Link to original post: [drupal=5086]Musical Resolve: A Change in Perspective[/drupal]
Because I seem to be incapable of blogging about (almost) anything besides music anymore, I’m back with another music blog. Ironically, despite what I blogged about two blogs ago – hating both popular music and hipster music cultures – I’ve found myself drifting more and more to a hipster sort of mentality as of late.
To call me a complete music hipster would be inaccurate, as I still own and listen to music that is now and was once popular. Still, I’m closer to being a hipster than ever, or at least since my overall “rebellious” phase back in late elementary school going into middle school. The pop music in my library has begun to bore me, and I don’t really have much urge to go out and add any more currently popular music to my library.
Truth be told, I can trace this back to a number of things. Part of it is that I’ve satirized hipsters for so long by saying, “I liked this song before it was popular!” that it actually seems to have become a legitimate thought. Also, while I generally avoid listening to the radio, particularly modern popular radio, since I’ve gotten to college, I’ve found it nearly impossible to avoid. Probably the largest factor, though, is that I’ve been burned on many of my latest pop music purchases. I bought Rihanna’s latest album, but aside from “We Found Love” (very overplayed, but still catchy with a good beat and riff) and “Farewell,” most of the album is utter trash to me. Lady Gaga’s newest album was a severe disappointment to me as well.
Even looking back on some albums in the past two years that I was initially somewhat pleased with, I realize that there was a time when I enjoyed all but one or two songs thoroughly on practically every album I owned, and that has now become my standard for an exceptionally good album.
Also, I’ve begun to think more critically about my music based off of things that various people have said. Somebody once explained to me what significance he gets from music as being the human voice, its capacity as an instrument, and its ability to therefore move him to different sentiments, particularly with female singers. This is something I’ve considered to be true for myself as well, as instrumental pieces can rarely move me as much as lyrical ones, and yet looking at all of this pop music I have, few of the artists can sing, and even fewer elect to do so without overproducing their music and adding auto-tune anyway.
Frankly, I’m tired of that. Outside of “An Ending (Ascent)”, instrumentals don’t move me nearly as much as the human voice, and the human voice accompanied by lyrics that can bear some sort of significance to me. It’s part of why dubstep fails to appeal to me at all. (The other part being that I can’t stand the bloody WUBWUBWUB and the fact that it ends up sounding like a jumble of electronic noises rather than music.)
I’ve also had many interesting conversations with my suitemate who is a complete metalhead. Aside from symphonic metal, I don’t get too much into metal – because the screaming present in much metal goes against my personal preference of the human voice as an instrument – but we feel pretty similarly on pop music. He, of course, comes at it from a much more metal-focused perspective, but these types of conversations have inspired me to look for more in my music rather than settling for a cheap, catchy beat. Then I look at all of these people partying around me, listening to the same bloody music until the next wave of popular music comes out, not even really seeming to think about what they’re listening to except that it’s what’s popular and catchy, and I’m even more inspired to look for more.
The hipster part comes in when I look through my music and realize what I’m truly satisfied by. Most of the popular rock music today doesn’t interest me. Instead, I find myself looking to the rock I started off listening to and gravitating towards those artists I’ve discovered more recently who are not very well-known, like Thriving Ivory (one of my favorite bands) or Civil Twilight.
When it comes to pop music, the only stuff I can much stand at the moment, except in some specific circumstances, is pop-rock. Avril Lavigne is, of course, somewhat popular – though not nearly as much now as she was in her “Sk8er Boi” days – but I loved her newest album because, as she even said she personally strove for, her voice is the main instrument on the album. I’ve also recently – particularly since summer – gotten into Michelle Branch’s music, although she hasn’t released an album in years (and her record company is currently withholding her new album, it seems).
Oh sure, I still have some of that generic pop music in my library, but most of all, I look for that stripped-down music, and that’s something you rarely find in popular music, especially in the music found on the radio.
Of course, people always ***** at me over Adele, because yes, it would sound like she’d fit my criteria to a bloody ‘T’, but her music just sounds generic to me, and the whole overplayed and overrated piece that comes along with being on the radio makes it very hard for me to enjoy anything I do enjoy by her for very long. Yes, she can actually sing and play an instrument. The fact that this is now something in music that is not a baseline, but rather a plus, is just sad from my perspective. But maybe I’m just old-fashioned.
Actually, I almost certainly am, but that’s okay.
Perhaps it’s just because it’s something that I feel I almost have to myself, that nobody else can corrupt by mindlessly listening to it just because it’s popular, but I keep looking through my music and I see artists that make songs that seem to have so much more soul and emotion put into them, and it’s never the popular ones. Save for the most emotional songs, the songs from the most popular artists in my library are the ones I’ve been skipping time and time again on shuffle.
I also think a good portion of why I’m starting to grow so strongly away from popular music is the same things I pointed out in my other blog. Music is overplayed on the radio so much that even if I liked a song that gets to the radio, I rarely like it for much longer. (I’d threaten to scream the next time I hear “Domino,” but that pretty much already happens every time it comes on the radio.) People take a song that may have meaning, and then it becomes just another top 40 song and it loses the majority of the emotion I felt listening to it.
The only popular music I can find myself looking for anymore is older music – I’m talking pre-2000 – ironically, as my library has usually consisted of a majority of music that’s from the ‘90s or later. But I can’t stand this trend of electronic music in popular music. I know I already voiced my complaints about dubstep, but that goes for a significant portion of electronic music; more often than not, I don’t like listening to instrumental music much at all, video game music being the only exception to that. It’s not that I dislike it; I just prefer lyrics in my music. Besides, while I appreciate electronic music, I like music that’s – as I said – more stripped-down, basic, and honest-sounding.
I’m not about to become one of those people who generalizes an entire genre of music as terrible, because I hate that, and I’m not about to become one of the hipsters that says anything in the top 40 is automatically terrible, as both of these things are things I’ve explicitly complained about in the past. My point is that I’m just fed up with buying this music. I’m not going to delete music from my library or sell CDs, because I bought every CD that I bought for one reason or another, and there is no CD in my library that is completely without merit to me. I just want to go out and look for music in that lesser-known category, once I’m finally done thoroughly listening to all of the music in my library that I already have and haven’t gotten a chance to listen to yet.
I’m not saying this to offend anyone’s music tastes, or to act high-and-mighty because I’m done with modern popular music. I’ve just found it ironic – and a bit annoying – that I’ve found myself becoming one of those people that I’ve been annoyed at for some time now, and I felt like expressing that change. As I said, I’m not swearing off any music that becomes popular. I just want to avoid actually putting any of said music into my library, because it generally gets ruined for me through the radio, and I’m finding myself less and less satisfied with it.
I also find myself wanting to talk about my music more and more (something my friends care to do less often than I do), so if all goes well, you can expect some song/album/artist reviews coming from me sometime in the near future.
(I hope this is fairly organized and comprehensive, too, because for some reason I had trouble writing my thoughts out as I wanted to with this blog.)
Because I seem to be incapable of blogging about (almost) anything besides music anymore, I’m back with another music blog. Ironically, despite what I blogged about two blogs ago – hating both popular music and hipster music cultures – I’ve found myself drifting more and more to a hipster sort of mentality as of late.
To call me a complete music hipster would be inaccurate, as I still own and listen to music that is now and was once popular. Still, I’m closer to being a hipster than ever, or at least since my overall “rebellious” phase back in late elementary school going into middle school. The pop music in my library has begun to bore me, and I don’t really have much urge to go out and add any more currently popular music to my library.
Truth be told, I can trace this back to a number of things. Part of it is that I’ve satirized hipsters for so long by saying, “I liked this song before it was popular!” that it actually seems to have become a legitimate thought. Also, while I generally avoid listening to the radio, particularly modern popular radio, since I’ve gotten to college, I’ve found it nearly impossible to avoid. Probably the largest factor, though, is that I’ve been burned on many of my latest pop music purchases. I bought Rihanna’s latest album, but aside from “We Found Love” (very overplayed, but still catchy with a good beat and riff) and “Farewell,” most of the album is utter trash to me. Lady Gaga’s newest album was a severe disappointment to me as well.
Even looking back on some albums in the past two years that I was initially somewhat pleased with, I realize that there was a time when I enjoyed all but one or two songs thoroughly on practically every album I owned, and that has now become my standard for an exceptionally good album.
Also, I’ve begun to think more critically about my music based off of things that various people have said. Somebody once explained to me what significance he gets from music as being the human voice, its capacity as an instrument, and its ability to therefore move him to different sentiments, particularly with female singers. This is something I’ve considered to be true for myself as well, as instrumental pieces can rarely move me as much as lyrical ones, and yet looking at all of this pop music I have, few of the artists can sing, and even fewer elect to do so without overproducing their music and adding auto-tune anyway.
Frankly, I’m tired of that. Outside of “An Ending (Ascent)”, instrumentals don’t move me nearly as much as the human voice, and the human voice accompanied by lyrics that can bear some sort of significance to me. It’s part of why dubstep fails to appeal to me at all. (The other part being that I can’t stand the bloody WUBWUBWUB and the fact that it ends up sounding like a jumble of electronic noises rather than music.)
I’ve also had many interesting conversations with my suitemate who is a complete metalhead. Aside from symphonic metal, I don’t get too much into metal – because the screaming present in much metal goes against my personal preference of the human voice as an instrument – but we feel pretty similarly on pop music. He, of course, comes at it from a much more metal-focused perspective, but these types of conversations have inspired me to look for more in my music rather than settling for a cheap, catchy beat. Then I look at all of these people partying around me, listening to the same bloody music until the next wave of popular music comes out, not even really seeming to think about what they’re listening to except that it’s what’s popular and catchy, and I’m even more inspired to look for more.
The hipster part comes in when I look through my music and realize what I’m truly satisfied by. Most of the popular rock music today doesn’t interest me. Instead, I find myself looking to the rock I started off listening to and gravitating towards those artists I’ve discovered more recently who are not very well-known, like Thriving Ivory (one of my favorite bands) or Civil Twilight.
When it comes to pop music, the only stuff I can much stand at the moment, except in some specific circumstances, is pop-rock. Avril Lavigne is, of course, somewhat popular – though not nearly as much now as she was in her “Sk8er Boi” days – but I loved her newest album because, as she even said she personally strove for, her voice is the main instrument on the album. I’ve also recently – particularly since summer – gotten into Michelle Branch’s music, although she hasn’t released an album in years (and her record company is currently withholding her new album, it seems).
Oh sure, I still have some of that generic pop music in my library, but most of all, I look for that stripped-down music, and that’s something you rarely find in popular music, especially in the music found on the radio.
Of course, people always ***** at me over Adele, because yes, it would sound like she’d fit my criteria to a bloody ‘T’, but her music just sounds generic to me, and the whole overplayed and overrated piece that comes along with being on the radio makes it very hard for me to enjoy anything I do enjoy by her for very long. Yes, she can actually sing and play an instrument. The fact that this is now something in music that is not a baseline, but rather a plus, is just sad from my perspective. But maybe I’m just old-fashioned.
Actually, I almost certainly am, but that’s okay.
Perhaps it’s just because it’s something that I feel I almost have to myself, that nobody else can corrupt by mindlessly listening to it just because it’s popular, but I keep looking through my music and I see artists that make songs that seem to have so much more soul and emotion put into them, and it’s never the popular ones. Save for the most emotional songs, the songs from the most popular artists in my library are the ones I’ve been skipping time and time again on shuffle.
I also think a good portion of why I’m starting to grow so strongly away from popular music is the same things I pointed out in my other blog. Music is overplayed on the radio so much that even if I liked a song that gets to the radio, I rarely like it for much longer. (I’d threaten to scream the next time I hear “Domino,” but that pretty much already happens every time it comes on the radio.) People take a song that may have meaning, and then it becomes just another top 40 song and it loses the majority of the emotion I felt listening to it.
The only popular music I can find myself looking for anymore is older music – I’m talking pre-2000 – ironically, as my library has usually consisted of a majority of music that’s from the ‘90s or later. But I can’t stand this trend of electronic music in popular music. I know I already voiced my complaints about dubstep, but that goes for a significant portion of electronic music; more often than not, I don’t like listening to instrumental music much at all, video game music being the only exception to that. It’s not that I dislike it; I just prefer lyrics in my music. Besides, while I appreciate electronic music, I like music that’s – as I said – more stripped-down, basic, and honest-sounding.
I’m not about to become one of those people who generalizes an entire genre of music as terrible, because I hate that, and I’m not about to become one of the hipsters that says anything in the top 40 is automatically terrible, as both of these things are things I’ve explicitly complained about in the past. My point is that I’m just fed up with buying this music. I’m not going to delete music from my library or sell CDs, because I bought every CD that I bought for one reason or another, and there is no CD in my library that is completely without merit to me. I just want to go out and look for music in that lesser-known category, once I’m finally done thoroughly listening to all of the music in my library that I already have and haven’t gotten a chance to listen to yet.
I’m not saying this to offend anyone’s music tastes, or to act high-and-mighty because I’m done with modern popular music. I’ve just found it ironic – and a bit annoying – that I’ve found myself becoming one of those people that I’ve been annoyed at for some time now, and I felt like expressing that change. As I said, I’m not swearing off any music that becomes popular. I just want to avoid actually putting any of said music into my library, because it generally gets ruined for me through the radio, and I’m finding myself less and less satisfied with it.
I also find myself wanting to talk about my music more and more (something my friends care to do less often than I do), so if all goes well, you can expect some song/album/artist reviews coming from me sometime in the near future.
(I hope this is fairly organized and comprehensive, too, because for some reason I had trouble writing my thoughts out as I wanted to with this blog.)
