When I talk about music, naturally, I will speak about the genres or songs that I personally enjoy. I often hear people say 'oh this song is shit, so is that', but can you qualitatively prove such a claim? Is that song really that bad? What makes it that bad, and is it a fact or just your opinion? Simply because you don't particularly enjoy a piece of music, does not make it bad; the opposite is true: music that is demonstrably talentless, tuneless and aggravating to everyone around you can be the best thing you have heard in ages. It all comes down to opinion, which by definition, cannot be ultimately correct or incorrect.
People pour so much love and feeling into the music they listen to, they feel the need to defend their choice to the death if necessary, whilst simultaneously attacking everyone else's preferences in order to validate their own. Hey, come on guys! It doesn't matter, does it? Music is music and it is all brilliant in some way.
So what is brilliant about it? In a technical sense, the ability of a mind to formulate lyrics, arrange them into a pattern to fit notes played on a, quite frankly, bewildering array of instruments, and then for the singer to match those notes and produce something that your ears can deliver to your brain as a torrent of information and stimulation, thereby generating feelings, emotions and euphoria... is simply astounding. The processes involved are as complex as anything else humanity is capable of.
Of course, you can just press a button and make a machine do it for you. That may reduce the perceived talent within the piece, but it does not render it invalid, terrible or worthy of hatred. You can simply say "No thank you" and listen to something else rather than launching into a twenty minute barrage of bile-flecked vitriol about how the singer is a jerk, a talentless moron and produces nothing more than soulless money-vacuums for the music industry. All of that may be true but as long as there is at least one other person out there who disagrees with you, your opinion remains just that: an opinion, not fact.
This is, hands-down, my favourite song right now:
I like fairly poppy punky rocky alternative stuff, I guess. I would say the above song is brilliant: It drags me in and gives me such a fantastic feeling every time I listen to it. I love songs that sound unique, fresh, different. Even a single line or solo in a song can get me hooked on it, purely because, to my ears, it sounds so perfect.
However, if someone insulted that band or song, how would I react? I would feel personally attacked, as if someone was questioning my judgement, my values, my integrity. Then I would remember that they were simply trying to have their opinion pose as fact and as such it is not worth being offended by what they have to say.
Accents are another thing that I adore about some bands:
People sometimes ask me how I find new music.
First of all, I listen to Last.fm sometimes, which will recommend and play songs for me that are similar to what I already love. I also talk to friends about what they are listening to, if they have discovered anything good recently. Youtube suggestions are helpful as well - for instance, this song is by a band I love, I looked up one of their songs to put in here and it suggested a new one I hadn't heard before:
I told you in my first post about how I adore visions and ideas that are epic in their design and albums are a fantastic place to discover worlds and concepts beyond our own. A Thousand Suns is Linkin Park's latest album, and at first listen, it seems pretty okay. Then as soon as you learn that the album 'theme' is nuclear war and devastation, it makes perfect sense and the album is now one of my absolute favourites of last year. Watch this in 1080p, fullscreen and allow it to totally absorb you:
A Thousand Suns was a big departure from Linkin Park's usual stuff. Many people hated it, purely because they hadn't done something similar to their first couple of albums. However, my personal feeling is that they have evolved. They've done the nu-metal thing and have gone so far now that I'd be inclined to call this album it's own genre. It is such a mix of things and crafted with such devotion and commitment that I cannot help but love it.
Another band that has created a recent concept album and reinvented themselves, to a greater degree than Linkin Park, are My Chemical Romance.
This was them a couple of years ago, from their Black Parade album (which was also a concept, really), a wonderful compendium of energetic and violent anger, misery, hatred and no small amount of brilliant tunes to shout along to when in a bad mood; I adored it:
... and this is them now, from their latest album Danger Days:
What the hell? Yet still, I love it.
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