Musical Taste: Subjective or Objective

A true guitar hero in the making

I should open my first blog post by saying that I have no musical talent whatsoever.  I can marginally play several instruments enough to strum a couple ditties, but the bulk of my musical ability can be summarized by the only song I know on the guitar.  Of course that song is "Time of Your Life" by Green Day.  Perhaps the easiest song ever to learn.

That being said I have a keen interest in music, not so much as a practitioner of the glorious craft but rather as bystander, someone who enjoys but often fails to understand certain complexities within the tune.  The problem I have often encountered though is that those who are skilled at music, and understand the technical aspect of it, often insult those bands that I hold most dear.  I have been told that the music I enjoy is a sonic mess, not capably produced, or has even been declared to be "not even real music" and it has left me wondering, "who cares? I enjoy it."

My argument of course it that music is subjective, and as such cannot be considered bad.  Of course there is bad music, the band that I was a part of in university was a bad band, not because our music was bad to the taste, but mostly because we had no talent creatively or musically....we just plain sucked.  However, most music that we listen to today is well crafted music.  It sounds pleasing to a group of people and therefore at some point is considered subjectively good.

Will I ever understand why people enjoy country music? Probably not, but that does not mean it is bad music, rather it means that it is not my taste.  I know plenty of people who love country music, and while it confuse me to the core of my very being, it still remains good music because somebody likes it.  The importance of this cannot be understated, music needs this subjective element in order to maintain its creativity.  The subjective moves music forward from Elvis to the Beatles to the Rolling Stones to Nirvana all the way to Coldplay.  The subjectivity allows for creativity, it forces bands to innovate and become creative, changing the sound.  An objectively good standard of music limits creativity.  If everyone is striving to achieve brilliant musical technically then each genre begins to sound to similar.  Granted there would still be different genres, but within each there would become less and less true creativity.

A perfect example of this is the 'Screamo' genre.  I was an unabashed fan in high school of this genre, I loved the nu-metal wizards known as Linkin Park, the driving rock of Alexisonfire, the thundering bass of Silverstein.  But the genre became stagnant.  An objective quality began to creep in where the genre was expected to have a dueling singer and screamer, emotional lyrics, complicated guitar pieces, and heavy, driving bass.  Every band in the genre began to sound like carbon copies of one another, each band taking on the same general musical persona.  When the subjectivity began to return to the genre, incredible new music began to return.  Alexisonfire released a record called Old Crows, Young Cardinals, infusing blues music with heavy rock to produce a totally different record to most that existed within the industry.  It rubbed some people the wrong way, but it created diversity in the genre, and changed the game.

My taste in music mixes from the heavy metal technicality of Protest the Hero to the pop music mastery of Jesse McCartney, all the way to the iconic sounds of bands like Blue Swede, the Rolling Stones, Queen, and of course...Great Big Sea.  I love them all and I understand none of it from a technical musical point of view.  It frankly just sounds good to me, and thus I listen to it.  Before we judge each other on our musical tastes, we need to remember that we need people with different tastes in order for the music to continue to grow and progress.  The fact that musical tastes evolve and change has led to what is perhaps one of the most interesting era's of music so far.  Innovations in electronic music are the latest innovation of music with bands like Tegan and Sara, Chvrches, Lights, and many others leading the charge towards a different style of music all together.  House, Dubstep, and Techno music has brought a completely different aspect to the music scene.  There is so much music out there and each particular band is reaching out to somebody and that is wonderful.  The creativity and change happening in music today is fantastic.

Of course if you'd like to find out what truly and objectively bad music sounds like, feel free to click the link below.  Its the live video of my bands only show ever...somehow we got voted into Battle of the Bands.  I can assure you that we knew we were a joke.

Happy listening, enjoy whatever music your into...its all good