Tuesday, July 06, 2004
Revolver? It’s ok, but it’s no Taj Mahal.
Five stars for Exile on Main Street, well, we can all agree about *that* (can we?)… But what is it being measured against? Five stars meaning that it is four stars better than a one star album. Five different leagues, everything falling in one or the other. But what does this actually mean? Does this measure of quality transcend the narrow confines of music journalism? A five star album is apparently (near) perfection, but this is a perfection judged within the strictures of popular music. What if the best records are, well, not actually that good…
It’s time someone said this. Pop music is of extremely limited worth. It seems to me that it is deemed “good” by default, praised for not falling into common traps: so if it’s not hackneyed, the lyrics aren’t clichéd, the melody is not completely pedestrian then it’s valuable.
A lot of pop music is just dross, of course, and can be dismissed as such. But turn to the supposed classics. Just how good are they? Take a step back and take a long hard look at Revolver, a sacred text. Four blokes make some songs in the studio over a period of a few months. (Yes, and Picasso just “painted”, ok…) And that’s it. But, but, but, they used the studio as another instrument, weaving textures that couldn’t be recreated live… And? So what? The praise thrown at lyrics which are, at best, proficient, is hilarious. Take Eleanor Rigby, “wearing a face that she keeps in a jar by the door,” is held up as a great piece of poetry. If written in a GCSE essay it may warrant a tick (“in a jar. Good!”) but compare:
Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been
Lives in a dream
Waits at the window, wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door
Who is it for?
All the lonely people
Where do they all come from ?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong ?
With,
A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognised, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.
Or even,
My sister Laura's bigger than me
And lifts me up quite easily.
I can't lift her, I've tried and tried;
She must have something heavy inside.
And you start to think that the accolades afforded McCartney for his doggerel are embarrassing for all concerned.
Comparing across art forms may annoy but it is completely necessary to get a sense of scale. If we stay within pop then what – the Rolling Stones are better than the Strokes… Ok… but how good are the Rolling Stones? Being the best at flicking coins into a bin is all very well, but is that as worthwhile as being the best at painting? If we take a wider view across human achievement then the difference between the great and the mediocre in pop is a hair’s breadth. There is the poor, of course, but everything else falls somewhere between 6 and 6.2 with a couple of exceptions – Astral Weeks, perhaps, being an example. Furthermore, I would say that leaving aside the impossibility of scoring pieces of music (“What?! That’s a large area to leave aside! Isn’t that exactly what you’re doing?” “Yes, I know. I am using the scoring as a metaphor, calm down.” “I’m not sure if I’ll be able to, but ok, I’ll just misunderstand you later instead.” “I expected nothing less.”) then there is also a measuring error based on from where we are looking at the music. I’m arbitrarily saying that this uncertainty is +/- 10%. Just as the angle of the eye will affect the reading of a thermometer, so the cultural climate will influence the ear. Which bands are hip young things with cool haircuts currently referencing? What has become over-familiar? The mongrel horde of accepted taste will continually have different leaders as they nose in front of each other depending on our angle as listeners/viewers.
If albums are put up against other human accomplishments, with very few (no?) exceptions, they score low.
Is Ziggy Stardust as powerful and mysterious as Moby Dick? It is not.
Is A Hard Rain’s Going to Fall as shocking and haunting an anti-war statement as Guernica? It is not.
Is Trans-Europe Express or Planet Rock as “modern” and innovative as the Seagram Building in New York? They are not.
I can't really get behind recommendations either - you *should* listen to “black music” etc… Why, exactly? If it’s all much of a muchness then you may well enjoy it, but will it really change anything? Another suit is added to the same slim, endlessly reshuffled pack, the cards dealt will change but the value remains about the same. I listen to hip hop and that, sure, but it’s just a little stroll down ghetto lane before I return to my nice, white middle class life. There may be some kind of empathy going on, but it does not appreciably increase cross-cultural understanding. Being a fan of hip hop’s Bash Street Kids, the Wu Tang Clan (or their first album, at least), gives me no more clues as to what it’s like to be black than Oasis would provide to understand my existence – I just enjoy bouncing along to it. You could listen to Tupac Shakur, or you could read The Invisible Man, Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack or If He Hollers Let Him Go. The choice… is yours!
The undeniable snobbery surrounding music (and I’m taking aim at myself now, kids) frequently leads to an emphasis on owning over appreciating. It’s seen as a mark of a serious person not to own Best Ofs, but instead to have the actual albums, which, of course, should be listened to as God/The Artist intended – from beginning to end. Well, fuck it. So much of so many records is filler and stamped with “Will this do?” and *should* be rejected. How many times can I repeat it (count ‘em *) it’s… just… pop… music…
So if pop music is largely mediocre or at best, quite good, how do we explain its continued draw? All the cool kids like music, don’t you know that? When you’re growing up bands are a symbol of maturity, the don’t-give-a-fuck attitude, leather and sunglasses seem exotic and exciting. Bands from the past can be even more resonant – they have stood the test of time, after all, and can be appreciated away from the shallow dictates of fashion. “No, I don’t like Coldplay like you. I like Love. Therefore my taste is more refined. I had to mine that nugget myself, it wasn’t spoon fed me by VH1 and Q magazine…” Then where was it from? Did you take a chance on a record you’ve never heard of because you liked the sleeve? In which case how is this accident evidence of a more developed taste? Did you read about the band in another, more credible publication? Spoon-fed again then, my friend, just a different spoon. Unless a discovery is completely random, and in which case, no credit accrues to the listener, then it must come from somewhere.
“This record changed my life.”
“How, exactly?”
“Umm… I bought some more records.”
“Rightio.”
Now I love pop music. No, that’s not true, I’m falling into the same traps and not actually thinking. I *like* it. It pleases me, me gusto pop, but none of my favourite records are worth so much as a hair on the head of a person I love. I enjoy it, it’s fun or interesting or sad – it’s an amusement. It soundtracks my life and brings back memories of summers past, but I don’t *love* it. It’s a pastime. I’ve enjoyed finding out about the genealogy of genres, but let’s not pretend that it actually means anything. It’s just a hobby, like collecting china statuettes or being really into throw rugs. There’s stuff to know, some history, an accepted taste, forgotten “classics”, but the idea of arguing about which is better, or that you-really-should-get-into-Dutch-1930s-you-know… is absurd.
* Just once then.
|
Five stars for Exile on Main Street, well, we can all agree about *that* (can we?)… But what is it being measured against? Five stars meaning that it is four stars better than a one star album. Five different leagues, everything falling in one or the other. But what does this actually mean? Does this measure of quality transcend the narrow confines of music journalism? A five star album is apparently (near) perfection, but this is a perfection judged within the strictures of popular music. What if the best records are, well, not actually that good…
It’s time someone said this. Pop music is of extremely limited worth. It seems to me that it is deemed “good” by default, praised for not falling into common traps: so if it’s not hackneyed, the lyrics aren’t clichéd, the melody is not completely pedestrian then it’s valuable.
A lot of pop music is just dross, of course, and can be dismissed as such. But turn to the supposed classics. Just how good are they? Take a step back and take a long hard look at Revolver, a sacred text. Four blokes make some songs in the studio over a period of a few months. (Yes, and Picasso just “painted”, ok…) And that’s it. But, but, but, they used the studio as another instrument, weaving textures that couldn’t be recreated live… And? So what? The praise thrown at lyrics which are, at best, proficient, is hilarious. Take Eleanor Rigby, “wearing a face that she keeps in a jar by the door,” is held up as a great piece of poetry. If written in a GCSE essay it may warrant a tick (“in a jar. Good!”) but compare:
Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been
Lives in a dream
Waits at the window, wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door
Who is it for?
All the lonely people
Where do they all come from ?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong ?
With,
A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognised, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.
Or even,
My sister Laura's bigger than me
And lifts me up quite easily.
I can't lift her, I've tried and tried;
She must have something heavy inside.
And you start to think that the accolades afforded McCartney for his doggerel are embarrassing for all concerned.
Comparing across art forms may annoy but it is completely necessary to get a sense of scale. If we stay within pop then what – the Rolling Stones are better than the Strokes… Ok… but how good are the Rolling Stones? Being the best at flicking coins into a bin is all very well, but is that as worthwhile as being the best at painting? If we take a wider view across human achievement then the difference between the great and the mediocre in pop is a hair’s breadth. There is the poor, of course, but everything else falls somewhere between 6 and 6.2 with a couple of exceptions – Astral Weeks, perhaps, being an example. Furthermore, I would say that leaving aside the impossibility of scoring pieces of music (“What?! That’s a large area to leave aside! Isn’t that exactly what you’re doing?” “Yes, I know. I am using the scoring as a metaphor, calm down.” “I’m not sure if I’ll be able to, but ok, I’ll just misunderstand you later instead.” “I expected nothing less.”) then there is also a measuring error based on from where we are looking at the music. I’m arbitrarily saying that this uncertainty is +/- 10%. Just as the angle of the eye will affect the reading of a thermometer, so the cultural climate will influence the ear. Which bands are hip young things with cool haircuts currently referencing? What has become over-familiar? The mongrel horde of accepted taste will continually have different leaders as they nose in front of each other depending on our angle as listeners/viewers.
If albums are put up against other human accomplishments, with very few (no?) exceptions, they score low.
Is Ziggy Stardust as powerful and mysterious as Moby Dick? It is not.
Is A Hard Rain’s Going to Fall as shocking and haunting an anti-war statement as Guernica? It is not.
Is Trans-Europe Express or Planet Rock as “modern” and innovative as the Seagram Building in New York? They are not.
I can't really get behind recommendations either - you *should* listen to “black music” etc… Why, exactly? If it’s all much of a muchness then you may well enjoy it, but will it really change anything? Another suit is added to the same slim, endlessly reshuffled pack, the cards dealt will change but the value remains about the same. I listen to hip hop and that, sure, but it’s just a little stroll down ghetto lane before I return to my nice, white middle class life. There may be some kind of empathy going on, but it does not appreciably increase cross-cultural understanding. Being a fan of hip hop’s Bash Street Kids, the Wu Tang Clan (or their first album, at least), gives me no more clues as to what it’s like to be black than Oasis would provide to understand my existence – I just enjoy bouncing along to it. You could listen to Tupac Shakur, or you could read The Invisible Man, Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack or If He Hollers Let Him Go. The choice… is yours!
The undeniable snobbery surrounding music (and I’m taking aim at myself now, kids) frequently leads to an emphasis on owning over appreciating. It’s seen as a mark of a serious person not to own Best Ofs, but instead to have the actual albums, which, of course, should be listened to as God/The Artist intended – from beginning to end. Well, fuck it. So much of so many records is filler and stamped with “Will this do?” and *should* be rejected. How many times can I repeat it (count ‘em *) it’s… just… pop… music…
So if pop music is largely mediocre or at best, quite good, how do we explain its continued draw? All the cool kids like music, don’t you know that? When you’re growing up bands are a symbol of maturity, the don’t-give-a-fuck attitude, leather and sunglasses seem exotic and exciting. Bands from the past can be even more resonant – they have stood the test of time, after all, and can be appreciated away from the shallow dictates of fashion. “No, I don’t like Coldplay like you. I like Love. Therefore my taste is more refined. I had to mine that nugget myself, it wasn’t spoon fed me by VH1 and Q magazine…” Then where was it from? Did you take a chance on a record you’ve never heard of because you liked the sleeve? In which case how is this accident evidence of a more developed taste? Did you read about the band in another, more credible publication? Spoon-fed again then, my friend, just a different spoon. Unless a discovery is completely random, and in which case, no credit accrues to the listener, then it must come from somewhere.
“This record changed my life.”
“How, exactly?”
“Umm… I bought some more records.”
“Rightio.”
Now I love pop music. No, that’s not true, I’m falling into the same traps and not actually thinking. I *like* it. It pleases me, me gusto pop, but none of my favourite records are worth so much as a hair on the head of a person I love. I enjoy it, it’s fun or interesting or sad – it’s an amusement. It soundtracks my life and brings back memories of summers past, but I don’t *love* it. It’s a pastime. I’ve enjoyed finding out about the genealogy of genres, but let’s not pretend that it actually means anything. It’s just a hobby, like collecting china statuettes or being really into throw rugs. There’s stuff to know, some history, an accepted taste, forgotten “classics”, but the idea of arguing about which is better, or that you-really-should-get-into-Dutch-1930s-you-know… is absurd.
* Just once then.
|
