Musical Taste

A friend of mine on another blog site posed a question about his own musical taste: was he okay for liking a pop group that is currently getting a lot of attention, or was he just giving in to media hype (even though he doesn't really tune in mainstream media a lot, he was still aware that this band would be in his face if he did). Was he just a sucker for certain choices of chord progression, instrumentation, or production? And so on.

I've redacted the name of the band so as to make my point more general. This is what I replied:

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I think personal taste is a really good thing. Just because people can disagree about it doesn't mean someone's wrong. I used to get flak for my musical taste; these days I often get strokes for it. My taste hasn't necessarily changed--I'm more familiar with a variety of things than I used to be, but I'm still applying the same standards of "what I like" and "what pleases me."

As for music theory--a LOT of pop music is based on a limited palette in terms of chord progressions and so on. There is still room for tremendous variation. If we picked apart some of $band's songs, I bet we'd find they have the same chord progressions and instrumentation as other songs that sound NOTHING like that. Music is fractal: permutations of simple rules can yield very complex results.

As for marketing: I've played on the bill with a lot of bands working territory similar to $band. In general it's not my favorite thing, but there *are* noticeable differences between the bands who have a better knack for songwriting and performance and those that don't. The suck factor is that the very *best* band, musically, doesn't always get the industry push behind it. The saving grace is that the bands that do get turned into stars are usually at least second or third rate ... rather than fifth or tenth rate. And for all I know, $band really could be the best of their ilk.

It's true that a lot of bands get sent into studios without their songs finished or their skills honed, and studio trickery rescues them ... but even then, all that means is that *someone* in the food chain had musical talent. Even if it was the producer. ;-) You can't rescue music at the touch of a button if you don't know *which* button you should be using.

In short: like what you like. If there are *other* kinds of music you enjoy, listen to those too. And if it's crap, and even YOU decide it's crap after a while, well, treat it like an internet crush on a hot $person who turns out not to be "all that" once you get to know them. You're not wrong to be attracted to pretty surfaces, even if you also wind up wanting depth.