Music is my least favorite thing to talk about. The careers of various artists and bands, what is good or not, when it’s all quite similar, I find this conversation boring.
Any song that people like is a hand full of chords with some versus, a chorus, and sometimes a bridge. It’s marketed to different types of people, who usually fancy themselves as similar to the image being espoused by the people making or fronting the music they like, or at least want to hang out with them.
I have a few favorite bands and artists. They might not be the same ones you like. You might say the bands I like suck, yet be a huge fan of a band that it incredibly similar.
I’m a big fan of Pearl Jam, yet I think Nickelback sucks. In fact, I know this to be true. Yet, at the end of the day, it would be difficult for a Ugandan man to tell the two apart – I just like hanging out with guys from the northwest to read a lot and like basketball as opposed to Canadian guys who like smoking cigars in parking lots – yet those people certainly exist and they need a band.
I don’t think any of popular music taste is an intellectual endeavor. As I have studied music some and learned how to play an instrument somewhat capably, I’ve realized it’s not especially complicated.
The illusion is that you have to be a genius to hammer three chords on an electric guitar, but your average person could figure it out in ten years or so.
Certainly there are posers – people who pretend to like a certain band because it’s trendy – but I think that’s pretty rare.
I think people just intrinsically like what they like. There are certain songs that are unequivocally catchy, and nobody knows why. You can’t produce them in a lab, despite the efforts of Dr. Luke.
Perhaps it all boils down to genetics. Like fatherhood or cilantro.
I don’t come from a musical family, but growing up I saw my familial associates caught off guard by songs like Tom Petty’s You Don’t Know How It Feels or The Band’s The Weight.
One minute a parent is driving along the street, minding their own business, then spontaneously they’re belting out the lyrics or subconsciously tapping their foot. This is the closest some people get to dancing.
I’m quite certain southerners have a certain expression for it, something jus’ jumped into your bones, or the coyote’s got your dick by its tail, but I like the way I said it a lot better.
You can’t engineer music to mass produce this effect, but you can try. Unfortunately there are many among us who just gladly accept whatever is put in front of them, whether it’s Burger King or Beyonce, but no group of dudes in suits got together and persuaded people to crave beef – they might have mass produced it and tweaked it, but they didn’t come up with the idea.
The Band were a bunch of guys from Canada, most of them had their own bands, and they sort of morphed into this elite unit, weeding people out along the way – touring together for a decade, living that life, and this struggle reflected in the authenticity their music.
Beyonce’s music, if you want to call her music, is a corporate collective, employing hundreds of talent who are not named on her album. Her Lemonade album featured 72 writers, the song Hold Up alone featured 15.
And it still sucks.
She can’t play an instrument, though she is in reasonably good shape and can sing through machines. I’ve yet to understand why she carries herself like an artist.
I posit she is simply a dumb asshole.
Anyway, whenever people want to talk to me about music I grow incredibly bored. I just like what I like.
It’s not an endorsement of the artist especially, they more or less just stumbled onto these songs while trying to get laid.
It’s all the same format, I just happen to like the sound of instruments, and I don’t say that with any hint of superiority.
I didn’t choose this music, it just found me.
For this reason, I haven’t heard most of the songs or entire albums of my favorite bands or artists. Most of them have one to twenty good songs and the rest of it just can’t live up to these tracks.
In fact, if we’re being honest, every album was commercially influenced. You just happened to have 45 minutes to an hour of material? Bullshit. You could have easily cut five of those songs.
I am a big fan of Neil Young and Soundgarden, but I only listen to the greatest hits. The Toadies only have one good song, Possum Kingdom, but I’d much rather listen to that song than any song by Soundgarden except for three or four of them.
In fact, one hit wonders have some of the best songs out there. Crimson and Clover, maybe. Conversely, many artists have several popular songs, but I only like one of them, and I don’t feel the need to explain my taste, in fact I can’t even explain it. For example, I legitimately hate The Eagles, but I have Desperado on my playlist.
Hence, I have no loyalty to any one band or artist. I’m like the Bill Belichick of playlists. If someone outperforms you based on my own unwritten criteria, you’re off the team.
In fact, I have no loyalty to anyone except friends and family.
***
I recently had the experience of watching the Super Bowl Halftime Show, sober, with a woman who was a huge fan of Beyonce and Shakira.
I remarked that it objectively sucked ass, and she said, well, they are making a lot of money off of this, and they look good, for their ages.
This would never occur to me when listening to the music I like. I don’t care how much Neil Young is making for the show, I just like what he’s doing.
That’s not to say I don’t on occasion live vicariously in brief moments through musicians I adore – usually when I am running I play music really loud and pretend I am Springsteen hammering out guitar riffs and guttural vocals on stage.
I just don’t identify with the part that I was somehow still getting booked based on the shape of my ass whilst not singing and then sipping tea in the green room while telling everyone to get the fuck out.
That’s why Springsteen appeals to the working man and Beyonce appeals to cunts.
***
As you can tell, I have loyalty only to the performance. Not to the image of the artist. I live for the music. Hence I could give a shit whatever dumb outfit Ghostface Killah is wearing at this juncture.
I am, in the only true sense of the word, a purist. Living in the moment. Letting the rhythm take me over, bailando.
Hence, my playlists are beyond eclectic, they are disjointed to the point of being distracting to anyone besides myself.
Currently: Lungs by Towns Van Zandt followed by Supersonic by Oasis, Rudy Can’t Fail by The Clash, Swimming Pools by Kendrick Lamar, Evangeline by Emmy Lou Harris, Wild Wild Life by The Talking Heads, The Future by Leonard Cohen, Rich Girl by Hall and Oats, mix in some Gin Blossoms, Rolling Stones, Johnny Cash, Wu Tang Clan, Travelling Willburys, Loudon Wainwright III, Dire Straits, Social Distortion, Van Morrison, Outkast, Bob Dylan and Gladys Knight and someone is surreptitiously eyeing my bluetooth speaker, believing they can resurrect the vibe.
It would be impossible for me to look like I like all of these artists, or at least, certain songs by them. Perhaps that’s why I got kicked of that one junior high school party when I showed up wearing cowboy boots and locs.
I also don’t especially care what they’re doing right now. I don’t really care if they’re sleeping in a gutter or, more likely, ordering modified egg sandwiches to their hotel suites.
I care simply about the music. Not the back story, not the narrative, not the image, and not the work.
You ever met the drunk girl at a bar who hears a song and claims it’s her favorite song? Even though you can tell she maybe has never heard it before?
Then later she has a new favorite song?
We should all aspire to be that person. I have a lot of opinions on politics and everything else.
Frankly those things are more important than music.
If they weren’t, music wouldn’t just be called good if it was good, and bad, if it was bad, by people who, BY THE WAY, routinely opine about music.
Read a book, then if you still want to look down on people based on their preferences, realize you have Beyonce on your playlist.