American Football - American Football (October 21, 2016) Album • Page 36

those measures seem subjective. and just because youre not using like/dislike doesnt mean its objective. plus, what about music without lyrics? personally i find lyrics to be the least important part of my enjoyment of music. its always what i focus on last.

 

Maybe im not talking about how everyone should rate music but this is the way i look at it. If im listening to music of a genre i generally dont like, i try to go by this thinking.

Imo I think different pieces of music try to prove different theses, just like how a painting may attempt to evoke a message or spiritual awakening or a certain emotion. If every song has a message or theme to it, a goal in mind, then the way i measure the song is its ability to deliver that message in terms of musical structure, concision of the song's "narrative," originality and general beauty in the sounds progression (be it melody or harmony)

 

I don't think there can be complete objectivity to music criticism. Like, there's no way to do that without reducing it to parts like "this song uses x chord in y key in a waltz rhythm and the lead tends to stick to this mode and blah blah" like that's not criticism, that's just a laundry list. any sort of parameters you set to try to be objective outside of that is subject to your reader disagreeing because of different habits and what you value and how you define those values in music. for example part of why my listening habits are so slow is because im a lyrics first kind of person -- it's like a 60/40 split in favor of the lyrics. And this has been a problem because in that sense I'm judging the music on either how it makes me feel or how i relate, and I think the latter is not a great metric for me anymore. Like, it worked out in getting me into a lot of formative music because a lot of it fell into indie/punk/emo sphere where those lyrics typically tick(ed) those two boxes for me, but it definitely means i have to digest stuff a lot longer as a result. not to mention, by that criteria, it'd make a lot of entire genres mostly inaccessible to me (instrumental stuff like a lot of jazz, shoegaze where the vocals/lyrics tend to be more inscrutable, mainstream rap where the concerns of the individual rapper is more about how the lyrics are crafted than what specifically they are ((to me anyway, im new to it))). anyway, back to the point, in the end i can say I love LP1 because I related to the minimalism of the lyrics which left a lot of room for projecting my own experiences, and someone will say the minimalism is lazy and it gave them nothing to latch onto. literally, the minimalism is factually true, but the conclusion either way is fluid.
I think i had a point here and i lost it somewhere along the way, maybe someone else will find it since i already typed it lol

 

the problem with that last statement is that there's plenty of merit in music that is "ugly" or harsh. i listen to a ton of heavy metal, a ton of harsh ambient music, im not "wrong" for liking it. plus how effective something conveys messages or themes is often up for debate itself. too many of your measures have plenty of room for grey areas to be absolutely objective.

 

I also see what you mean here. I too listen to some ugly stuff, droney, ambient, etc-- but i guess in the end when i throw something on for the first time, theres a feeling i want to achieve-- thats the mode i measure it by. If i get that feeling, and of course thats entirely emotionally based. I guess i was just trying to share how i intellectually measure a piece of music if i dont "automatically" like it. I just think this is a pretty interesting topic to speculate on

 

see the thing is that just because something does or doesnt achieve the feeling YOU'RE looking for, doesnt mean it will/wont do that for OTHER people. thus, its all subjective.

 

the only time I will say something is bad is when it feels really fake and unauthentic.. if I don't like something but I feel the music is coming from an honest place I usually just won't comment. Which is why no one on here usually sees me saying bad stuff about bands ha. Anyway how do you tell if it's honest or authentic? Idk I think it's just a quality that is there.

 

Authenticity is a farce. Your last question explains why

 

there are super good manufactured pop stars

 

No one in music is original or honest. Once you accept this fact you'll be a lot happier

 

Beethoven was

 

Cave people banging sticks in rhythm probably were tbh

 

My post didn't really make sense I guess ha

 

it made sense Teebs

 

It makes sense. I'm just telling you authenticity isn't real

 

extremely false

 

Ah true

 

Well than we can say that maybe it's the perception of authenticity that matters. Which is something I thought goodness did very well and meant to do.

 

as i said above, lots of pop stars that are totally manufactured and very obviously so that i'd rather listen to some "authentic" punk band

 

well why does the perception of authenticity matter to you? what makes something better because it seems authentic?

 

Tends to allow me to relate to the music more I think

 

This is coming from someone who enjoyed Charles Ives ha I've dedicated my life to studying music and still have no idea what makes something good or not. It's always just been well I like this bc of this bass line or this guitar part or this harmony or this melody against this chord progression.

 

but you're relating to the music, not the artist. can you not relate to stories that are fiction?

 

My brain tells me I like how something sounds so I listen to it more, or my brain tells me no no no I don't like this, so I stop listening. Yeah.

 

I like stories yea, I love the Dear Hunter lol

But I think in stories the artist still needs to find a way to give the music some sort of authentic human element. There are still a lot of relatable human elements in the Dear Hunter that make it very relatable even tho it's based in a different time period and is complete fiction