It’s easy to think this is a dark time for music. Last year, Train’s “Hey, Soul Sister” topped the Billboard Rock Charts, leading the BBC to declare 2011 the worst year for rock in history. Katy Perry matched Michael Jackson’s record for number #1 singles off a single album (five, if you were wondering) through the soulless dance music of Teenage Dream. Worse still, LMFAO proved hopes for a kind future empty through their mere existence, and managed to make Right Said Fred seem positively talented in hindsight.
All of the above is true, but we shouldn’t take that as a sign that music, as a vital artform, is dead. Music is the 21st century’s most powerful art form; a medium that produces more interesting, thought provoking pieces that anything else in the modern era. Nothing else comes close, largely because music is extremely easy to distribute and relatively easy to produce, especially in comparison to film or television. Even a student film can cost thousands of dollars, while the means to play and record a song rarely exceed a few hundred for amateurs.
Pop music may be an empty husk coated in mascara and cheap perfume, but what was once considered underground music, something once relegated to college radio stations and worn cassettes passed from friend to friend, is now a few clicks of the mouse away. If you can get past the prickly pretentiousness, music forums offer a wealth of obscure albums that only barely exist in the real world.
And yet, I’m still biased against modern music. Even though I have more albums from the last decade than any other, I still listen to classic rock stations at work and wax on (endlessly, I’m told) about how everything nowadays is simply shit. A lot of it can be blamed on the disposable swill of modern radio pop (which I do honestly believe is worse now than it ever has been and will take an in-depth look at in due time) but that doesn’t excuse me continuing to claim the superiority of the past over the present. Brilliance still shines through, and my generation is blessed in that we don’t even need to look that hard for it.
And so I started this blog as a twofold New Year’s resolution: to immerse myself more in the present day and to actually carry through on the threat I’ve made to my friends for years of actually putting my pretention on the page. Over the coarse of the next year, I’m going to write about music. The center of this will be a weekly write up of an album from the last ten years (give or take) that I believe is, and will continue to be recognized as, historically or artistically significant. A lot of this will be grounded in efforts at giving the albums cultural context, and offering what I believe will be interesting observations. I’ll also be writing about other subjects as they occur to me. I don’t want to limit myself too much, but I don’t want to promise more than a post a week either.
Further, I’d like to offer a few disclaimers. At no point do I want to hear people talking about how music doesn’t have to be ‘good’, it just has to be ‘fun’. While fun music (which is generally either or novelty) has its place (the dance floor and comedy, respectively), that place is not here. I’m discussing music, after all. This is not to say that good music can not also be fun (The Black Keys’ ‘El Camino’ is a fine example of something that is precisely that) but a song made purely for humor can never be considered good music, and the first person that brings up Jonathan Coulton gets a knife in the eye.
On a similar note, poptimists are welcome to come in and state their views, but must also accept that I will verbally eviscerate them for their stupidity. Let me say, unequivocally, that the central argument of the poptimist movement (that pop music is so well crafted and so well liked that it’s just plain mean to insult it) is fucking retarded, and you people should be ashamed to hold that opinion. It’s like comparing furniture to sculpture. The obvious caveat here is that some pop music is, in fact, quite good, which I’m obviously not going to deny. But poptimism doesn’t defend the kind of pop that you can probably guess that I like. No, poptimism is the reason why Beyonce gets put on Top 10 lists by venerable music critics (well that and gratuitous payola). It’s bullshit, and I’ll save my tirade about it for a series of posts in the future.
What else? I swear a lot so be mindful of that. In spite of my bombastic, pretentious (I do love that word, don’t I?) prose, I am perfectly to discuss and issues or complaints you may have about this blog and its content. I’ll be reading the comments closely so feel free to post. I won’t bite. Hell, I probably won’t even cravenly delete posts.
The first album discussion will be uploaded this weekend, which is when you should generally expect them.
Cheers all.
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