Welp I'm on the record now: I love Boléro, fuck the haters, Ravel knew exactly what he was doing https://twitter.com/vanmusicmag/status/1387848625083011078

The most eye-rolling Boléro criticism I see is "Ravel himself hated it!" ClassicFM clickbait bullshit. Ravel's tongue-in-cheek self deprecation was always along the lines of "I know I broke the rules of 'good music' and IDGAF." If you think that means he hated it, you're an idiot

Every journalist and critic that peddles the "Ravel hated Boléro" line is lazy and has never read his quotes in context. There's even a pernicious rumor that Ravel "disowned" or "withdrew" it, which like ... please provide me any evidence whatsoever of that, I dare you

Something I didn't get into in this essay because it would have been even longer: when Ravel discovered he couldn't immediate secure the rights to orchestrate Iberia, he pronounced copyright "stupid" Pretty sure he and I would have gotten along pretty well.

Ironically, when Ravel died in 1937 without children, Boléro became one of the best examples of how greedy vampiric estates have turned copyright into a bloated monster that stifles creativity and art https://interlude.hk/composers-in-the-court-roomravels-bolero/