If you spend any time on social media—and judging by the comments flying about on the many sites I peruse daily, you do—then you know that we live in a world largely consisting of absolutes. Dak Prescott sucks. Joe Biden sucks. Taylor Swift sucks. You see it all the time.
You see, nuance doesn’t sell. It never has. People crow about thinking critically and doing their own research, and then the spew off an opinion that indicates the exact opposite. Shades of gray are boring and are for cucks, nerds, and wussies, right? Uncertainties don’t make money.
We let narratives dictate our opinions. Is it our fault? Partly. Media in general is no help, though. Conflicts laid out in black and white terms get clicks, views, and eyes on TV screens. Money talks. The truth is, the things we love to hate aren’t nearly as bad as they seem.
In most cases. Bigots and racists can still go pound sand.
But before I go off on a different speech meant for a different meeting at a different dock in a different dilapidated warehouse, let me focus on music. I spend a lot of time on music pages. The pervading theme in these spaces nowadays always seems to hover around “Who’s better?”.
Beatles or Stones. Pearl Jam or Nirvana. Soundgarden or Alice In Chains. Biggie or Tupac. We’re always being forced to take sides and argue about it. I will cast a few stones here, but with tongue firmly in cheek, for I am admitted music snob. My life, like most of yours, has been inundated with music since we were in utero. I still get nostalgic about the giant console stereo from my childhood. If I close my eyes, I swear I can smell the vinyl records and eight track tapes. Safe to say that a ton of us look at music as life.
And don’t even get started on the bands that “suck” nowadays. For whatever reason, bands like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Eagles, Led Zeppelin, and the Beatles take a lot of heat. I’ve seen a lot of people calling the Beatles overrated lately, which is laughable, because if you’ve ever tried to play a Beatles song, you understand how complex their chord changes can be and how well they’re composed. Those guys just didn’t miss.
Further, it seems like the object of our ire isn’t necessarily that a band sucks. If we drill down just a little bit, it’s apparent that any ill will towards a particular artist centers around overexposure. It’s why I didn’t appreciate The Rolling Stones until well into my thirties. Up until then, I’d largely just heard their radio hits. We all know how often those get played. It’s easy to get irritated after you hear “Satisfaction” for the thousandth time.
It wasn’t until I gave Exile On Main Street a thorough listen that the Stones’ genius started to become apparent to me. Songs like Tumbling Dice, Casino Boogie, and Sweet Virginia all swagger, groove, and ache in their own special way. In fact, Exile was a veritable passe partout into the world of the Stones for me. I started exploring their discography more and falling in absolute infatuation with their catalog. Seriously, from 1968’s Beggars Banquet to 1974’s It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll—six records total—it’s easy to argue that they could do no wrong. Each of those albums is a standalone masterpiece.
So no, in summation, the Rolling Stones don’t suck. But neither do the Beatles. Thankfully, no one’s holding a loaded slingshot to my nutsack and making me decide. At the end of the day, there is room for both on my playlist. And there are several songs from each band in my music collection,
Bands don’t suck because they’re not talented. They “suck” because we get weary of how overexposed they get. Here’s the thing, though: overexposure isn’t their fault in the least. In fact, overexposure should be a living testament to an artist’s impact on the world. For any band we hate, there are often millions—millions—of people that disagree. So who’s wrong in that equation?
Further, dismissing a band as bad is an insult to their musical ability, not to mention the thousands of hours they’ve dedicated to practicing and the thousands of dollars they’ve spent on gear. If you don’t like it, then get up there and do something better. I can’t. If not, then shut up and change the station or listen to something you personally like. Bottom line is, it takes a ton of balls to compose something, perfect it, release it, get it distributed, and hope that people like it enough to make a dent in your brain.
Music lovers have always been guilty of gatekeeping, and I’m not excluding myself from that. I used to bag on any band I deemed not worthy of my time and give dissertations on why they were lame, poseurs, hokey, or all of the above. The problem there is that gatekeeping gets exhausting. I’m not a “I Heard Them First” guy who won’t tell you about something that caught my ear. I am actually the exact opposite. If I hear something that I love, I try to spread it. Does it fall on deaf ears? Yeah, probably. That’s what makes music such a subjective experience. In the truest sense, one person’s treasure can be another’s trash.
Does this mean I love everything now? Of course not. There as several bands I could do without, but again, absolutely no one is making me listen to it. So instead of wasting my time on negativity, I’ll just queue up Stone Temple Pilots “Purple” and drift off into the nostalgia and brilliance of that record.
Let people enjoy things that make them happy.
Dunno Ben--You are asking for nuance and middle ground in an attention economy. I wish this was a message people could get behind....but I worry we are too far gone.
Music wise, I grew up listening to Dad's vinyls and bawling my eyes out to Bobby Goldsboro's Honey. Let Culture Club and Twisted Sister usher me into the 80s, thought XTC was just the coolest of cool in late 80s, went old school metalhead and Tom Petty devotee in the early 90s, was a club kid who just wanted more bass through college....and since then, if it's on the radio, I'm listening. Music defines eras--if you give me a song, I might not know who sang it--but I can tell you what grade I was in when it came out :-)