I don’t like critiquing music. Yes, I write about music.<\/p>\n
Aside from atrocious musicianship and outright plagiarism, we all know that appreciation of music is subjective. It therefore seems pointless to savage a work of art based on personal opinion. It’s akin to screaming at all the bad drivers on the road when you yourself don’t know how to drive.<\/p>\n
However! Some time ago, I was enlisted by an ultra-local paper to review new albums. My instructions: “be nice”.<\/p>\n
That’s it.<\/p>\n
At first, I thought it was a bullshit mandate. I wanted musicians to better their music — and better music in general — <\/em>even if it meant I crushed their spirits enough to keep them from it forever. The “be nice” mandate was bullshit not because I couldn’t be\u00a0cruel<\/em>, but because I was being forced to obfuscate the cold, hard facts about the terrible artists’ “potential” and “talent”. And, I thought, I’d be goddamned if I would ever ingratiate myself to spare some feelings! Right?<\/p>\n Well, I am no Lester Bangs, and it’s not just because I was forbidden to be.<\/p>\n For starters, I was reviewing albums by musicians who were either just starting out or laboring in obscurity for good reasons. With a handful of exceptions, each CD I received ranged from inoffensive to teeth-grindingly terrible. It was like a musical kaleidoscope of recycled riffs from more popular artists, mewling vocals, and treacly, broken-down melodies.<\/p>\n Just my opinion, of course.<\/p>\n So, the order to “be nice” got under my skin. Uncovering the merits of this “awful” music had me questioning my judgement in no time. I started thinking about how many genres or musicians I was ignorant of. I doubted all the ideas I had about the difficulty of guitar techniques. I re-affirmed my kindergarten-level knowledge of music theory.<\/p>\n And then I started to sympathize with these musicians, toiling in obscurity, being un-appreciated and second-guessed.<\/p>\n Worst of all, I wondered: Were these musicians simply being humored by their peers and producers? That thought horrified me.<\/p>\n Jeeze… why\u00a0did that get to me so much?<\/p>\n I realized that I, too, fear that important people in my life felt like they had to “be nice” to me. Because of that, I fear that I’ve too often been told<\/em> that I’m better than I actually<\/em> am. I came to see that lambasting these struggling musicians would have felt good not because I believed they deserved it, but because it would be like making up for all the dis<\/em>couragement that I should have gotten. Being “nice” was the acknowledgement that I, too, could have easily been lied to when I was told that I was talented or smart or pretty… or a good writer. And who wants to think about that?<\/p>\n Still, I generally subscribe to the “art for art’s sake” idea. But that doesn’t mean I like it.<\/p>\n