and all the world is green<\/i><\/p>\n
Do you ever wonder how often the “emperor has no clothes” phenomenon occurs in music appreciation circles? That is to say, a band or artist with little to no talent being considered good primarily because others say so, and no one has the guts to call them out for fear of being ostracized by their fellow critics? Musical taste is so subjective that I’m sure all of us have artists about which we wonder “Why in the world do they receive so much praise?” Sometimes I catch myself thinking that, but I correct myself immediately with the thought “Well, I haven’t really listened to them anyway.” I used to wonder about the appeal of bands and artists like the Beach Boys or the Rolling Stones or Bob Dylan or Radiohead or Death Cab before I listened to a good deal of their music. And I have to say, while I’ll never have an outright affection<\/i> for it, giving them a fair hearing did<\/i> help me appreciate them more vis-a-vis their influence on the narrative of popular music in the past 50 years or so. I respect<\/i> their music now.<\/p>\n
That said, I still wonder whether there are bands out there whose entire appeal is built, so to speak, on peer pressure. I’ve heard it said that the only reason for anyone to like Wilco is to be able to tell people you like Wilco. Tom Waits was another artist whose lack of accessibility had me almost convinced that his critical success could be attributed to the phenomenon, but… In the end, there is<\/i> something mesmerizing about his music, and especially his live performances.<\/p>\n
I still think, though, based on my admittedly limited experience in indie music circles, that the “emperor has no clothes” phenomenon is alive and well. There’s something about that particular scene that gives me the impression it’s someplace the phenomenon would thrive. I think it’s the anti-mainstream streak shared by most indie music fans, which lends itself to disproportionate weight given to critical analysis over personal taste, coupled with an overwhelming desire by most scenesters to simply be a part<\/i> of the scene, which leads many of them, I’m sure, to sacrifice their musical good sense on the altar of fitting in. I’m generalizing; I know, but what would this journal be without philosophizing about music from time to time?<\/p>\n
Back to work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
and all the world is green Do you ever wonder how often the “emperor has no clothes” phenomenon occurs in music appreciation circles? That is to say, a band or artist with little to no talent being considered good primarily because others say so, and no one has the guts to call them out for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1218"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1218\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}