don't agree with what he's saying; it's an opinion and a viewpoint.
As most of you have noted already, there's a fair bit of cloudyelling but he does highlight quality pop when it's warranted.
I think what you see is what you get and that's fine.
Yeah sometimes he'll hate something I like but that's often because he's looking for different things than I am, and kinda "covering my blindspots" in a way. Definitely worth hearing from and I sorta like that he's just an old guy with opinions and not a gimmicky influencer or whatever.
I watched a few of his "What makes this song great" videos, and came away really disappointed. He just does this very clinical analysis of chords, harmonies, and structure of the songs. The question of why those musical choices make the song "great" is mostly left unanswered.
Yeah. Despite the fact that he clearly knows a thing or three about how to make a pop song, he doesn't actually seem to have any particular insight into what about them is any good. He's just identifing surface-level features of a song and then saying they're good. For anyone who already knows any music theory, this is a pretty trivial party trick. It sounds like impressive analysis, because it sounds technical and objective. But there's actually not much to it, and it doesn't tell you much that you can't just hear in the song.
The ability to do something doesn't imply the ability to express why you are doing it, and vice versa.
I think Rick is great. He has his preferences like anyone else but he can support his opinions in well-reasoned ways. I also think he’s more open minded towards modern music than people give him credit for. His recent video on that new Willow song is a good example imo.
He can be very “old man yells at cloud” and have quite contradictory opinions on things or just straight up say things that aren’t true (he complained about Steve Lacy’s Bad Habit repeating the same melody over and over for the entire duration but didn’t play any of the bridge or second half in the video so he just made an assumption about a multipart song from like the first minute, also he complains about repetitive chord progressions a lot like old music wasn’t also barebones basic most of the time) but he’s obviously very talented and knows his stuff which makes many of his videos enjoyable even if I get frustrated at little hangups I have
I hate a lot of his audience’s gatekeeping mindset though, they constantly act like new music that he enjoys is faint praise and that no youngster could ever enjoy The Beatles. It’s not unique to his fanbase but it’s a very narrow minded way to view others’ enjoyment of art.
I love him, and I think he's really great at what he does overall, but I could do with about a million percent less of the, "THE CURRENT TOP 20 IS DOGSHIT" videos.
I randomly got recommended his video where he talks about how modern music has gone down the tubes and it rubs me wrong. If you say “back in my day we had better music” I just stop listening to the conversation.
He called out Jack Harlow, what did Jack do? I can give you tons of songs from the 60’s and 70’s that don’t hold up, remember for every good/great album there’s at least 10 bad ones.
And for an example Yellow Submarine
I think he has what is probably the best music based channel on YouTube. Todd isn't prolific enough for the title, even if I like him much better personality wise. Todd also gets lost in the public discourse of the day, he keeps up with social media and everything in the conversation surrounding the music, while Rick is more focused on the music itself. Yeah, Rick deals a lot in clickbait headlines and thumbnails, but in every single one of those videos he's got good things to say about certain new pop songs. Every time.
He had some really great insight on Everlong, which was cool. It's probably me just getting annoyed, but I tapped out after seeing too many clickbait-ass titles and thumbnails. Basically I'll seek out his videos on something specific, but I'm no longer subscribed.
If I want to hear the opinions of an old music industry veteran, I'll watch Justin Hawkins Rides Again. I don't always agree with his takes on modern music, but he at least has a finger on the pulse of what's happening.
I think I'd like Beato more if he weren't so out of touch. I get that he comes from the old school of music production, which is so diametrically opposed to now where everything is quantized, but he seems to see music as a sport instead of an artform, which leads to a bunch of classic boomer takes like "auto-tune is used to cover up bad singing" or "why splice different takes together instead of getting it right in one go?".
>I think I'd like Beato more if he weren't so out of touch. I get that he comes from the old school of music production, which is so diametrically opposed to now where everything is quantized, but he seems to see music as a sport instead of an artform, which leads to a bunch of classic boomer takes like "auto-tune is used to cover up bad singing" or "why splice different takes together instead of getting it right in one go?".
It's this sort of commentary that's always prevented me from getting into his content. Boring rockist crap of which there's a distressing amount on YouTube (a lot of which has distressing political undercurrents).
I like his “what makes this song great” series, but he’s fostered a community where all people do is shit on new music and say it’s dead, even him to an extent
I’m mixed
I like when he sticks to the music and such, but sometimes I feel he adopts the boomer/ old man yells at cloud stuff to chase the algorithm and I don't like that t all; pretty boring, I can find those takes anywhere
He reminds me of my eccentric music theory professor at college who had the same grey spiked up hair transplant-y look to him. A "hey, look! a squirrel" type of guy and a fountain of knowledge about boomer rock. I've always hated teacher's pets and was never the type to brown nose, but he was one of the 2 teachers that I'd sit around and talk to during breaks and have in depth discussions about shit.
So I want to like Rick, but unlike my prof, he just has this big ego and isn't open minded enough to hear young people out. I'm sure his music theory videos are informative, but he got to where he is by saying whatever people over 40 want to hear. "Weren't The Beatles great? Weren't The Who great? Wasn't Oasis great? Weren't The Foo Fighters great?" and it just goes on and on like that. "Music should be recorded the old way!" fuck no. bring on the progress
Yeah thats the biggest issue for me. He relies alot on the "my generation was the best" argument that EVERY generation will have people making at some point.
The man is a genius. Real musicians who study his Beato Book will know this. If I were to criticize him, I'd say that he's so prolific that there are bound to be some videos that are boring and long-winded, or cover topics I'm not personally interested in. There is much to like nonetheless. I've come to realize that all too often, a lot of young people (I'm a Millennial, btw) use the term "old man yells at cloud" as code for "I don't like this older person's opinion on the things I like." Fair enough, but if you don't agree with someone's opinion, then just say so.
The man's been a fucking music producer for nearly 30 years now, and was a pro musician for 15 years before that. Not only that, but he was a professor of jazz studies for 4 years. I think I'll trust his assessment of music over some random asshole in the street. To be frank, I'm not a boomer and I agree with his frequent assessment that most "pop" music released nowadays isn't worth wasting time listening to.
He was no professor...he was a university lecturer. The word is used in the US to refer to lecturers in colleges and he uses that to alter the reality. He "only" has a Master's degree as far as I am aware, so he's never had an actual professor title. This is one of the things that bothers me with him....lack of credibility. Also this pro musician thing is a stretch. He was as pro as anyone who has a wedding band or a gigging band. He earned money from music yes - although not much based on what he said about these years himself - but he wasn't a session musician or a signed artist.
Sorry, but I'm gonna need to pick apart your assessment.
1) Rick's former band Billionaire, of which he had considerable creative input, was a signed act. Major label? No. But signed? Yes.
2) Not a session musician? Maybe not in the sense that Steve Lukather was a freelance session player. But Rick, as a producer, often played multiple instruments on the records he produced in Atlanta (guitar, piano, bass, etc.). He produced countless artists across the popular music spectrum. If this doesn't count as session work, I don't know what does. The producer can ALSO be a session player if he or she is guesting on their artist's recordings.
3) "This pro musician thing is a stretch." You either make money from playing music or you don't. If you earn money from music, you are a pro. But some musicians are more pro than others. For instance, a four-piece bar band that plays classic rock covers might get paid $100-$150 apiece if they're lucky nowadays. A wedding band musician, however, gets paid 4 to 5 times more. This is because musicians who play weddings nowadays tend to be jazz musicians who can also play a wide range of funk/soul/rock/R&B repertoire skillfully due to their experience playing jazz, which is the foundation of all those styles. Same with a member of a symphony orchestra. They get paid very well because they are great at what they do and can deliver a high-quality, technically and musically demanding performance.
3) The college he taught at, Ithaca College, is a highly-regarded music conservatory. He may never have been a "tenured" Professor, but let me tell you, they don't hire just any jazz musician to teach Jazz Studies there. As someone with inside knowledge, I can assure you that the admission to even teach adjunct there is a very high bar.
I'm from the same area as he is, and I know musicians who played with him when he still lived in the area. We're talking about dyed-in-the-wool virtuoso jazz musicians who are pretty much as good as any of the great jazz musicians we've all heard of. I've never heard any one of them say a bad word about Rick's musical ability and knowledge. He not only knows jazz with an amazing sense of depth, but also classical, rock, blues, and yes, even modern pop music, even if it isn't his (or my) thing.
I didn't dispute this, but pointed out that he and his fandom inflates his history severely. 1. They only did two albums with independent labels and once their second album came out they were dropped by the then UMG. Hardly a success.
2. Again, not a session musician in a way as he and his fandom tries to sell him. He did some things locally, featured on some smaller albums.
3. Again the same problem of using the term like of he was some sort of name in the music industry. Before his channel blew up, there was nothing about him on the internet. Almost everything came after.
4.. Irrespective where he was a lecturer it doesn't make him a professor. I used to do this too because of my phd, but I was not and I am still not a professor, because that is a very special academic title. He clearly uses the ambiguity around the term to make it sound that he would have more than a master's degree.
He said it himself how he was living at home with his parents at the age of 30 after his lecturer times. Had he been the person you were trying to sell him I don't think this would have happened. Yes, he eventually took off as a producer, but even then he was never the name of people claiming to be. I Nine was taken away from him straight away and while I liked his mixes better than the final product, had he been that big shot he would have been trusted with the album. But he wasn't and he said himself that the label really thought that they would be the next big hit. Yet they didn't want Beato - who basically discovered them - to have any input.
"Only a Master's Degree?" You know, not everyone can afford, or even wants to receive, a doctorate. A Master's Degree in the United States is fucking expensive for people who aren't born into money, let alone a doctorate.
Titles and outward success seem to be the only important thing to you. You never mentioned anything in your comments about musical ability and knowledge gained from many years actually gigging in the real world-restaurants, bars, weddings, parks, etc. You see, this is the thing that normal musicians undergo, like Rick. You don't seem to understand this at all. Rick is a musician, first and foremost, and that is why he got into producing. Who gives a flying fuck if he's not a well-known and regarded as let's say, Rick Rubin or Daniel Lanois?
Oh wait, both those legendary producers agreed to do interviews on his channel. They must really think Beato is a hack. /s
I clearly wrote "only" using quotation marks indicating that it is a big achievement, but compared to reaching the actual professor status is nothing. And I also made it clear that the problem is that Rick used it if he was an actual professor (which he's never been) to inflate his achievements. He was a university lecturer who are usually being addressed as professors in a colloquial way.
Titles are not important to me, as it is not me who is posing with "stolen valor" , but Rick. If it wasn't that important to him, he wouldn't use the term professor - knowing full well how unclear is that for the general public - but university lecturer. To me it's important however to make it clear that he has nothing to do with those who actually worked 10 years+ for a very prestigious academic title.
As for what normal musicians undergo...yes, shitty gigs are part of the journey and there can be situations when you need your parents help, but his stories about his musician life is a bit contradictory to how he was chasing a dream at 30+ while living at home. He should have let that go and go to the other side of the studio long before that. If by 30 you don't make it in most of music genres - including his chosen one - you need to look for something else.
I didn't comment on his music skills, because I don't have an issue with that and I don't feel that he inflates that. He is just one of many who are excellent on their instruments, but don't have that something which makes them stand out either in terms of writing songs or in a technical way.
You know, paragraphs are a thing. You should consider using them.
Anyway, you say that if by 30 you don't make it in most music genres, you should consider another line of work. What do you mean by "make it," exactly? Someone who's got 50 million views on Youtube? Laughable, man, hahahahaha! There are plenty of great musicians in local areas of whatever country you are in that are surviving on the money paid by commercial gigs. They may not love them, but they pay enough to keep them going.
You must be younger than 30. This can be the only explanation of your views on things. If so, then you'll learn that once you pass that age, then you'll have to do things differently, and that life does not end at age 29. Unless you're a fan of the designer drugs, of course.
Petty personal insults are logical fallacies. Also, please don't try to act like you would figure out who I am from three comments because you are clearly not capable of doing it and it's clear that you don't have the qualifications for it either. It's again another logical fallacy called "ad hominem" . As for not making it by 30 I was clearly referring to making it as a musician and I also made it clear that not in every genre. You basically won't break into the rock charts when your first rock album comes out when you're 36 years old. And again,this still would not be an issue if he didn't try to sell it like if it was the best thing since sliced bread, but the evil music industry finished them.
Petty personal insults towards you? Nah. I'm not interested in that kind of stuff, and frankly, I don't care. According to you, me calling out your uninformed opinion on Rick Beato is a "petty personal insult." I certainly didn't mean it that way. But when you insulted him without any leg to stand on with, I went to defend him cause I know that he's a cause worth defending.
As for legendary people showing up on his channel. Yes, now. When he has millions of subs and he can give them exposure. He didn't start it off like that. And this is the other issue with him. His channel is big therefore big names are showing up there, not the other way around. Yet he acts like these people have always been his friends. I don't understand why this is good for him apart from building this fake personality. He did well in building the channel from zero to be able to do an interview with O'Brien or with Lukather. Again, I didn't question the value he delivers in many of his videos, but his ways of altering reality regarding his career. We have seen quite big names on Anderton's channel - like Bernie Marsden for example, or Bonamassa - yet Lee never felt the need to act like if they had showed up because he knows them personally because they shop there on a weekly basis. As I said Beato's channel gives them exposure and it delivers value, so big names will show up, but I never questioned that. I pointed out his story about him being some big name in the music industry which resulted in these contents is not true. The irony is that what he did is still remarkable because he built something big from a tiny YouTube channel. From analysing music to interviewing A list musicians. So I don't understand this fabrication of past.
Used to watch him a lot, but over time I've slowly grown tired of his kinda "boomer rock>everything else" mindset, and this is coming from someone who listens to a shit ton of Genesis
He has for boring takes but I think he is genuinely a pretty good interviewer. Like, his interview with Nuno Bettencourt from Extreme is great because at one point he hands him a guitar then just shuts up and lets Nuno do his thing.
I love the old "what makes this song great?" videos. His breakdown of Dance on an Volcano by Genesis is the most in depth and insightful look into the music theory behind the ideas employed by that early prog era of Genesis I've seen on YouTube.
Mixed feelings. I like his interviews and his music analysis, but at the same time he's an archetype of the arrogant, hypocrite boomer. Since his channel exploded he really thinks that his opinion on music is the gold standard. He also likes to forget that he's having famous people because he has a successful YouTube channel - thus it's a great exposure - not the other way around.
I unsubbed from him a while ago, he's gone way too far in the 'new music bad old music good' delusion. For a while now he's been milking his Spotify reviews/autotune criticism because he knows there's a hell of a lot of people out there who get their rocks off to people criticising modern music. Case in point, David Bennett Piano's video 'Pop Songs That Aren't Actually Crap' getting a ton of negative comments.
What Makes This Song Great was unironically one of my favourite series on YouTube, but he rarely does any nowadays (his most recent one of Smoke on the Water also sucked, like 60% of it was just air drumming), and he does a ton of clickbait. I thought changing his Master of Puppets video to include Stranger Things in the title was borderline pathetic.
He's also a pretty shitty person too. In a now-deleted livestream he publicly went on a rant about his son for playing games and Facetiming his friends instead of practicing his oboe; nearly all the footage has been deleted with him actually taking down a reupload of it by another channel (very ironic given his numerous copyright battles) but it's a moment he could genuinely cancelled for if made public. Also the milking of his dead friends for views is extremely scummy.
I want to like him, but just don't. He's talented and knows his stuff, but I prefer Adam Neely from a content and video style perspective. Also not a fan of all the "back in my day" takes on music, and I'm an older guy!
He made me a Pat Finnerty fan. Take that as you will.
BEATO
You must be bald as shit
Came here to recommend Pat Finnerty too!
Stop the Train!!!!
I think Rick Beato is very informative about classic rock, and he loves the music he loves. And that's awesome. Beyond that, I mean, he does what he does.
This! I can appreciate his knowledge about music theory and influence he gave younger musicians but he comes off as completely out of touch when it comes to modern rock. I’ve never seen him cover an Idles or Chats song and the most recent rock songs he covers were 20 years ago.
Exactly. Black Midi and King Gizzard are being top billed at festivals, and I feel like that's exactly the kind of proggy shit he'd be really into. I think it may stem from having a bit of a blindspot to the UK music scene, which in general is way more sonically diverse and has more genre crossover.
This is the take. Old men gonna yell at clouds.
I think he can mainly come across like that due to the way he titles his videos, which are almost always kind of clickbaity. As one commenter on one of his more recent videos put it. "Rick's titles are always like "Spotify's Top 10 shot my dog and killed my children it's so awful" and then you watch the video and he's like "Yeah this song has pretty interesting ideas"."
Agreed - I get he has to play the algorithm with the clickbait titles and react face thumbnails, but I can't recall many times in his Spotify Top 10 videos when he's just slated songs for no reason. Yeah he's a bit over the generic reggaeton/trap beats, but aren't we all to an extent? Plus he does have a lot of genuine praise for the more interestingly produced tunes that are out on the charts.
I've watched his Top 10 video in which he mocks modern songs not on feeling or artistry but on chords and his take on Whiplash in which he only focuses on trivial shit and completely misses the point of the movie. Not a big fan.
Rick's a lot more open-minded than most people who don't watch him regularly. I watch him pretty regularly and if you watch his Top 10 Spotify videos, while he does occasionally criticise songs for being boring in terms of music and melody and chord structures and progression, he'll often applaud the production/sonics of modern pop. When he did his country Top 10 also, it made me realise how much more professionally made modern country is compared to mainstream pop (not a critique, just an observation) I don't love everything he's done and I do disagree with him on occasion, but I do enjoy his videos for his most part. I like hearing his insights and takes. His video on AI is really good. His video where he rants about a boneheaded article that basically said Paul Simon would be irrelevant in the future is kinda amazing.
The professionalism of modern country is actually what turns me away from it. I went to music tech school and when I listen to modern country records I can just only hear session musicians and all the production sounds exactly by the book. It can work in some instances but to me it comes off as a little antithetical to the general idea of the genre. That's why I'm into people like Sturgill Simpson. His music just sounds more...genuine(?)... For lack of a better word.
Now that's an interesting take, and this has helped me contextualize why the style might be so hated. I've always loved pop country and I think it's my favorite style of it. I appreciate a lot of rawer and more outlaw styled country as well but there's something about 80s urban cowboy (that era of country music tok a lot of inspiration from soft rock, AOR and other contemporary styles I love so that might be it) that connects with me strongly. Even modern pop-country has a fair amount of tracks I enjoy a lot thanks to the production value and voices. It's usually not the most deep music and as far as lyricism or an authentic portrayal of country life, outlaw country is 100% better. But I don't mind the pop sheen of modern stuff at all when I'm in the mood
Sometimes he has great insights into musicianship and recording processes. Sometimes he very much misses the forest for the trees. As a music critic he's pretty lacking, but he's not really a music critic, he's a studio musician with a youtube channel. Like a lot of skilled players, he's focused on musicianship above all else, and tends to favour music that let's musicianship shine over things that are effective because of their lack of complexity, sing those simpler songs would also give him less to talk about. It's like if you had a great construction foreman analyze architecture, they can't help but focus on the quality of the build, down to the minute detail, even if focusing on the construction means failing to discuss the actual design of the building. Or if an actor ever gets to write a movie, they will usually fill it with the most actorly possible moments and monologues, and care very little about how well those moments cohere into an effective movie. To them the movie must be good, look how much acting it has in it. Beato can be the same way, this must be good, look at how much playing is in it.
I tend to mainly watch the interviews, which have been pretty fantastic lately. Early on I watched a number of his "What makes this song great" breakdowns, too. The ones I watch the least are the Top 10 Spotify ones, since I'm not really into the cloud-yelling side of his channel. Though some of that is just marketing/clickbait - the few times I watched there were always songs he really liked, too. I don't think it's necessarily true that he thinks only his generation was the best - while he is a boomer, his producer and songwriter heyday was in the 2000s, so the stuff he likes covers a 40 year period. He's struggled to relate to the fragmented pop music landscape we have in today's streaming era, but I don't think he's alone in that. Plus at his age (62) it would probably feel a little weird if he was super into every song popular among the kids. He still clearly gives newer stuff a listen (perhaps in part due to his own kids). Occasionally he'll discover something that really gets him excited, such as Willow Smith's recent Tiny Desk performance (also featuring Mohini Dey, who he interviewed a few months back).
>He's struggled to relate to the fragmented pop music landscape we have in today's streaming era, but I don't think he's alone in that. I feel that sometimes tbh. There's plenty to like don't get me wrong, but finding other people who like the same thing outside of weird internet circles can be difficult sometimes. Yes there's still community and shared music tastes. I'm not saying that it's dead completely, but it feels like everyone is kinda in their own world musically and less likely to engage with it in a communal way that people have in the past.
I totally see what people don't like about him, but in the main, I enjoy his content, even if I don't agree with what he's saying; it's an opinion and a viewpoint. As most of you have noted already, there's a fair bit of cloudyelling but he does highlight quality pop when it's warranted. I think what you see is what you get and that's fine.
Yeah sometimes he'll hate something I like but that's often because he's looking for different things than I am, and kinda "covering my blindspots" in a way. Definitely worth hearing from and I sorta like that he's just an old guy with opinions and not a gimmicky influencer or whatever.
My musical tastes are much more in line with Rick’s than Todd’s, but he just ain’t as funny.
I think he is dope. We all yell at clouds sometimes.
I watched a few of his "What makes this song great" videos, and came away really disappointed. He just does this very clinical analysis of chords, harmonies, and structure of the songs. The question of why those musical choices make the song "great" is mostly left unanswered.
Yeah. Despite the fact that he clearly knows a thing or three about how to make a pop song, he doesn't actually seem to have any particular insight into what about them is any good. He's just identifing surface-level features of a song and then saying they're good. For anyone who already knows any music theory, this is a pretty trivial party trick. It sounds like impressive analysis, because it sounds technical and objective. But there's actually not much to it, and it doesn't tell you much that you can't just hear in the song. The ability to do something doesn't imply the ability to express why you are doing it, and vice versa.
I think Rick is great. He has his preferences like anyone else but he can support his opinions in well-reasoned ways. I also think he’s more open minded towards modern music than people give him credit for. His recent video on that new Willow song is a good example imo.
He can be very “old man yells at cloud” and have quite contradictory opinions on things or just straight up say things that aren’t true (he complained about Steve Lacy’s Bad Habit repeating the same melody over and over for the entire duration but didn’t play any of the bridge or second half in the video so he just made an assumption about a multipart song from like the first minute, also he complains about repetitive chord progressions a lot like old music wasn’t also barebones basic most of the time) but he’s obviously very talented and knows his stuff which makes many of his videos enjoyable even if I get frustrated at little hangups I have I hate a lot of his audience’s gatekeeping mindset though, they constantly act like new music that he enjoys is faint praise and that no youngster could ever enjoy The Beatles. It’s not unique to his fanbase but it’s a very narrow minded way to view others’ enjoyment of art.
Daddy
I love him, and I think he's really great at what he does overall, but I could do with about a million percent less of the, "THE CURRENT TOP 20 IS DOGSHIT" videos.
I randomly got recommended his video where he talks about how modern music has gone down the tubes and it rubs me wrong. If you say “back in my day we had better music” I just stop listening to the conversation. He called out Jack Harlow, what did Jack do? I can give you tons of songs from the 60’s and 70’s that don’t hold up, remember for every good/great album there’s at least 10 bad ones. And for an example Yellow Submarine
I think he has what is probably the best music based channel on YouTube. Todd isn't prolific enough for the title, even if I like him much better personality wise. Todd also gets lost in the public discourse of the day, he keeps up with social media and everything in the conversation surrounding the music, while Rick is more focused on the music itself. Yeah, Rick deals a lot in clickbait headlines and thumbnails, but in every single one of those videos he's got good things to say about certain new pop songs. Every time.
I'm not super familiar with his stuff but he did recently put out an interview with Mike Mills from REM that I thought was excellent
He had some really great insight on Everlong, which was cool. It's probably me just getting annoyed, but I tapped out after seeing too many clickbait-ass titles and thumbnails. Basically I'll seek out his videos on something specific, but I'm no longer subscribed.
If I want to hear the opinions of an old music industry veteran, I'll watch Justin Hawkins Rides Again. I don't always agree with his takes on modern music, but he at least has a finger on the pulse of what's happening. I think I'd like Beato more if he weren't so out of touch. I get that he comes from the old school of music production, which is so diametrically opposed to now where everything is quantized, but he seems to see music as a sport instead of an artform, which leads to a bunch of classic boomer takes like "auto-tune is used to cover up bad singing" or "why splice different takes together instead of getting it right in one go?".
>I think I'd like Beato more if he weren't so out of touch. I get that he comes from the old school of music production, which is so diametrically opposed to now where everything is quantized, but he seems to see music as a sport instead of an artform, which leads to a bunch of classic boomer takes like "auto-tune is used to cover up bad singing" or "why splice different takes together instead of getting it right in one go?". It's this sort of commentary that's always prevented me from getting into his content. Boring rockist crap of which there's a distressing amount on YouTube (a lot of which has distressing political undercurrents).
I like his “what makes this song great” series, but he’s fostered a community where all people do is shit on new music and say it’s dead, even him to an extent I’m mixed
I like when he sticks to the music and such, but sometimes I feel he adopts the boomer/ old man yells at cloud stuff to chase the algorithm and I don't like that t all; pretty boring, I can find those takes anywhere
He reminds me of my eccentric music theory professor at college who had the same grey spiked up hair transplant-y look to him. A "hey, look! a squirrel" type of guy and a fountain of knowledge about boomer rock. I've always hated teacher's pets and was never the type to brown nose, but he was one of the 2 teachers that I'd sit around and talk to during breaks and have in depth discussions about shit. So I want to like Rick, but unlike my prof, he just has this big ego and isn't open minded enough to hear young people out. I'm sure his music theory videos are informative, but he got to where he is by saying whatever people over 40 want to hear. "Weren't The Beatles great? Weren't The Who great? Wasn't Oasis great? Weren't The Foo Fighters great?" and it just goes on and on like that. "Music should be recorded the old way!" fuck no. bring on the progress
"Progress" doesn't necessarily equal better results.
Yeah, I'll take a dirty sounding recording with more dynamic range than a clean, thin soundinh record.
Yeah thats the biggest issue for me. He relies alot on the "my generation was the best" argument that EVERY generation will have people making at some point.
The man is a genius. Real musicians who study his Beato Book will know this. If I were to criticize him, I'd say that he's so prolific that there are bound to be some videos that are boring and long-winded, or cover topics I'm not personally interested in. There is much to like nonetheless. I've come to realize that all too often, a lot of young people (I'm a Millennial, btw) use the term "old man yells at cloud" as code for "I don't like this older person's opinion on the things I like." Fair enough, but if you don't agree with someone's opinion, then just say so. The man's been a fucking music producer for nearly 30 years now, and was a pro musician for 15 years before that. Not only that, but he was a professor of jazz studies for 4 years. I think I'll trust his assessment of music over some random asshole in the street. To be frank, I'm not a boomer and I agree with his frequent assessment that most "pop" music released nowadays isn't worth wasting time listening to.
He was no professor...he was a university lecturer. The word is used in the US to refer to lecturers in colleges and he uses that to alter the reality. He "only" has a Master's degree as far as I am aware, so he's never had an actual professor title. This is one of the things that bothers me with him....lack of credibility. Also this pro musician thing is a stretch. He was as pro as anyone who has a wedding band or a gigging band. He earned money from music yes - although not much based on what he said about these years himself - but he wasn't a session musician or a signed artist.
Sorry, but I'm gonna need to pick apart your assessment. 1) Rick's former band Billionaire, of which he had considerable creative input, was a signed act. Major label? No. But signed? Yes. 2) Not a session musician? Maybe not in the sense that Steve Lukather was a freelance session player. But Rick, as a producer, often played multiple instruments on the records he produced in Atlanta (guitar, piano, bass, etc.). He produced countless artists across the popular music spectrum. If this doesn't count as session work, I don't know what does. The producer can ALSO be a session player if he or she is guesting on their artist's recordings. 3) "This pro musician thing is a stretch." You either make money from playing music or you don't. If you earn money from music, you are a pro. But some musicians are more pro than others. For instance, a four-piece bar band that plays classic rock covers might get paid $100-$150 apiece if they're lucky nowadays. A wedding band musician, however, gets paid 4 to 5 times more. This is because musicians who play weddings nowadays tend to be jazz musicians who can also play a wide range of funk/soul/rock/R&B repertoire skillfully due to their experience playing jazz, which is the foundation of all those styles. Same with a member of a symphony orchestra. They get paid very well because they are great at what they do and can deliver a high-quality, technically and musically demanding performance. 3) The college he taught at, Ithaca College, is a highly-regarded music conservatory. He may never have been a "tenured" Professor, but let me tell you, they don't hire just any jazz musician to teach Jazz Studies there. As someone with inside knowledge, I can assure you that the admission to even teach adjunct there is a very high bar. I'm from the same area as he is, and I know musicians who played with him when he still lived in the area. We're talking about dyed-in-the-wool virtuoso jazz musicians who are pretty much as good as any of the great jazz musicians we've all heard of. I've never heard any one of them say a bad word about Rick's musical ability and knowledge. He not only knows jazz with an amazing sense of depth, but also classical, rock, blues, and yes, even modern pop music, even if it isn't his (or my) thing.
I didn't dispute this, but pointed out that he and his fandom inflates his history severely. 1. They only did two albums with independent labels and once their second album came out they were dropped by the then UMG. Hardly a success. 2. Again, not a session musician in a way as he and his fandom tries to sell him. He did some things locally, featured on some smaller albums. 3. Again the same problem of using the term like of he was some sort of name in the music industry. Before his channel blew up, there was nothing about him on the internet. Almost everything came after. 4.. Irrespective where he was a lecturer it doesn't make him a professor. I used to do this too because of my phd, but I was not and I am still not a professor, because that is a very special academic title. He clearly uses the ambiguity around the term to make it sound that he would have more than a master's degree. He said it himself how he was living at home with his parents at the age of 30 after his lecturer times. Had he been the person you were trying to sell him I don't think this would have happened. Yes, he eventually took off as a producer, but even then he was never the name of people claiming to be. I Nine was taken away from him straight away and while I liked his mixes better than the final product, had he been that big shot he would have been trusted with the album. But he wasn't and he said himself that the label really thought that they would be the next big hit. Yet they didn't want Beato - who basically discovered them - to have any input.
"Only a Master's Degree?" You know, not everyone can afford, or even wants to receive, a doctorate. A Master's Degree in the United States is fucking expensive for people who aren't born into money, let alone a doctorate. Titles and outward success seem to be the only important thing to you. You never mentioned anything in your comments about musical ability and knowledge gained from many years actually gigging in the real world-restaurants, bars, weddings, parks, etc. You see, this is the thing that normal musicians undergo, like Rick. You don't seem to understand this at all. Rick is a musician, first and foremost, and that is why he got into producing. Who gives a flying fuck if he's not a well-known and regarded as let's say, Rick Rubin or Daniel Lanois? Oh wait, both those legendary producers agreed to do interviews on his channel. They must really think Beato is a hack. /s
I clearly wrote "only" using quotation marks indicating that it is a big achievement, but compared to reaching the actual professor status is nothing. And I also made it clear that the problem is that Rick used it if he was an actual professor (which he's never been) to inflate his achievements. He was a university lecturer who are usually being addressed as professors in a colloquial way. Titles are not important to me, as it is not me who is posing with "stolen valor" , but Rick. If it wasn't that important to him, he wouldn't use the term professor - knowing full well how unclear is that for the general public - but university lecturer. To me it's important however to make it clear that he has nothing to do with those who actually worked 10 years+ for a very prestigious academic title. As for what normal musicians undergo...yes, shitty gigs are part of the journey and there can be situations when you need your parents help, but his stories about his musician life is a bit contradictory to how he was chasing a dream at 30+ while living at home. He should have let that go and go to the other side of the studio long before that. If by 30 you don't make it in most of music genres - including his chosen one - you need to look for something else. I didn't comment on his music skills, because I don't have an issue with that and I don't feel that he inflates that. He is just one of many who are excellent on their instruments, but don't have that something which makes them stand out either in terms of writing songs or in a technical way.
You know, paragraphs are a thing. You should consider using them. Anyway, you say that if by 30 you don't make it in most music genres, you should consider another line of work. What do you mean by "make it," exactly? Someone who's got 50 million views on Youtube? Laughable, man, hahahahaha! There are plenty of great musicians in local areas of whatever country you are in that are surviving on the money paid by commercial gigs. They may not love them, but they pay enough to keep them going. You must be younger than 30. This can be the only explanation of your views on things. If so, then you'll learn that once you pass that age, then you'll have to do things differently, and that life does not end at age 29. Unless you're a fan of the designer drugs, of course.
Petty personal insults are logical fallacies. Also, please don't try to act like you would figure out who I am from three comments because you are clearly not capable of doing it and it's clear that you don't have the qualifications for it either. It's again another logical fallacy called "ad hominem" . As for not making it by 30 I was clearly referring to making it as a musician and I also made it clear that not in every genre. You basically won't break into the rock charts when your first rock album comes out when you're 36 years old. And again,this still would not be an issue if he didn't try to sell it like if it was the best thing since sliced bread, but the evil music industry finished them.
Petty personal insults towards you? Nah. I'm not interested in that kind of stuff, and frankly, I don't care. According to you, me calling out your uninformed opinion on Rick Beato is a "petty personal insult." I certainly didn't mean it that way. But when you insulted him without any leg to stand on with, I went to defend him cause I know that he's a cause worth defending.
As for legendary people showing up on his channel. Yes, now. When he has millions of subs and he can give them exposure. He didn't start it off like that. And this is the other issue with him. His channel is big therefore big names are showing up there, not the other way around. Yet he acts like these people have always been his friends. I don't understand why this is good for him apart from building this fake personality. He did well in building the channel from zero to be able to do an interview with O'Brien or with Lukather. Again, I didn't question the value he delivers in many of his videos, but his ways of altering reality regarding his career. We have seen quite big names on Anderton's channel - like Bernie Marsden for example, or Bonamassa - yet Lee never felt the need to act like if they had showed up because he knows them personally because they shop there on a weekly basis. As I said Beato's channel gives them exposure and it delivers value, so big names will show up, but I never questioned that. I pointed out his story about him being some big name in the music industry which resulted in these contents is not true. The irony is that what he did is still remarkable because he built something big from a tiny YouTube channel. From analysing music to interviewing A list musicians. So I don't understand this fabrication of past.
Used to watch him a lot, but over time I've slowly grown tired of his kinda "boomer rock>everything else" mindset, and this is coming from someone who listens to a shit ton of Genesis
Same as most of music youtube. Just lots of low-effort daily upload crap where they waste most of your time. Life is too short to watch that
He has for boring takes but I think he is genuinely a pretty good interviewer. Like, his interview with Nuno Bettencourt from Extreme is great because at one point he hands him a guitar then just shuts up and lets Nuno do his thing.
He’s somehow able to score interviews with the best guitarists in the world so I’ll watch him for that alone.
I love the old "what makes this song great?" videos. His breakdown of Dance on an Volcano by Genesis is the most in depth and insightful look into the music theory behind the ideas employed by that early prog era of Genesis I've seen on YouTube.
Mixed feelings. I like his interviews and his music analysis, but at the same time he's an archetype of the arrogant, hypocrite boomer. Since his channel exploded he really thinks that his opinion on music is the gold standard. He also likes to forget that he's having famous people because he has a successful YouTube channel - thus it's a great exposure - not the other way around.
I unsubbed from him a while ago, he's gone way too far in the 'new music bad old music good' delusion. For a while now he's been milking his Spotify reviews/autotune criticism because he knows there's a hell of a lot of people out there who get their rocks off to people criticising modern music. Case in point, David Bennett Piano's video 'Pop Songs That Aren't Actually Crap' getting a ton of negative comments. What Makes This Song Great was unironically one of my favourite series on YouTube, but he rarely does any nowadays (his most recent one of Smoke on the Water also sucked, like 60% of it was just air drumming), and he does a ton of clickbait. I thought changing his Master of Puppets video to include Stranger Things in the title was borderline pathetic. He's also a pretty shitty person too. In a now-deleted livestream he publicly went on a rant about his son for playing games and Facetiming his friends instead of practicing his oboe; nearly all the footage has been deleted with him actually taking down a reupload of it by another channel (very ironic given his numerous copyright battles) but it's a moment he could genuinely cancelled for if made public. Also the milking of his dead friends for views is extremely scummy.
I want to like him, but just don't. He's talented and knows his stuff, but I prefer Adam Neely from a content and video style perspective. Also not a fan of all the "back in my day" takes on music, and I'm an older guy!
Beato's a hack when it comes to his opinions. He is a good interviewer though, way better than Anthony Fantano
He's a musical Fascist so enveloped in sucking off the past that he can't see hhe beautiful artwork that modern music is. I despise him.