non-sports post: music commentary.
i have to come out and say something: i've never understood quite why people like radiohead so much.
people enjoy radiohead, it seems, for probably three reasons. one is that they're technically brilliant. of course, in a certain sense, so is the mars volta, so is korn, and so is the arcade fire. so people must also have some other reason for liking them, and so i press on to the next two reasons for why i think people like radiohead.
radiohead is undeniably innovative, to the point that they're impossible to even replicate. no, find a band that sounds like radiohead for more than, say, one song. there is hardly an album in existence that sounds like any of radiohead's albums. if the best part of art is creativity, then radiohead is better than any set of artists in existence today; they're definitely the most creative, and they push music to the outer bounds of its limitations.
but i don't necessarily believe that you can look at someone and say, "because you are creative, i will like you." that requires someone to be refined in a particular direction, specifically in the direction of a myopic view of creativity being brilliant for creativity's sake. but that sort of notion flies in the face of the idea of taste: how does one have a taste for the new? allow me to present the following thought experiment: suppose that one were not to have well-defined preferences for a particular subset of society. for example, suppose someone didn't like sports, or simply didn't know very much about sports. introducing them to a sport with which they were unfamiliar and continuously exposing them to this sport would probably lead to defined taste eventually. and they would learn to love certain things about the sport, while hating others. however, it would be difficult for them to look at innovations from the point of having a taste for the new: after all, they are still trying to grasp the significance of the construct of the old.
so i find it hard to understand people who love radiohead because of their creativity. i simply believe that it requires an intimate kinowledge of the underlying structure of music (something that i don't have) that is sort of predicated on the idea of taste. put more clearly, i feel that people who appreciate radiohead's creativity have the idea of creativity fused into their existing likes and dislikes of musical styles, and thus the two ideas are virtually impossible to separate.
this brings me to the third point, and perhaps the most potent: for some, radiohead just "speaks to them." this is where i have had the least understanding, because i've never had radiohead speak to me. i've thought that radiohead's music was good, sort of along the lines of ideas one and two, but i've never had radiohead speak to me, and so i've always just sort of gone along with the people who experienced one, two, and three, because i felt that radiohead was the sort of band with which my tastes had better conform to the norm in order to avoid being called into question. and so i played along, declaring hail to the thief to be a great album, even though i didn't listen to it with the same passion as most of my friends.
i never managed to download "in rainbows." i just didn't care. people would tell me that it was great, but since radiohead's music never spoke to me, i felt that i was just going along with reasons one and two again, and i felt sort of apathetic about the whole process. in fact, i just bought the album yesterday, mainly because graduate school in economics has reinforced the idea of "sales are good" to me. i calculated my "willingness to pay," i examined my budget set, i looked at some cross-price elasticities, and then i decided that mastercard was pretty sweet and that i should just buy the damn album, since it was $9.99.
why did i buy it? i generally assume that the masses are right, because i have a limited desire to search in the realms of things that i don't care deeply about. so i decided that i would give radiohead another shot.
and for once, they spoke to me through 'reckoner.'
and it all came together at once: the technical brilliance, reasonably thoughtful lyrics executed at the correct time. for once thom yorke had feelings: he didn't just seem like an artist who was so much better at his craft that there was no need to communicate with the masses on their level; he just seemed human. the tempo was fast enough to build the song to a climax, and the drums created a soothing, yet consistent rhythm. i understood the 'why,' and i understood it all at once.
and then the rest of the pieces of radiohead's brilliance came together like a mathematical proof. i could immediately see the genius of putting a song like 'bodysnatchers' on an album that contained a song like 'all i need,' or 'reckoner,' or 'arpeggi.' and hail to the thief seemed a lot more obvious too: '2 + 2=5,' and 'wolf at the door' obviously belonged together. karma police, blackstar, just, kid a, everything in its right place...
so i'm a fan too. it just took me a little longer.
people enjoy radiohead, it seems, for probably three reasons. one is that they're technically brilliant. of course, in a certain sense, so is the mars volta, so is korn, and so is the arcade fire. so people must also have some other reason for liking them, and so i press on to the next two reasons for why i think people like radiohead.
radiohead is undeniably innovative, to the point that they're impossible to even replicate. no, find a band that sounds like radiohead for more than, say, one song. there is hardly an album in existence that sounds like any of radiohead's albums. if the best part of art is creativity, then radiohead is better than any set of artists in existence today; they're definitely the most creative, and they push music to the outer bounds of its limitations.
but i don't necessarily believe that you can look at someone and say, "because you are creative, i will like you." that requires someone to be refined in a particular direction, specifically in the direction of a myopic view of creativity being brilliant for creativity's sake. but that sort of notion flies in the face of the idea of taste: how does one have a taste for the new? allow me to present the following thought experiment: suppose that one were not to have well-defined preferences for a particular subset of society. for example, suppose someone didn't like sports, or simply didn't know very much about sports. introducing them to a sport with which they were unfamiliar and continuously exposing them to this sport would probably lead to defined taste eventually. and they would learn to love certain things about the sport, while hating others. however, it would be difficult for them to look at innovations from the point of having a taste for the new: after all, they are still trying to grasp the significance of the construct of the old.
so i find it hard to understand people who love radiohead because of their creativity. i simply believe that it requires an intimate kinowledge of the underlying structure of music (something that i don't have) that is sort of predicated on the idea of taste. put more clearly, i feel that people who appreciate radiohead's creativity have the idea of creativity fused into their existing likes and dislikes of musical styles, and thus the two ideas are virtually impossible to separate.
this brings me to the third point, and perhaps the most potent: for some, radiohead just "speaks to them." this is where i have had the least understanding, because i've never had radiohead speak to me. i've thought that radiohead's music was good, sort of along the lines of ideas one and two, but i've never had radiohead speak to me, and so i've always just sort of gone along with the people who experienced one, two, and three, because i felt that radiohead was the sort of band with which my tastes had better conform to the norm in order to avoid being called into question. and so i played along, declaring hail to the thief to be a great album, even though i didn't listen to it with the same passion as most of my friends.
i never managed to download "in rainbows." i just didn't care. people would tell me that it was great, but since radiohead's music never spoke to me, i felt that i was just going along with reasons one and two again, and i felt sort of apathetic about the whole process. in fact, i just bought the album yesterday, mainly because graduate school in economics has reinforced the idea of "sales are good" to me. i calculated my "willingness to pay," i examined my budget set, i looked at some cross-price elasticities, and then i decided that mastercard was pretty sweet and that i should just buy the damn album, since it was $9.99.
why did i buy it? i generally assume that the masses are right, because i have a limited desire to search in the realms of things that i don't care deeply about. so i decided that i would give radiohead another shot.
and for once, they spoke to me through 'reckoner.'
and it all came together at once: the technical brilliance, reasonably thoughtful lyrics executed at the correct time. for once thom yorke had feelings: he didn't just seem like an artist who was so much better at his craft that there was no need to communicate with the masses on their level; he just seemed human. the tempo was fast enough to build the song to a climax, and the drums created a soothing, yet consistent rhythm. i understood the 'why,' and i understood it all at once.
and then the rest of the pieces of radiohead's brilliance came together like a mathematical proof. i could immediately see the genius of putting a song like 'bodysnatchers' on an album that contained a song like 'all i need,' or 'reckoner,' or 'arpeggi.' and hail to the thief seemed a lot more obvious too: '2 + 2=5,' and 'wolf at the door' obviously belonged together. karma police, blackstar, just, kid a, everything in its right place...
so i'm a fan too. it just took me a little longer.
posted by mike at 10:37 PM
4 comments
