I don't get it...Exile on main Street-Blue

@jastralfu when I said “level playing field” I meant, unlike athletics where it’s a scientifically proven fact that males have a physical advantage over females, none such exists in art.

“Full disclosure I love female vocalists…”
How does such a sexist qualification necessitate a preface of “full disclosure…”?
Full disclosure: I abhor sexism.  
Do you refer to “male vocalist” as if it’s a “genre” or do you just call them “vocalists? (because that’s what they are, right?)  Would we categorize and label Black Sabbath and Exile on Main Street as “male rock albums,” or just “rock albums” (because that’s what they are, right?)

These are much more interesting questions to me than whether someone likes something.  
P.S. you already had the right answer when you said, “it’s all subjective.”  There’s nothing wrong with you for not liking a thing. You don’t have to like it. FWIW those are two of my favorite LPs but…who cares what I think? Nothing I or anyone can say will cause you to be moved by something that doesn’t move you.

@jastralfu Of course there’s nothing wrong with enjoying the (clearly different from a male’s) sound of a female voice.
Of course everything you say is true, but none of it addresses what I said or what the actual issue is.
I’ve never once heard someone say, “I love male artists.”
I’ve never once heard Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen or Bruce Springsteen (or whomever - just a few ex.) referred to a “a male artist.”
They’re referred to as “artists.”
Yet Carole King, Joni Mitchell and Lana Del Rey (or whomever - just a few ex.) are so very often referred to not as “artists,” but “female artists,” as though an actual artistic distinction need be made.
It’s just dumb and sexist.
They’re all artists, some are better than others, some people like some more than others.

This ain’t athletics where there are many scientifically proven facts that point to irrefutable differences in muscle mass, strength, leaping ability, etc. between males and females.
Artistically and creatively, we’re all on a completely level playing field.

To quote Kurt Cobain, sorry to be so anally PC, but that’s the way I feel.

@grislybutter Please don’t misrepresent my words.  
At no point was it ever “the point” to label, categorize and speak of an artist on terms of gender, male or female.  
The most recent thread topic where I expressed my objection to the “female artist” label was a OP asking whether forum members like Taylor Swift. This OP asks whether one is “missing something” when non-plussed by the albums Blue and Exile on Main Street.  
When the whole “female artist” thing emerged in both cases, I expressed my objection to it in each scenario.  
I kinda can’t believe how much I have to clarify this, but of course there’s nothing wrong with being inclined to prefer the sonic aesthetic of a female voice.  
It’s still just an artist, not a “female artist.”  
Again, my qualm is the labeling of artists, not with any individual’s preferred sonic aesthetic.  
Of course, your insinuation that a male voice can’t be mistaken for a female one is overstated. Many male vocalists can sound like a female.  
It wasn’t until I saw a video of Russell Oberlin singing that I realized it was a male.  
There are other vocal performances where it would be understandable to mistakenly believe it was sung by a person of a different gender.
 

I’m not a troll and I don’t like conflict. Opinionated and intense, yes, but not a troll and I don’t like conflict. As such I’ve been thinking about my contributions to this thread quite a bit.
I think I was still “on one” from the previous Taylor Swift thread and would have been well-advised to not drag that energy into this thread, and foist such negativity with the hectoring tone of the first half of my first post on this thread.
For this, I apologize.

I love both LPs in question, and there are plenty of widely-praised things that I either “didn’t get” until relatively late in life (jazz music being a big one - it was mid-30s for me with that) or still “don’t get.” If something doesn’t move you, it doesn’t move you. There’s nothing wrong with that, and it’s entirely possible that at some point in life, it will.
Side note: the YT vid of Joni on the BBC, a 1970 performance that includes many “new” songs soon to be released on Blue, left me amazed and deeply moved.
One of the great artists in pop history in her prime, captured beautifully by the BBC technical staff.

I think when seemingly every media outlet lavishes something with effusive praise, I go into it with a certain expectation that causes me to be disappointed sometimes.
In that situation, I feel like my ability to take the thing on it’s own terms is compromised.
I also think time/place and how I’m exposed to something effects how I feel about it. If something is associated with a very negative experience, it’s hard for me to appreciate it.
With these particular LPs, they were released a decade before I was born, so it wasn’t like, “oh, Joni Mitchell and the Rolling Stones have new LPs out.” I just sought them out from the perspective of “these LPs came out 30 years ago,” or whatever. They were obviously not contemporary releases.
In that scenario, I just thought they were both absolutely brilliant.
With Exile on Main Street, not only do the songs seem to attain a unique, hard-to-define kind of soulful, scuzzy majesty (‘Tumbling Dice,’ ‘Torn and Frayed,’ ‘Let it Loose,’ ‘Soul Survivor,’) but there’s real diversity between something like “Rip This Joint” and “Torn and Frayed,” between “I Just Want to See His Face” and “Sweet Virginia,” between “Ventilator Blues” and “Let it Loose,” etc. etc.

Blue is just genius to me.
The combination of highly sophisticated harmonic composition with such intense emotion and poetry is just masterful to me.

@tony1954 FWIW, especially after we consider the Academy/Hollywood’s moral grandstanding, I don’t understand why we have “Best Actor” / “Best Actress,” either.  
It’s…acting. I thought equality was what we were after, but what do I know.

@grislybutter Yes.  
However, at least they wouldn’t have intellectual egg on their face by bending over backwards to portray themselves as exemplars of equality while having two separate categories. Not that modern Hollywood has much interest in intellectual honesty to begin with… 
I think there’s a reason why they have two, and that reason is why they are unlikely to change, cognitive dissonance be damned, and that reason is money.  
The industry each year gets twice as many “assets” to market and advertise.