Comments on: Oscar Wilde on Sentimentality, or Why I Still Dislike Mumford

By: Bruin

Bruin — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 14:36:04 +0000

If I may quote David Foster Wallace: “[T]he next real literary ‘rebels’ in this country might well emerge as some weird bunch of anti-rebels, born oglers who dare somehow to back away from ironic watching, who have the childish gall to endorse and instantiate single-entendre principles. Who treat of plain old untrendy human troubles in emotions in US life with reverence and conviction. Who eschew self-consciousnesses and hip fatigue.”

By: andrew

andrew — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 00:06:50 +0000

for the most egregious gush of sentimentality i’ve ever come across, check out yanni playing live at the acropolis:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhS6asdNNy4

this is how bad bad art can get…. i don’t know anything about mumford, but from the posted video of their red rocks concert…. well, i’ll let you compare them to yanni.

By: Religion News Service | Culture | Arts & Media | Wednesday's … | The Arts Media

Wed, 03 Oct 2012 21:30:08 +0000

[...] First Things’ Matthew Schmitz is a brave man: he continues to lead with his chin, critiquing the new Mumford and Sons album, a sentimental favorite of everyone, it seems, especially [...]

By: Joe Z

Joe Z — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 21:21:57 +0000

Charlie Collier – ouch!

By: Charlie Collier

Charlie Collier — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 20:00:17 +0000

“A sentimentalist is simply one who wants to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it.”

What do we call a critic who wants the luxury of a dismissal without having paid for it with the actual work of criticism?

By: Father John Hollowell

Father John Hollowell — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 15:46:43 +0000

I also disagree that Mumford is guilty of mere sentimentalism. Is there some evidence?

By: Dan Hart

Dan Hart — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 13:09:39 +0000

I have read both of the reviewer’s posts about Mumford & Sons, and I am not convinced of Mr. Schmitz’s central argument that Mumford & Son’s music is little more than trite sentimentality. Much of the band’s music reflects on love, faith, and mortality in a way that is fairly unique in popular music, such as in “Winter Wind,” where they sing:

We’ll be washed and buried one day my girl/
And the time we were given will be left for the world/
The flesh that lived and loved will be eaten by plague/
So let the memories be good for those who stay.

To be sure, this is hardly Faure’s Requiem or a Verdi opera, but it’s not too far off from the traditional Appalachian music from which it draws. It even reminds me of Robert Herrick’s 17th Century poem “To the Virgins to Make Much of Time”:

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.

Objectively, one has to conclude that this is considerably better, and more profound, than the vast bulk of popular country and folk music that claims to be the descendant of traditional folk music. (For that matter, it is considerably more profound than the trite and sentimental “folk music” to which most Catholics are subjected at mass every week.)

Popular music is not high art and does not pretend to be high art. The fact that any popular band is reflecting on human mortality at all separates this music from the typical bubble gum sentimentality of most popular music.

By: Pete

Pete — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 06:16:19 +0000

That’s why I like the song “Gangnam Style” so much. It is completely unsentimental.

By: James K.A. Smith

James K.A. Smith — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 21:03:34 +0000

On the other hand, consider Albert Goldbarth, “Sentimental”: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171481