A Boring Question

I don't think I have an idea that rules my opinions about music, but I definitely have some kind of general approach or principle that rules how I talk about music. Not sure if I can fit that into 15 words or not though, and anyway I think it's kind of a meta-rule and thus not what you're looking for. (So maybe my rule is: follow the meta-rule.)

It's the music that matters. If the music doesn't grab me, then I don't care if wrote the lyrics.

I'm much more forgiving of hamhanded lyrics than hamhanded musical execution.

What I meant to say is "then I don't care if (insert name of favorite author/poet/polemicist here) wrote the lyrics."

Drat the formatting!

I'm not saying 'feel the music' or 'soul baby' or anything - the intellect/emotion split is as dumb an opposition as rock and rap, after all. Being critical is about being aware of your reactions and the patterns in them, not about trying to fix them.

so when i put something on for the first time, i look for a connection. it's usually a melody, but it can be an arrangement, a beat, the vocal, and sometimes, though HIGHLY infrequently, a lyric: anything that will make me want to play the song again and again and so on.

it doesn't really matter who it's by; that used to be consideration but i've proven myself wrong on far too many occasions lately to allow old biases to stand in the way of something that can bring but joy to the day.

nowadays i either like it on first listen or its not worth the effort - no time for 'growers' in 2001, thus ill jettison the new Tindersticks album pronto.

I thought about it a bit, and thought that for me, the answer was probably no. And less so, too, than, say, 10 years ago, when I perhaps felt more of a need for everything to add up. Circumstantial evidence: Stevie T telling me that my taste was inconsistent, because I like literary modernism but my favourite pop is like C19 realism (so he says).

I also wondered about applying the question to other people on the forum that I know. Possibly they would mind if I did. But it seemed to me that people whose views / tastes / perspectives add up might conceivably include Ally C96 (for 'romanticism') and Tim Hopkins (for 'authenticity'). And people whose views / tastes / perspectives don't add up might include Steady Mike (who combines intense, solemn avant-gardism with bathos and comedy) and Nick Dastoor (who's always undercutting his own views and thinking about how things that he thinks and feels are incompatible). That leaves Stevie T. In a sense Stevie is perhaps so eclectic that his perspectives don't all add up - he contains multitudes. Then again, he's a system builder, a constructer of theories - he is always adding things together, drawing links - so maybe some kind of principle of coherence does animate him.

Apologies if these were cartoon sketches.

In the music I love, though, I find something which I like to think of as *emotional authenticity*: I like it to ring true, and I like to perceive some emotional involvement on the part of the musician. Clearly, this is an issue of my perception rather than something quantifiably 'in' records and it doesn't tally with my knowledge of an artist's life or background; neither does it fit with rootsiness, or singing styles (or even singing). To me, though, it's as real as anything: a palpable sense of an emotional grain. I know it when I hear it. This reply probably belongs on the 'soul' thread, because I suppose that's what I'm talking about.

The "I'm rejecting irony and being real now so I'll grow my hair and wear a sweaty t-shirt" act of N. Hannon is the opposite of what I mean. The knees-bent blueswailing of a Joe Cocker is just as far away. And since I've arrived here, perhaps I'll note that I'm dissatisfied with the irony / honesty opposition which I've seen posited here and elsewhere (mostly elsewhere, but it kind of raises its head on the soul thread). It seems to me that anyone who wanted seriously to think about irony, honesty or otherwise in pop would want to come up with a much more complex and engaging formulation. They might start with Howard Devoto.

Like you, I try to look for a kind of "emotional authenticity" in music and I have often (perhaps wrongly) shied away from describing it as such for fear of it being misconstrued in the sense of exact stylisations. Like you, I couldn't define it, but I know it when I hear it.

I dislike Neil Hannon whether he's being 'ironic' or 'honest', of course.

I don't think it's uncommon to have a ruling ideology, a cogent metaphysic. As soon as I read Michel Houellebecq's writing about the importance of ideas, I thought YES; that's true; I also believe that ages and people are ruled by ideas, above all else, even singular and simple ideas. This goes beyond the Marxist idea of ideology; it's much simpler. I even believe that Chekhov's belief in his own incoherence was the result of the prevailing idea in his period.

Chekhov DID have a ruling idea; it's articulated above, it's manifested in all his works, and it could be summarised much more briefly. Personally, I think it's not an amazingly great idea, and doesn't result in amazingly great works.

Articulating and understanding your own Idea; well only very few people are granted that in each period, going by historical evidence, and just having a single idea is . . . something immense. For instance, in the case of Houellebecq, he has really only got one idea: that sexual liberalism is a system of social hierarchy. He hasn't achieved much beyond that, but still, that's so much. All I'm saying is, it's expecting a lot to get people to articulate their idea, it's like asking them to understand their age and themselves absolutely and entirely - BUT THAT DOESN'T MEAN THAT THEY DON'T HAVE ONE.

I think it's up to us to make consistency/inconsistency interesting. (Not by justifying our choices but in what we choose. The former is an added finesse, or a different skill, which I guess is necessary to answer this question unless you have friends who understand you and can sum you up in a word.) Nowadays, eclecticism is fashionable. So maybe it's hard for us to understand Chekhov's unease. It would be interesting to hear people making the opposite case.

Ladies and gentlemen, the intended audience of Melody Maker. I thank you.