Sometimes the inmates run the asylum and it’s just amazing to me that Stone Temple Pilots’ “Lady Picture Show” never became a defining anthem of American society. The song is absolutely, terrifically great, with a series of elaborate, responsive melodies governing the verse, and a brilliant, awesomely pliable chorus that pares itself down to a simple mantra and excludes the song’s title, in stylish form.
I just read on Wikipedia that on the release of STP’s third album, Tiny Music… Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop, the critic for Entertainment Weekly felt so spiny about the expedition that he was found “singling out and making fun of the band’s physical appearances — like, actually their body types” [1]. Now, I suppose that would qualify as a legitimate red herring fallacy, if only it were the magazine’s expressed professional objective to vilify the band, as if they were opponents of the band in a courtroom. But seeing as, theoretically, it was their cup of tea to inform us as to whether the music were good, I have no choice but to declaim it as too nonsensical to even qualify as a legitimate logical fallacy. The most marked case of clinical-level belligerence, though, as it were, might have emanated from Ryan Schreiber of Pitchfork, likely still a virgin at the time, who, in this review of Tiny Music, according to Wikipedia, expressed that he “wished Weiland would tie (himself) off and fall into space forever.” What exactly the He** that’s supposed to mean, as it happens, is completely lost on me. Schreiber also at one point the review exclaims “Fu** you, Scott,” taking particular exception to the band’s borrowing of a “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” melody in “Big Bang Baby,” the lead single.
The “initial critical reception” to Tiny Music was so obviously sodden in pathological jealousy that, as I allude to in the title to this piece, Wikipedia actually institutes a dual “Critical Reception” section on the album’s page of “Initial Critical Reception” and “Retrospective Reception,” each in its own right. Across the board, the “Initial Critical Reception,” a la Pitchfork’s 0.8 out of 10 [2] and Entertainment Weekly’s C, was staunchly negative, with Pitchfork itself doling a 7.4 in their 2021 review of the album, and Billy Corgan’s praise of Tiny Music as his favorite STP project rounding out the “Retrospective Reception” section. Of course, it is phenomenologically similar to how Pitchfork openly and copiously dissed Soundgarden concurrent with their heyday, to then launch an extensive project in commemoration of Chris Cornell upon his death.
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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiny_Music…_Songs_from_the_Vatican_Gift_Shop.
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[2] Yes, it’s hard to believe, but Pitchfork actually differentiates “0.8 out of 10” from “0.9 out of 10,” a discrepancy likely contingent on whether or not the scribe has gouged out his own gerbils’ eyeballs with a flat head screwdriver on that particular morning, or not.
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