The Narrative of Music (Or Why Music Critics Like Music You Don’t)

Most movies that win or are nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars are, at a minimum, watchable. Crash notwithstanding, if a movie wins the Oscar for Best Picture, it will at least keep you stimulated for 120 minutes. Likewise, the most critically acclaimed TV shows are entertaining. You might not love Breaking Bad or Mad Men, but you likely can acknowledge that as far as TV shows go, these ones are solid.

The dissonance between what is lauded in critical reviews and what is popular in music, well, that gulf is something else.

Here is a block quote from the New York Times’ review of Lonerism by Tame Impala, the most highly reviewed rock album of 2012, according to Metacritic.com. 

Tame Impala saves itself from mere revivalism with 21st-century self-consciousness and, tucked amid the swirl and buzz, touching confessions of insecurity.

Two comments: 1) I have absolutely no idea what this means; and 2) This music criticism has nothing to do with music.  

Here is the band’s most popular song from the album.

Ok, now I get what the New York Times meant by revivalism. These guys vaguely sound like Sgt. Pepper-era Beatles. Or Todd Rundgren. Or something from the late sixties, early seventies. Only problem is, the Beatles were incredibly catchy, even on experimental Sgt. Pepper stuff. Tame Impala’s Lonerism isn’t all that catchy. The chorus is catchy enough, but the rest is kind of blah. Which is why it isn’t all that popular.

Near as I can tell, Tame Impala got top-shelf reviews because it kinda sounds like the Beatles and the vibe of the music feels contemporary. That’s an excellent narrative.

Here’s the first line from (my former employer) All Music Guide’s review of Lonerism.

There's a better than decent chance that, no matter where you are, Perth, Australia is pretty far away, a fact that pretty much makes Tame Impala mastermind Kevin Parker an isolated pop genius' isolated pop genius.

Again, that’s a neat narrative, but it’s also ridiculous. It makes it sound as if Parker gets his music via gramophone records delivered on horseback. In 2012, the most popular song in the world was about a neighborhood in Korea. And the song itself was in Korean, which is a language that has fewer native speakers than Telugu and slightly more than Marathi.

In 2013, it matters not whether you come from Perth, Australia or Gangnam, South Korea.  People all over the world danced Gangnam style. With the exception of a few rock critics, no one danced to Tame Impala. 

Actually, given how great the reviews were for Lonerism, it’s kind of impressive how few people bought the record.

You don’t listen to music because it has a good narrative. You listen to music because it makes you shake your booty, or sing along. Or boil over with emotion. Or because it sticks in your head. Or whatever.  Unless you’re a rock critic, you don’t listen to music because it has a good narrative. 

Unfortunately, I think most music critics miss the point of music criticism, which, by my reckoning, is to figure out whether music is good or not. Too frequently, music critics get distracted by trying to place music into a broader cultural context. That’s a fool’s game, because the broader cultural context can only be understood long after the fact, if at all. 

The gist of this article is not to say that Gangnam Style was the best song of 2012, or that Tame Impala is terrible. It’s to say that music appreciation should be about music, not side-show cultural baggage or narratives of what we should like. 

And you should feel very confident ignoring any music review that doesn’t focus exclusively on the quality of the music. Anything else is just a particularly useless form of storytelling.  

Do Cool Shit

My life has been marked, if anything, by a little too much introspection.  I was a philosophy major in college. I spent much of my teenage years reading in my room. I quit my job and spent the last year in a phase trying to figure out what to do next.

If I have come to any conclusion after all of these periods of introspection, it is this: Do cool shit.

That’s terribly vague, I know. But the value of life lies in the things that we do. If the things we do every day are fulfilling and rewarding, then we will feel fulfilled and rewarded. If we find our actions to be empty and meaningless, then our lives, too, will be empty and meaningless. 

I recently travelled to Costa Rica and Nicaragua. In Nicaragua, I had a conversation with a guy who was contemplating the possibility of moving to Nicaragua. He’s a war vet turned park ranger and nature lover. With his war pension, he receives about $1300 a month from Uncle Sam. That’s far more than anyone would need to live in Nicaragua. He said that he couldn’t pull the trigger.

 

I, too, thought about the possibility of moving down there. Sitting on a hammock and staring into the sunset, it certainly seemed like a good strategy.

What I’ve learned in all my years of introspection (aka, contemplative inaction) is that it doesn’t matter.

Moving to Nicaragua will not make me happy or fulfilled. Nor will it make me unhappy or unfulfilled, either. What determines that is what I do every day, wherever I might be. If I sit around and eat and drink all day, I’ll eventually feel like a waste of life, regardless of what country I’m in. If I engage in activities I think are enriching, I will feel enriched.

The decision to move to Nicaragua would initially be interesting and challenging, and it would provide an emotional boost for a short period of time. But after the initial boost of adrenaline wears off, you’re still the same person with the same problems and peccadillos you had before you left. You have to come up with new challenges and struggles to give your life meaning. 

Because even if you’re in a cool place, if you’re not doing cool shit, over time, it won’t matter.  

And that’s all I have to say about that.