Thursday 7 March 2013

No Music Is Superior To Any Other

As in it doesn't necessarily make you more moral or cool to listen to one kind of music as opposed to another.
This has been a thing that's annoyed me for some time, actually; you see these sort of clan wars developing over the internet over whose kind of music is better, what makes you the better person if you listen to it, etc. You must have seen the type of thing I'm talking about - in one corner you have the rock fans with "at least our bands write their own music and use real lyrics as opposed to 'you a stupid hoe'", and in the other you have the pop fans with their "I Am Going To Make Yet Another Trending Topic Asking For The Attention of This International Celebrity Asking Them To Follow Me Because I Am So Much More Fascinating Than Any Of The Other 3,000,000 People Doing The Same Thing At The Same Time" thing.
Now, I could very easily take to the rock corner, and in fact I do agree with a lot of what they say about songwriting and musicianship, because that, to me, is what music actually is - it's an art, a form of expression you use when just saying things doesn't quite cut it, so singing into a machine the words of some moneymaking algorithm all to please some dark music industry overlord seems a bit like a perversion of the art to me.

But then, that's the thing right there; all art is subjective. I and others like music created very personally, specifically to be very personal for the audience, music that gives you somewhere to escape to. I'm all over that kind of stuff. But just because of that doesn't mean that I don't like any other genre of music. Proper hip hop (Lil Wayne does not count, I'm talking about Wu Tang Clan and the like) is awesome, as is a bit of house music every now and then. I'm increasingly disillusioned with the music you hear on the charts nowadays because it's all so meaningless, but maybe that's the fun of it - some pop singers are aware of how light and sugary they are, and they take the piss out of it, people like Ke$ha, for example - she is so obviously a parody artist. Even the ones that are serious about it can be good, because sometimes you need a bit of relief and some time surrounded by the paper-thin sparkly pop world. It's certainly more racially diverse, with a lot more black artists (although the way they've been whiting up Nikki Minaj of late is disappointing, because she shouldn't have to be marketed as any other skin tone to be more successful) and the increasing popularity of K- and J-pop, with groups like Big Bang having a bigger audience here in the UK.

Sure, it's fine to say that you prefer the music you like for certain reasons - I've already stated mine - but don't ever pretend that liking My Chemical Romance over One Direction makes you a better person, and it doesn't work that way the other way round either. Sure, the 1D fans may have a tendency to be really annoying and never shut up about them, and some seem to think it's ok to send death threats to children just because their dad was involved in rock music, but that's the fans - not all of them, yes, but the ones who are currently standing as the global ambassadors for the rest of them, unfortunately - as individuals who are whiny, self-absorbed douches, and any fanbase can be like that (coughSherlockcoughcough). Incidentally, nothing that you like, be it a band or a television series or a god, can make you a more or less moral person than anyone else, unless what you like to do is brutally murdering people or inciting discrimination and hate crimes.

All fans of any particular genre with a brain in their heads will know that there's other kinds of music that they like occasionally, and if you look at modern music, there are songs that transcend genre and make everybody like them, or at least recognise them - Mr Brightside, for example, or Low - so just . . . get off your high horse and dance to different kinds of music, because you know you like them really.

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