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Goodbye to "good music"
Published: Thursday, November 15, 2007 - 9:13pm
Last Sunday night I was driving home with two fellow sophomores, Eddie Diazmunoz and Gabe Smith.
Since we were in Eddie's car we were listening to his iPod, which meant we were listening to his music, which meant I was doing a lot whining.
Why? Because Eddie likes punk and hardcore music, while I like mostly indie rock.
After one of my complaints, Gabe turned around and said, "OK, Sindha … I'm about to play a song that you will hate because you don't like any good music."
Eddie nodded his head and added a confident, "Yeah, you really don't."
My brain went off sending crazy indie-kid snobbery signals, and I was just about to say: "What are you talking about?!? You guys are the ones with the terrible music taste! Anyone who can't recognize Thom Yorke's brilliance has no taste whatsoever!"
But then I paused and let the reggae/punk band fill the silence.
I was remembering back to the earlier days of Creative Writing class when senior Anna Cangellaris walked up to the classroom's podium and triumphantly declared that there is no such thing as "good music.” She went on to say that everyone should be able to decide what music they listen to without having to worry about other people calling it out as "bad music.”
There are some bands that I used to say lacked any talent whatsoever, such as Fall Out Boy, and some bands that I simply refused to listen to, such as The Fray. However, with this new and sudden revelation, caused by being on the receiving end of such a critique, I started to wonder if I really have the authority to determine the quality of a piece of music.
My new answer is no. This isn't because I have suddenly seemed to understand that Fall Out Boy is the best band ever (I don't think I will ever feel that way), but because I have come to realize that good music is entirely a personal thing. If you feel that Fall Out Boy is really the best band ever, then they are … for you.
This revelation may seem like a simple solution that most people can come to, but I think it's a legitimate problem among us stubborn Millennials. I believe that this is the case because we all have, due to the extreme access to music via the Internet, cemented tastes.
We know band names, album names, song names, and who influences whom. It almost seems necessary to have a "taste" in music, or a genre that we associate ourselves and are experts of. How many times have you been asked, "So, what kind of music do you like?" I know I can't keep track or how many times I have.
Although I know arguing for just the purpose of debate is a favorite activity among Uni students, I think it's definitely time to put aside the hostility a lot of us have bred toward genres that don't match our taste. We need to accept how exclusively personal "good music" is.
Comments
yay!
i totally agree. there is no such thing as good music. people have been making fun of me for my music tastes forever and just don't seem to understand this idea.
music taste is purely
music taste is purely subjective.
Sindha, I agree with your
Sindha, I agree with your ultimate conclusion about this all, but I'd probably be a bit harsher.
Just like with any genre of art, there are certain forms of music that just aren't very respectable. Mainstream groups that (supposedly) write the same song over and over again, playing the same, lame, easy to memorize and predict chord progressions, with the same, lame lyrics just aren't on the same level as bands like, say, The Who.
I'm not saying that musical taste must be absolute––I, for one, am one of the few people I know who's enjoyed Envy, a Japanese hardcore band, enough to put it on my top list. That said, I did so because their musicality is worth a high spot. Envy uses incredibly intricate guitar work in addition to your garden variety rock power chords, with various effects that make their music sound more like post-rock than screamo.
In my humble opinion (which is backed up with my own actual musical ability, a few years of music review-writing, and hours upon hours of time spent in record stores) mainstream acts like Fallout Boy and The Fray are just cookie-cutter bands that fill in whatever pop-niche is required in the genre of "rock" that week, month, year, or whatever. However, while that fact is clearer to me than crystal, I don't think that musical taste should be used as a metric for someone's worth as a human being.
Anyways, nice piece, Sindha. You know your stuff, so don't let anyone else knock your opinion.
Unfortunately, your idea of
Unfortunately, your idea of "mainstream groups that (supposedly) write the same song over and over again, playing the same, lame, easy to memorize and predict chord progressions, with the same, lame lyrics" is ultimately up to your taste, which I often have issues with. Maybe for you Fallout Boy means nothing, but I'm sure there's somebody out there who as taken their music to heart.
new but not last..
Sindha your "new answer" is OK because it is not the last one..
4 Seasons
Like their are 4 seasons in a year and many moods in 4 seasons, similarly their are a number of likes and dislikes about music. Likes and dislikes about music are not complete. They are entirely based on seasons and moods. When we feel good then there is "new answer" for good music.
Carl, You're talking about
Carl,
You're talking about liking a band. I'm talking about technics. Different things.
Does it matter?
People's preferences for songs are strongly based on variety. People like something new and fresh or it's just like everything else they hear and they don't like it. For someone who really like hip-fop, for example, they can differentiate between stale "technic" and fresh "technic." Now if don't like hip-hop (or any other genre), you most likely won't be able to make that kind of distinction, unless of course, you're a critic.
That made absolutely no
That made absolutely no sense...A term like "stale" can't be applied to skill. "Stale" and "fresh" are time-sensitive, and refer to a band's popularity, and the opinion of their overall sound, as opposed to their aptitude.
"Technic" does not mean
"Technic" does not mean skill. It means technique or method. And "stale" as in not original.
I didn't say "technic" means
I didn't say "technic" means "skill," and you just proved my point: how does technique influence whether something's "stale" or "fresh"? It doesn't! It just affects the sound itself, so that's what matters. And "stale" doesn't mean whether something's original or not––certainly not in this sense. It refers to how new it sounds in a time-sensitive manner, i.e. in the world of pop music.
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