how do you define bad musical taste?

By 'sorted out' I don't mean 'come to a final resolution' - I can't imagine the dissensus on ILM doing that - but rather, clearly - and relatively systematically - articulating our positions, if we have any, on this stuff. (I don't think that everyone should have a position, or that everyone should be compelled to answer these questions - far from it. But it might provide some clarification in some cases.)

Ridiculous. Why shouldn't there always be a favorite band? I will use my MBV example here with a particular point -- no other band was ever, before or so afterward, able to so completely, totally and utterly *send* me on first listening. The problem is not taste, but arbiters forcing taste into boxes and processes to suit their own visions of the universe -- as, frankly, you're trying to do.

see "your cv as a music listener" thread where you did not contribute actively yet

This might be me, but I don't start threads to take people to task for not adding to them, or not doing so the right or 'active' way. I gave you my answer and if that bugs you, do believe me that I see that as your worry, not mine.

What I *am* annoyed with your astonishing presumption -- there is absolutely no other way to describe it -- with how you feel others should react/deal with/interpret music. And that presumption is truly mind-boggling. Your last few posts see you take on the role of an incredibly self-righteous commentator who cannot and will not see anything except through your own lens. You express revulsion -- it is not too harsh a word to use -- that others would dare to have opinions on taste and its functions that don't match your own worldview, and react to these differences not with an appreciation of how those opinions might be different, but instead with patronizing condescension. I find this to be impossible to deal with if you expect me to engage in a further discussion with you.

You say yourself we are here to 'exchange' views. I have heard your views and while I do not hold to your personal standards of growing with and enjoying music, I do not dismiss them as invalid, because obviously they succeed for you. Why, then, do you not grant me that same courtesy?

I think that could be delivered both ways here.

Why do you attack me? Did you read the whole thread? There were other people you could have attacked before (like Ally and Sundar).

This should perhaps tell you that I found something in your posts that I objected to which I didn't find in theirs -- which does in fact happen to be the case.

I would be interested in your opinion concerning bad taste.

It does not exist as an objective phenomenon. I have yet to see anyone anywhere *prove* the existence of correct taste or critical reaction. There are many who claim to have found it, but they are in the end speaking for themselves or for a tradition that is not inherently universal. I find your claim of shifting between subjective and objective taste impossible to accept as a result.

Sorry Ned but I find your behaviour quite destructive

I find yours incredibly frustrating, the complaint of someone who says something and then wonders why in the world anyone might even slightly disagree. Believe me, I'm well aware that others disagree with me in turn.

Posting to Plasmastics fan sites.

Being 33 or 34 and never having heard Small Faces or Sly Stone

Sorry, Alex.

There is actually a way of defining "taste" that skirts your arguments for radical subjectivity, and that is to consider "taste" not as a set of critical reactions, but rather as a set of tools used in the formation of those reactions. I.e., "U2 is great" and "John Zorn is great" fall on the unprovable-assertion side of subjective taste, whereas having the ability to compare, contrast, or otherwise draw connections between the work of one and the other -- or more generally making clear and coherent distinctions between and critical appraisals of the music one "likes" and "dislikes" -- would be an objective, if impossible to measure, skill. (I say "impossible to measure" because it takes a whole other set of verbal skills and music-jargon knowledge to adequately express those distinctions and appraisals, but I think we can take it as obvious that the initial skills exist in differing quantities and qualities, can't we? One-word post reading "No" will result in annoyance on my part.)

Possibly a bad way of putting it, but do you see what I mean? "Having good taste" can mean not the ability to objectively identify overall good / bad value in individual works, but rather a well-formed understanding of what one likes and dislikes and why. I think the example given last time this point was raised here was the difference between (a) the guy who hears a song on the radio, buys the record, and hates everything but that single, and (b) that person's friend, who heard the same single and said "Dude, I guarantee you're not going to like the rest of that record." It's not the greatest example, in that I see a few glaring holes in its logic, but it gets at the idea of taste as being "discerning," in the literal sense -- being able to discern between various musical qualities. This favors those with extensive listening backgrounds as having better "taste," but this doesn't bother me too much, insofar as continually experiencing any art form is surely the way to refine one's taste.

Am I going anyplace useful here?

Nein. There, see, you can relax now. ;-)

More to the point -- it's an interesting way of looking at it, but I think it sort of...loops back in on itself, for lack of a better way of putting it? Is that 'well-formed understanding' really a matter of taste at all? *thinks for a bit* Hmm...it almost strikes me as the difference -- and I'm thinking of it this way based on your own example regarding purchases and hit status -- between a couple of folks at the horse races, one saying, "That's a really great looking horse! Fiery, well-groomed, looks powerful" and another saying, "I'm willing to bet that that horse over there is the one which is going to be the winner." This is an extreme example, but I trust you see what I'm trying to get at, if hamhandedly. Person one appreciates for lack of a better word the aesthetics according to his/her standards, person two is interested in figuring out what will succeed, both are potentially looking at the same animal.

I have to say I'm also sympathetic to Tom's discussion about how things *can't* be predicted, how the capacity for surprise exists, even if the scope goes from greater to lesser shifts in thinking. The impact of sheer chance is important, and there's no A & R person canny enough to know every potential twist and turn.

I'm only saying that the idea creates an objective sense of what "taste" is, not that you'd actually want too much of it.

Are Morton Feldman aficionados seen as having bad taste? Odd.

I like your construction, though, in the sense that there is something seen to be challenging standards and that this can provide the taste thrill. Though I don't think it's always the case -- as Brian can confirm, I've said for years that I don't have any guilt over liking something or not, that I don't have any guilty pleasures. The 'surprise' is not so much that I find myself liking something I'm not supposed to as it is simply finding something new and going, "Ah, neat!" At least, this is my own perception and experience.

No, no, no -- I don't think I'm being clear. I'm accepting the Radical Subjectivist Program. What I'm saying is that people have differening abilities to discern between musical features -- e.g., when I was listening to Portishead once and my mother asked "Is that Toni Braxton? It sounds like Toni Braxton." My argument, which I'm just now becoming clear on myself, is that those "discerning" listeners therefore know their own taste, and that that taste is knowable to others with those "discerning" abilities -- and thus all that rockist music accumulates a "critical consensus" precisely because it's makers can programmatically figure out what tastes their satisfying. I.e., these tasteful rockists have it down to a quantifiable science, and thus know officially that X is "good" and Y is "not good."

On the other hand, the rank-and-file casual pop listener does not have this Proven By Science "taste," and thus his/her reactions are less knowable. (It's 100x harder to recognize a chart hit than a solid-selling highbrow indie record, right?) Thus pop music can't simply punch the standard critical-discerning-appeal buttons and have done with it -- pop makes no assumptions about how it can make you feel, and therefore just tries its hardest. I'm saying I think that's what Tom likes -- that neither he nor the pop knows what the reaction's going to be, and he can be excited to actually have that reaction, as opposed to the critical- consensus stuff, where his reaction might be "Ho, hum, yes, they are doing everything they are supposed to do in order to be considered 'good.'"

Does that seem to make more sense than what I said before, or am I just making this worse?

Yes I see what you're saying but but but - still the problem seems to be - where does this exercising of taste occur? In the example given the tasteful person is exercising his knowledge of other people's tastes not his own. Using the method on his own listening comes down to "I know what I like" still, surely? You talk about listeners being "trained to respect" things - well I agree, but I think this training is social not aural.

Sorry for posting so much.

No no no no no! I'm sorry -- I'm doing a lousy job explaining this. What I'm saying is that "like," "good," and "bad" are all beside the point, and that "taste" is simply an ability to discern between what's what. Thus I would have "good taste" in shoegazer bands if I could listen to a three-second snippet of a previously unreleased track and say, "Ahh, judging by the guitar processing, I'm fairly sure that's either Slowdive or Chapterhouse." And thus I do have not-so-great taste in IDM, because I don't yet recognize what I imagine are fairly crucial differences between Datachi and Cex. (I haven't really listened to Cex yet, but I think you see what I mean.) No "like," "good," or "bad," just an ability to make clear, coherent, or incisive distinctions and connections between X and Y, A and B.

For example: in your own listening to West African pop, haven't you noticed a sort of learning curve of "taste?" I'd imagine it all sounded pretty similar at first, and then gradually the distinctions and ins-and-outs of it became more and more clear to you, right? I'm considering that skill -- whatever allowed you to form those mental distinctions and associations -- "taste."

Nitsuh is making some subtle, thoughtful points. But his redefinition of 'good taste' is counter-intuitive in that it makes 'good taste' = what any number of people would call 'bad taste'. ie: "*expertise* = good taste" (this is perhaps what the claim comes down to?) - but if expertise is on sth that [person x] hates the sound of, then [person x] cannot call it 'good taste' without wrenching that phrase's meaning.

Also: I accept Tom E's claim that he likes to be surprised - but to extend from this to suggest that [PopOnTheRadio] = Surprise is, I think, an error which sticks much too slavishly to a certain idea of 'FT Ideas Of Pop' (which Tom E's actual listening might have little to do with). ChartPop (assuming we can agree what that is) might be very surprising in some contexts (eg. a classical concert), but very unsurprising in some others (eg ToTP). (Equally, classical music presumably = surprising on ToTP, unsurprising at classical concert.) The claim that Chart Pop (a la S Club 7 or whoever) is (as a genre) innately more 'surprising' than others is just implausible. I think (hope) that Tom E might agree with me if I say that 'surprise' is, presumably, a very context-bound affair.

In any case, I consider an individual to have "good taste" if his or her explanations for liking and disliking things seem to display a really keenly-developed understanding of the things themselves. And I have, in the past, found myself saying things like "Everything he likes is absolutely horrible, but I think he has good taste in his own way."

Pinefox: This may rely slightly on rockist thinking, but I really do feel that the pop of the past few years has been surprising. Surprising insofar as critical-consensus rock has drifted largely into auto-pilot button-pushing "This is what we're considering good" mode, whereas teenpop had no pre-Britney history that was memorable to its target audience (barring the Spice Girls), and thus got to build itself anew.

Like I said in my horse race comparison, HAHAHAHA. No, I tease, this is actually a much clearer way of phrasing it.

In any case, I consider an individual to have "good taste" if his or her explanations for liking and disliking things seem to display a really keenly-developed understanding of the things themselves.

Mm...seems to go back again to expertise vs. taste, though. Or rather a judging of the ability *to* judge.

6. Mental perception of quality; judgement, discriminative faculty.

(And note that "quality" here can mean not "goodness," but rather just the qualities, as opposed to quantities, which exist in the aesthetic realm.)

7.a. The fact or condition of liking or preferring something; inclination, liking for; appreciation.

Whereas I suppose this thread started as a discussion of the common 8th denotation of the word:

8. a. The sense of what is appropriate, harmonious, or beautiful; esp. discernment and appreciation of the beautiful in nature or art; spec. the faculty of perceiving and enjoying what is excellent in art, literature, and the like.

And note that the OED, probably for the sake of excising an extra volume on this issue alone, assumes that the word "taste" implies the objective existence of the "excellent."

Your last few posts see you take on the role of an incredibly self-righteous commentator who cannot and will not see anything except through your own lens. You express revulsion -- it is not too harsh a word to use -- that others would dare to have opinions on taste and its functions that don't match your own worldview, and react to these differences not with an appreciation of how those opinions might be different, but instead with patronizing condescension.

What an unbelievably apt example of projection!

I'm sorry, but this makes my blood boil. Ned, you really need to rein your tone in like, yesterday, m'kay? Whenever you get involved in these discussions, your posts turn very nasty, and frankly I think it needs to stop now, because it's rather oppressive to those who don't share your POV, and I don't think IL* is meant to be about one person's ideology, is it? If you have a valid point to make, it can be made without name-calling and ad hominem attacks.

Hm. Considering this bit from Alex to Frank:

Frank, I am sorry to say but you are a moron. Not only everything referring to me was wrong in your post above but you cannot even spell the band you accuse me of not knowing. They are called Plasmatics apparently.

...I find your rage against me and not your philosophical soulmate regarding universal critical judgments over the matter of supposedly bad tone and name calling to be more than a little suspect. Condemn us both or don't bother.

And it is, indeed, dependent on a hierarchy of aesthetic value -- one that may not be universal (at least not in the sense of existing as a set of golden tablets on top of a mountaintop), but the fact that it's socially constructed and materially based doesn't mean that it's arbitrary and could be replaced with anything else. (One might even argue that certain elements of it are inevitable consequences of our biological nature as human beings, or of our nature as consciousness existing in social organization.) To fantasize about hypothetical listeners who exist outside of social constructs is a diversion, but nothing more: we ourselves exist in it, and having gotten past the "Yes, everything we believe is socially constructed, blah blah blah" business, we can critically evaluate music with that underlying assumption already addressed, depending in part on the extent to which we're familiar with the signs and signifiers of the music in question.

Or something like that, anyway.

But I think there are more fundamental values and expectations that are far harder to construct/deconstruct, some of which are inherent in the acoustic/technical material of music, others of which are closely tied either to our biology or to our social nature, and still others of which are an inherent consequence of music's perpetual (and compulsory!) dialogue with the past and present -- in other words, the conception of music as a communicative and historical medium, with a more-or-less specific intended listener who has acquired the signs and signifiers of that particular genre through familiarity with prior representative works.

This poses the question: what assumptions, or traits, are shared by value-hierarchies that "take root"? (In other words, is there a fundamental, unbridgeable difference between the value-hierarchy of hip-hop and that of country music, or do they share any fundamental values common to both, and perhaps to all Western music, or even all music?) From what principles, characteristics, or technical elements do they draw their common origins? What generalizations about different forms of music can be made in a language that will apply to all -- can one come up with a Grand Unified Theory, as it were, of the organizing principles of music, whose implications will give one the tools to understand and critically evaluate Ravi Shankar, Palestrina, Benny Goodman, Merzbow and Snoop Dogg in a way that doesn't require total compartmentalization or Ned's radical subjectivism? Is there a musical equivalent of linguistics -- or is that what I'm after?

(I like that thought, by the way, in that linguistics is capable of making critical observations of languages as a whole -- one aspect of which is pointing out that there are some thoughts you just can't fully express in certain languages, or concepts for which there are no synonyms -- and yet is also nonjudgmental: it doesn't say "language X is bad", although it does specify the grammar and vocabulary necessary to speak and understand language X.)

This is hopelessly muddled, and I'm not sure that I agree with everything I've written, but I've run out of free time to finesse it. I'll just add that some work in this area has been done -- for instance, in trying to understand the incidence and characteristics of tension-and-release patterns in different forms of music, or in exploring the role of expectation in listener satisfaction.

I find this an interesting comparison because, after all, if one hears a language one cannot interpret, one hears the sound without any real sense of the meaning. Perhaps this question should be turned around...

So ... you can have all of these tools to break it down into codifiable bits ... but whether those bits are "good" or "bad" is vexed and subjective?

That said.... I think there are two kinds of bad taste. Ordinary bad taste is the taste that comes from being lazy and not really caring about music. The people who buy "NOW!" compilations, Nelly, and whatever else is popular. Also people who hate genres -- saying, uncategorically, that you hate country or rap only proves you know nothing about music.

But that's far less annoying than bad taste number two, which is moulding your record collection to fit whatever is trendy. They might have obscure or interesting albums, but it's all obscure stuff Pitchfork likes.

In either case, I guess the defining note of bad taste is that it reflects a failure to experiment, to seek things out, to cross genre lines, to be uncool if it makes you happy.

So one has to be unpredictable to have good taste? I dunno, it'd make the person more interesting but not necessarily have good taste. How do I define bad taste? Probably differing from my *own standard* (so if a person likes fe Limp Bizkit/Shania Twain and Celine Dion, I'd say s/he has bad taste until s/he offers me insight into why s/he likes said music). Actually I prefer people to have *bad* (different from mine) taste because I can have a different outlook on the music after hearing why s/he likes the music.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090918170035AA00ZaH

is it very typical for an extremely indie taste in music to kick in at around 13 like this kid? seems slightly young but i'm out of the loop

Ah, thank you! That's the one.

Another piece on the same process, different company apparently, has gnarls barkly factoid:
http://www.gladwell.com/2006/2006_10_16_a_formula.html

Thread has moved on, but I guess listening to the rock show on the radio aged 12-13 was my first attempt to like music that my peers hadn't heard of and/or thought was weird. Sort of a proto-indieism but I hadn't worked out that indie brought the real smug superiority or where to find it. Got there by aged 14.

If Pitchfork had existed when I was a kid, maybe I could've reached indie dorkdom a couple of years early by bypassing entirely the stage of convincing myself that I'd like Megadeth but not daring to spend the money on their albums. But then, kid doesn't need to spend money buying CDs any more (nor did I once I discovered the local library had music, but still, time, effort, blank tape money, lending fees).

Strange to think of me aged 13 with like 5 CDs, each saved up for and treasured and listened to over and over again, and him aged 13 with a list of fifty bands he's downloaded that week, presumably listened to about once, and decided are part of the list which encapsulates his identity. But that's a familiar impulse too - age 14-15 I wrote lots of band names and put free-with-magazine band stickers on my school science folder to, like, impress people with my musical authority, or something, and maybe a third of them I'm fairly sure I'd never heard at all.

Perhaps the more interesting question is what this was like 15 years ago, when you had to spend a lot of time and money amassing a collection of cd's before you could profess things.

I listened to what was then called "classic rock" of the 1960s and 1970s until I was about 16, when as an explicit act of identity formation I decided to programatically make my music taste "more cool" -- this involved buying two R.E.M. cassettes (Document and Murmur) and playing them every night until they were my favorite records. From there, the Cure, Jesus and Mary Chain, Julian Cope, etc. but didn't really go full-on "indie" (or "alternative" as it was then called) until first year of college (1989) when my roommates gave me cassettes of Doolittle and London 0, Hull 4 for my birthday.

It was definitely different pre-internet; I guess you could have subscribed to music magazines, but barring that, for a kid in the suburbs you heard about bands from your friends or on alternative radio (I don't think I knew there was such a thing as college radio then) and it was a bit random what you heard and what you didn't hear. I bought my first Julian Cope record because I read a good review of it in the Washington Post.

Oh yeah, and as a representative of the past, let me just say that the Alanis Morrissette record was certainly branded as indie when it came out and tons of huge Mountain Goats fans really liked it, and still do, me included.

And that Hall and Oates was indeed a pretty straight-ahead, not-cool thing to like when I was a kid. A lot like Huey Lewis. But does a readoption of Huey Lewis by contemporary tastemakers seem out of the question to you? Not to me.

You're right that it was hard to find. I think I was the first kid at school to get anywhere beyond chart music, and that needed a total leap into the dark - the Chart Show's Indie Chart with its lovely psychedelic carousel was about the only gateway I can remember. The first few NMEs I got were like discovering the Americas - Indie No.1s! Stiff Records! The Greatest Drummers Of All Time! - there was so much undreamt-of stuff to care about that I managed to miss Nirvana breaking about six months later because I was poking about in Sarah Records or some other blind alley instead.

For all that I criticise the greyness of indie as an aesthetic, I guess it really did feel like a world of discovery at the time. It was really weird to get to university three or four years later and find that, the odd metalhead or goth apart, people there had never even attempted a similar journey and were mostly content with stuff like Mike & The Mechanics.

first thing that came to mind when I saw the thread title was, "someone who doesn't like black sabbath."

I'd say if you enjoy the musical stylings of Nickleback then you are beyond hope.

I don't think it's so much the things you like but why you like them and how you express this liking
e.g.
National Review's Top 50 Conservative Rock Songs

though certain acts lend themselves to and encourage being appreciated in an ugly way (ha! nickleback!)

do you people pay attention??