I was listening to the radio today. The station that I happened upon was doing an "Australian countdown", which was the top 20 songs with Australian artists. A lot of them were the "So-and-So Ft. Sia" tracks. There was some terrible, mediocre dance pop from reality TV alumni. One mediocre faux-indie track from an Idol alumnus. That Gotye. I'd say I wept for humanity, but really, I didn't expect any better.
Never mind finding someone with similar musical taste; that's not too hard. I started with the Pitchfork lists, and I bet many other people did the same. The important thing is the attitude.
Yes, a lot of mainstream pop music is terrible, but there is still an art to it. It's not like anybody can write a hit song. It's just that the art is less… how do I put it… scientific? I read that Ester Dean, one of Rihanna's songwriters, just goes into the studio and sings random phrases until she finds a nice hook. She definitely has some kind of talent. But a hook is just a few notes that fit into a song with familiar structure, key, whatever. Nothing too challenging. However, it has its place and value. The exception is the really unoriginal, cliché pop music that can't even be arsed to have an original hook e.g. a lot of Asian pop, and every song that ripped off the Teenage Dream chorus.
On the other hand, that music that people say is good, or at least the some of the stranger stuff that I like, is based on theory, like science. There is an aim to progress, to create new, unfamiliar things that people mightn't even like, but new nonetheless. I'll say that I prefer it to the poppy stuff because I'm a science person, and I'm all for testing boundaries. It’s called experimental music for a reason. This kind of music is so weird that people don’t get it. Then bits of it slowly make their way into more easily palatable stuff, like how cheap Target clothing steals bits off the high fashion designers. Why? Because they’re "good" ideas worth appropriating.
I didn't spend my formal outside on the balcony because the music was bad, like some people. Said people like a lot of the same things that I do. Like those people, I certainly don't ignore something because it lacks a danceable beat, or a catchy melody, and they think anybody who does is ignorant. But sometimes they dislike 20th century Western art music because it has no harmony or form, etc. There's nothing wrong with not getting it. The problem is that they downright dismiss it as "lacking artistic value” or some bullshit like that. Really, is that any better than the mainstream they look down on?
Hierarchy
