consistently good…
February 24th, 2008 by Luke
There was a Chevy commercial that ran during the Grammys I believe. Here’s where you can watch that video:
http://www.josephkosinski.com/projects/movs/BABY_640×360.mp4
That incredible song in the background is by a guy named Oren Lavie. It’s called Her Morning Elegance. I was listening to that song after figuring out who it was. Then, as I usually do, I decided to listen to the rest of the tracks on Oren’s Myspace page. I wasn’t nearly as impressed. Not that it was bad, it’s just that Oren isn’t my cup of tea. The funny thing was that earlier that day my brother and I were having a discussion about music and Sara Bareilles came up. If you aren’t familiar with Sara Bareilles, then you should check her out in the links at the end of this post.
Anyway, my brother was saying how he only really liked her single (Love Song), and didn’t care for anything else of hers really. So this is where art gets murky. The debate over subjectivity and objectivity. I will always argue that when it comes to art, it’s not completely subjective. I think there is a great amount of objectivity in deciding what is good when it comes to art. In other words, I don’t think art should be left up to everyone’s opinion. That’s stupid and wishy-washy.
In our culture today, though, all we preach is tolerance. We’ve preached it so much that most people don’t even know what they believe anymore. there’s no conviction because you don’t want to offend anyone. That’s a conversation for a different day though.
It’s because of this, I believe, that so many people think music is completely about the listener: Whether or not it’s good is up to each individual listener. Bullshit. For one, my music is about me. I’m glad that you like it, but I don’t write songs so that you will like them. And two, I’ll pass all the judgment I want on trash that masquerades for art in the music world. Why? Because it is awful. You can’t listen to Tom Waits, The Wall Flowers, and Britney Spears and not hear the digression as you go along.
Pay attention when you’re listening. This is why things are critical successes but not commercial successes; because the casual listener takes whatever they are told to listen to. If you aren’t proactive about what is fed you, that can be a very dangerous thing: physically, emotionally, politically, and spiritually.
-L
For music mentioned:
