Almost as Knee-Jerk as the People I'm Bashing

Music is a major part of our culture. I’m not going to give a history here of the profound effect that musical expression has had on our society, and how screwed we’d all be without it. No, I’m going to describe how music is dividing our culture, and making fools and barbarians out of the best of us.

Music is what we use to identify ourselves. The emotions and words, melodies and beats contained in the songs we love is how we see our inner self. Listen to almost any ACDC cut and you think “This is what I’m like. I’m a badass, and if you can’t handle this, then get out.’ We aspire in our minds to be that rock star on the stage, to wail on that guitar, to play the hell out of that drum kit, to drop the greatest verse ever, or to sing into the rafters, and leave the crowd weeping at the power of your voice. What I’m saying is that we put our favorite musicians on a pedestal, and idolize them to the point of blind reverence.

Famed videogame critic Ben “Yhatzee” Crenshaw said once that, “The worst thing you can do to an artist is to tell him that his work is perfect when it isn’t.” If that is true, then the second worst thing you can do is to disregard his work as pointless and meaningless before you give it a chance.

Music fans are the quickest to commit this sin, and it’s most apparent across decades, and contemporary popular styles. The most infuriating critique I hear made against artists is that they’re ‘talentless’. And ten times out of ten, the offender is not a musician themselves, couldn’t tell a major seventh from an inverted minor second. And one of the artists I used to hear this used on was Fall Out Boy; a pop-punk band that was slammed left and right by anyone with a soapbox, largely because their fan base consisted largely of fourteen-year-old screaming girls.

Listen to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pV2YKdiFjDE

Listen to that! That’s a powerfully talented vocalist, who’s hitting notes he has no business going anywhere near. But still people dump on it because this kind of music isn’t representative of their generation, or their geographic region, or whatever reason they choose to become their battle flag.

There is a rule that I have in regards to criticizing someone else’s work. If you’re going to say it sucks, then say why it sucks, and how it could be improved. If you want to say that your preferred style of music is better, then tell me why it’s better. If you’re going to say that a group is talentless, then prove that you can do it better. Play their songs better than. So many times I’ve heard one group or another assigned a quick label and then forgotten, “Oh they’re emo, they suck.” Or, “Those idiots can’t even play their instruments, X is much better.” It’s this knee-jerk, unreasoned criticism that is guaranteed to break my balls and drive me up the wall. So please, if you’re going to criticize something, aspire to be more than a passive participant.