Are any records better than other records?

Of course to say any of those things is wrong too but dead tempting.

If the proposition that no record can (in some kind of objective or semi-objective way) be deemed "better" than another, then much of what appears on ILM is so much hot air. Classic or Dud? meaningless. No such thing as bad taste, so why argue.

If it is not true, if there can be "truth" in the proposition that Miles is better than Wynton or Public Enemy are better than 2 Live Crew, there must be an underlying basis for that, whether conscious or not, whether spoken or not. Possibilities:

- the number of people who agree. Aesthetic value can be decided by sales charts, concert tickets sold, polling the population at large. Anyone at ILM buy that?

- probably the most popular: X is better because I say so, because its me saying it, because Westlife/Wynton/2 Live Crew are obviously crap. Aesthetic value determined by aggressive egomania.

- because there is a consensus among people who understand these things/are well informed/are sophisticated about these matters that X are better. Aesthetic value determined by a consensus among people with an intelligent interest.

I'm extremely intrigued by other suggestions ILMers may have.

If you manage to analyze what you like about some particular music, I think you will sooner or later hit some basic elements that you value. If other people don't happen to value the same things, then pointing to those properties of the music you are discussing is not likely to win them over. If other people happen to value the same things, they might be won over to a degree.

If someone else has more or less the same tastes, their opinions might be useful to you.

I think there are at least objective features of a piece of music that can be pointed out, but someone can always say, "Well, the unusual timbres and complex time signatures don't do anything for me." (Those descriptions aren't really objective anyhow, but they could be made so.)

Despite philosophically believing that there aren't objective aesthetic values (unless you want to called inter-subjective values "objective"), I find it's very hard for me to shake a feeling (or even a belief?) that some music (art, etc.) really is better than some other music.

I have to challenge this. As the long-timers here know, I am Mr. Radical Subjectivist to an arguably almost painful degree when it comes to music, to the point where I sat out the canon thread precisely because I figured I would be repeating myself and would have little to add. To use the specific example, I do not believe that JD is inherently, objectively and 'obviously' better than Westlife and never ever will. What I will fight to the death is any claim otherwise, even though JD is one of my all-time bar-none favorite ever bands and Westlife are most boring to my ears. Similarly, the most intensely frazzled I've ever got on this board -- as Phil Masstranfer will agree all too readily, I fear! -- is when the idea of such an objective standard for judging music is stated as fact. Without getting into all *that* again, I have no trouble with people envisioning such a standard as a personal tool of appreciation, but I have plenty trouble with the idea of then taking that standard to measure what everyone else's reactions 'should' be.

But where I disagree with you is the conclusion you draw about the 'hot air' of ILM discussion, the seeming 'meaningless' nature of Classic or Dud, etc. Because in place of graven-in-stone objectivity is the possibility of multiplicity, and of enjoying the wide range multiplicity has to offer. I *like* contrary opinions to mine, I like seeing what others have to say, I enjoy disagreement -- the more so because I think it reinforces rather than undercuts my overall stance. Everyone argues from their own viewpoints and therefore lets me see things in different lights, allows for a focus on different elements I might not otherwise notice or appreciate. Even a visceral reaction of "They SUCK!" says something, however brusquely, but certainly the more time is spent on said opinions, the more there is to consider.

Such things do not exist

The fallacy is to assume a clear-cut choice between "subjective" and "objective"

Please be clear I am not (as far as possible) trying to state a position here. What I am suggesting is that if you ARE going to adopt a position it should be intellectually consistent. On that basis I have no problem with what you say up to your final paragraph. In that, you say you like opposing opinions - but on what basis can an "opinion" (as opposed to a preference) be arrived at? If all aesthetic value is subjectively determined I can prefer JV to Westlife but I can't have a valid "opinion" about which is better. You also say you enjoy "disagreement" but again, what is the basis of disagreement? We can only disagree about things that have at least the capacity to be true or false. Neither of us can be right or wrong in a world of purely subjective value, so there is no basis for disagreement.

Incidentally, I don't agree that the alternative to subjectivity is "graven-in-stone" objectivity. For example, the third possibility I suggested above

"Aesthetic value [is] determined by a consensus among people with an intelligent interest."

Is not entirely objective (it is an abstract of subjective responses. In theory it could be objectively determined but in practice almost certainly cannot. Nor is it set in stone: the persons included in the group of "persons with an intelligent interest" will change, in some cases from one instant to the next; and so, inevitably, will their opinions.

This theory of value has just enough of the characterics of objectivity to validate debate but it is not objective.

(Incidentally please don't misinterpret this as my saying that that is my favoured option. I am trying to be as neutral as possible here. But I will go as far as agreeing with you that aesthetic value cannot be objectively determined. I have seen the argument put (usually in the Mozart is obviously objectively superior to (duff composer of choice) form.) But it has never seemed credible to me.

I do not see it this way. Reducing disagreement down to a 'true/false' scale seems to me a poor way to approach the question, especially since it is much more accurate to say there's a wide range of reactions to music between 'really really really LOVE' and 'really really really LOATHE.' The potential for disagreement, debate and discussion is quite wide as a result, so I find your way of phrasing the situation a bit curious.

Your 'consensus' vision is strange to me too. Arguably you could say you're trying to envision a discursive, participatory-at-one's-leisure body of commentators who debate based on a shared experience with the piece of art in question, whatever it might be. Certainly that seems to be us here, ideally. ;-) That's a reasonable enough framework, the more so because you (I hope) are saying that it's not a closed elite but something that anyone who has anything to say can join in on, which again describes here pretty nicely. However, while this may frame the debate, it doesn't determine the *value* of the object, but instead focuses on what the object is in question. It's a standard not of judgment, but of identifying what is to be judged -- and that identified, the range of opinions on that object is again potentially limitless.

I think I would learn more about Art/art&I by watching a high school orchestra play a piece by some duff composer than I would watching a really ace orchestra tackel Mozart.

What I'm saying is something a little subtler than you infer.

Lets consider a typical ILM style "disagreement".

A says: "Debaser" is a better song than "Yesterday" B says: No, "Yesterday" is a better song than "Debaser".

Let's start from the subjectivist position. This is not yet a "disagreement". A has stated a preference, and so has B. If they both hold a subjectivist position there is nowhere else to go. They have stated their preference, and neither has any basis for challenging the other. Provided they hold consistently to a subjectivist position then there is no basis for disagreement.

There can only be a basis for disagreement if A and B believe that they are expressing an opinion that has the capacity to be more or less true than its opposite. This does not mean that they are arguing about true and false, nor does it mean that there is an objective "right" answer, but they must believe that there is some sense in which one of these views can be more valid than the other.

To look at it another way, what does A mean when he says "Debaser" is a better song than "Yesterday"? He could mean no more than "I prefer D to Y" but normally we understand him to mean more than that. What he means may be paraphrased as follows:

"I believe that a hypothetical ideal listener - one with the listening experience, open mind and taste to make an informed judgement - will prefer D to Y".

This is not claiming objectivity but there is enough of a quasi- objective element to set a debate in train, provided both A and B can agree on at least some of the factors that would be likely to influence the taste of the hypothetical ideal listener. Evidence can be adduced on the basis of what these factors might be. For example, A might argue that most listeners approach "Yesterday" with undue reverence because of its place in the Canon. The ideal listener, shorn of such prejudices, would see the relative merits of the two songs clearly and would prefer "Debaser". (This is not my argument by the way but it does paraphrase one I've seen on an ILM thread).

Now you say:

"Arguably you could say you're trying to envision a discursive, participatory-at-one's-leisure body of commentators who debate based on a shared experience with the piece of art in question, whatever it might be. Certainly that seems to be us here, ideally. ;-) That's a reasonable enough framework, the more so because you (I hope) are saying that it's not a closed elite but something that anyone who has anything to say can join in on, which again describes here pretty nicely. However, while this may frame the debate, it doesn't determine the *value* of the object,"

I pretty much agree with this with the added proviso that the "framework" must include some shared values (or to put it another way some consensus of what a notional ideal listener would like and why). My argument is that the very notion of shared values or an ideal listener must lead to some sort of Canon, because once we have some kind of consensus about what our ideal listener will like and why we can predict what he will like most.

But I do not mean to suggest that it leads to the Canon described by, say, Mojo's list of 100 best albums. In fact different groups - including ILM, and no doubt different sub-groups within ILM - will have a different perspective on what is Canonical, (MBV? Magnetic Fields?) based on the shared values that allow them to discuss music meaningfully. I am not arguing it is intellectually inconsistent to continually question the Canon - that must be healthy; or that your own (or a group which you are a member's) sense of what is canonical may not be superior to what is more widely accepted as canonical. The canon is ever-changing, and some groups will always be in the vanguard.

""I believe that a hypothetical ideal listener - one with the listening experience, open mind and taste to make an informed judgement - will prefer D to Y".

But when I state my preferences, I *don't* assume this. I am not talking about a hypothetical ideal listener -- I certainly don't consciously assume this, and I rather hope I don't subconsciously assume it either. I'm just talking about myself, and I don't 'normally' assume anyone else to draw a further connection than that. Similarly I read a contrary expression of taste as reflecting that person's own vision rather than that of a presumed ideal.

In a related vein, or so I hope:

My argument is that the very notion of shared values or an ideal listener must lead to some sort of Canon, because once we have some kind of consensus about what our ideal listener will like and why we can predict what he will like most.

But I don't think we live in worlds of ideal listeners. Ultimately, I don't buy that, partially due to my objection to your construction as discussed above. I instead envision the connection as more one of "if you like this, you might well like that" -- something conditional and by no means automatic, and something that is ultimately personal.

But who gives a fuck about you?

Solipsism: The theory that the self can be aware of nothing but its own experiences and states.

I agree that an out and out subjective position must lead to solipsism; I'm just trying to rationalise a better position given that I don't believe objective aesthetic value.

Tom's position: OK it's hot air but who cares - (a variation: it's a game; we vaguely know the rules; we agree to play by them for the duration, enjoy the illusion and then go home). This works logically but the question is, is it satisfying? Does it correspond to how you really feel about talking about music? If you stick to the subjectivist position though I suspect it's the best you can do.

I've thought more about these sorts of questions about the subjectivity/objectivity of value as applied to moral judgments, where the questions take on more urgency for me. The subjectivist position may not be very satisfying and may not capture the feeling one sometimes has that a certain work of art really is better than another in an objective sense, but I am not convinced there is any good argument to back that feeling up.

At work recently I had a discussion about some Christmas cards that were hanging up in my department and we agreed that a couple of them were quite hideous looking. In fact, despite being a theoretical subjectivist when it comes to value, the certainty I feel that this card is in bad taste seems quite unshakeable.

But this hasn't been really true since the 50s: the dominant cultural tendency of modern times has been the shift towards suspicion of expertise, cultural, political, scientific. "Trust me I'm a doctor": no way YOU ELITIST MYRMIDON etc.

Anyway, how d'you judge who IS an expert when you're not one?

OK seriously one big problem with 'canonising' rock/pop in the same way we 'canonise' other stuff is touched on by Ben above - "decades and centuries" i.e. at 2 generations remove it's still too soon to know anything much even if canons are great and neccessary.

classic = stripped of vivid presence in the world here and now? = quite likely boring hence obvously NOT better

tom's charts joke actually refers to the fact that the *only* thing we can objectively agree on is who is selling most singles in any one week

We collectively like a lot of stuff that might actually suck on a lot of levels, is what. But hey, we don't care! ;)

classic inter-sibling insecurity-causing strategy: "you're not really part of this family cuz YOU'RE ADOPTED!! why your hair is red, look!"
"wah wah belinda says i'm adopted: but you're really my mommy aren't you mommy"
*thinks: yes howcum my hair IS red this is weird and spooky plus they wuv belinda much more than me she goes to bed at 9.oo and can watch pop idols!!*

classic = something we still argue about

dada=classic ;o)

tearing it down and starting all over is a well-established (and surely somewhat discredited by now) C20 tradition...

Did I ever say anybody should?

Paradoxically, although I absolutely agree that there is no objective basis for personal morality, the analogy actually undermines the subjectivist position: once we have finished contemplating the lack of an objective basis for personal morality we go on with our lives and resume a position in which we "know" murder and rape to be wrong: we will argue about the finest subtleties; we will do so on the assumption that there is one answer which is more "right" than another; and this will be on the basis of assumed shared values. Despite the lack of objective underpinning not many of us would take the position that moral debate is "hot air" (and, hey, what's the problem with that?); once we stop thinking about philosophy we return to the real world in which shared values have real meaning and we behave accordingly; as we do when discussing music.

Basically my position on the canon debate hasn't shifted. What is interesting for me in talking about music is the interaction of individual sets of values, not the discussion of individual records within a shared set.

One irony I discern here is the tie in with the rockist/popist debate. If I had to reduce rockism to a single characteristic it would be this: rockism is predicated on the Romantic notion that the pinnacle of art is to be found in the deep and sincere expression of the individual personality - the egotistical sublime. There was a certain inevitability that this is where pop music would go when it decided it might after all be art: it wasn't going to go from being nobrow to highbrow in one leap so it assumed a set of aesthetic values which had been passe in havant guarde circles for over half a century but still dominated middlebrow discourse(and could, of course, also be inherited directly from jazz, a supremely individualistic and Romantic form, where notions of authenticity, sincerity, and self-expression are still dominant). The re-emergence of pop as "cool" was also inevitable because it better corresponsed to hipper notions of aesthetic value that did not reject the collaborative, the consensual or the commercial or make a fetish of self-expression.

The irony as I see it is that the popists (implicitly rejecting the primacy of self-expression, authenticity and individualism in art) often seem to be the same people as the subjectivists who do want to make a fetish of the individual in the context of criticism (where some higher level of objectivity or consensus might seem to be appropriate?).

This is of course aside from my main argument which is that you can't have criticism at all in the solipsistic world that follows from an extreme subjectivist position.

Similarly one arrives at a set of individual aesthetic values, which have no objective basis. There is however no need for these aesthetic values - however widely agreed some of them might be - to make the jump to collective codification, let alone enforcement. (And indeed they don't - the problem with battling the canon isn't that the canon has to exist, it's that the canon already doesn't).

Individuals can have a concept of 'better'. They can try to persuade other individuals to try out their concept of 'better' - like Dave Q said on another thread, ILM works well as a set of "oblique strategies" for listening to music in this way. This however is not the same as the collective cultural construction and reception of a 'canon', or even its replacement with an alternative 'canon', because whats being argued about at base is the meaning of 'better', not the status of the records under discussion.

Do arguments about music have to be won by anyone, is the question that's lurking here?

I'm not saying the two views are necessarily incompatible, (though they may be if one thought it through) it just strikes me as an interesting reversal of accepted wisdom that the Romantic view of the primacy of the "egotistical sublime" should be rejected for the artist but advocated for the critic. And that it is critics who are telling me this. Hmmm.

if a poster says (or more likely implies) "Obviously Wagner/Coltrane/Squarepusher understands music bettah than Omar/ Nicole/XYZedd/masonicboom/bob snoom/ mark s/[insert all ilx posters evah inc.doompatrol]" then i will CERTAINLY FIGHT...

:)

I mean, like, duh! And thank God for our relativistic attitudes, otherwise, someone may have to disagree with me.

The meaning of better inevitably implies a value judgement. Whatever conforms most closely to the meaning of better is best.

Nobody has to win arguments about music. But if the possibility weren't there, we wouldn't bother. And it takes a long time, but sometimes, people do win. They lose, too. Lester Bangs won. Adorno lost.

It strikes me that people spend more and more time constructing canons. Magazines publish them all the time. People sit around making them up on their blogs.

They aren't bearers of eternal truth. They are tools for figuring out what we pay attention to in the limited time we have available to us. They might be a guide to this year's records. Or they might be something that gets passed on, albeit in inchoate form, to the next generation. They acquire weight with time. Their rankings might not survive, but their choices do.

All depends on how cosmically you understand the word "game"

Whenever someone has an opinion on something, I think of it "aggressive egomania."

- Joy Division made whatever music they felt like making, not paying too much attention to whether the audiences would like it or not. Westlife, on the other side, are a manufactured pop band whose music is mainly aimed at younger audiences, and they may not neccessarily like their own songs a lot themselves.

- Joy Division have a considerably larger following than Westlife among the kind of "music nerds" that have large record collections, go to a lot of gigs and read a lot of music mags. Most musicologists and professional musicians will also probably have a personal taste which favors Joy Division ahead of Westlife.

I like this recourd better than some other records http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_F0ISP34w5Wo/SK-Wgu8U3iI/AAAAAAAAAZg/lmbQwpzdfxk/s400/1373285.jpg

no it's impossible to say

It's no fun to say, "you can't argue with taste." It's much more fun to say "my favorite band rules"

In This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession, Daniel Levitin talks about how most people, unless they are woefully underexposed to it, become "expert music listeners" to some degree by the time they are six years old. People develop pretty sophisticated systems of discerning pitch, melody and timbre during their developmental years, just as they learn language. Because of this, many often forget that much more can be learned from continued exposure to and study of music. So oftentimes the notion that critics have anything significant or relevant to offer is challenged, at least regarding pop music. When it comes to classical, opera and some jazz, people tend to defer to experts. Just as they do with just about every other classical art, like painting, sculpture, and literature. You don't see people saying judging like architecture is purely subjective. That's because there are certain standards that have to be met or the structures won't even last.

Music can be judged similarly, but discerning what it's goals are, and how successful they are at achieving them. So Joy Division and Westlife are more appropriately judged based on different criteria, a sliding scale.

"Better" is such a poor word that even if you could say one record is better than another, you'd have no idea what that means. "Better" at what? Being listened to? Better crafted? More technically challenging to play? More interesting? One metric I like to use (tho more often with literature than with music) is how productive the piece is for criticism/reading. The more I can produce, think about, write about the work, the "better" it is. Which explains why Hamlet is the best piece of literature ever (maybe). So many people have been able to write books, stage plays, direct films, etc about it. There's obviously a problem with this definition too, w/r/t neoliberalism/etc.

In This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession..

liking this quote.

totally unrelated:
i once read a serious classical magazine and the reviews section was hilarious, basically 1 out of 2 records got a 5/5, cause, you know, classical music is brilliant.

Review section has two records?

(I know, I know..)

hehe.

but that's exactly the self-congratulating shit i hate about the classical music scene.

I give your post a 5/5 for its pithy brilliance and excellent air of professionalism tempered with inspiration, combined with superior digital technology.

I congratulate myself for saying I was a bit of a snob when my friend said she liked a particular (VERY shitty) band. It was a way of not blurting out:"Ek, derivative Ikea level muzak." Still, the band's extremely shitty. Their records are worse than other not so shitty records.

Glad I'm not your "friend".

Not to sound like a broken record, but worse how? I can't imagine you mean ethically worse. XP

(Thinking we need a Kantian ethics of music criticism. What if EVERYONE sounded like Westlife?)

Jon, I don't rate her for liking a shitty band. That was what I wanted to put across. I know it is pointless to argue over, say, Seal's music. I mean, shit, did you never think to yourself:"ek what a crap band!". Wtf are you here for anyway?

Mordy, the local band makes extremely wishwasy derivative music.

Lets all applaud Jon for being the least judgmental dude on the planet. We can all dress it up, but we all rate people's tastes. Otherwise we wouldn't be here.

You've missed my point.

I congratulate myself for saying I was a bit of a snob

That was what bothered me. Can't you just let it roll off you that a friend likes a shitty band, rather than saying something like this? I mean, of course my friends have bands they love that I hate, I just prefer not to say anything. You made it sound as if you said "well, I'm a snob so I won't comment", which I think it 100x worse than just saying "nah, don't really like them much".

xxp My point is that derivation isn't ethically or morally worse or better. There have been derivative artists (or things I loved) that I enjoyed listening to more than totally original things. But I guess that's a scale one could use: How technically/musically original an artist is as a metric of better/worse.

Ok, I don't care. I just realized I'm only posting here cause I'm bored. This is a silly discussion. Some record's mother are bigger than other record's mothers.

Oh, hahaha, I was ridiculing myself. It was obvious when I told her! But yeah I guess you do have a point. :-( I should just stfu.

I guess context is everything in this case.