The downward spiral of taste

nyarlothothep

Id be skeptical of even that, its still opinion. I don't see the need to be objective about art.

JC 2K3

@Rozie

Yeah, but it's all ultimately subjective really.

How "talented" a debater/music critic someone is is also unquantifiable and therefore subjective.

I do, however, understand your point. Some bands, to us experienced music listeners, stand out as being clearly miles better than others, and many of us with similar mindsets tend to think the same(with many exceptions - our views on Muse and Radiohead, for example).

The problem is, most people aren't into music - they like casually listening to pop songs, but have no desire to expand their musical horizons any further. Because of this reason, I kinda feel that certain people's opinions can be ignored on the basis of them not having heard enough music.

Another problem is seperating the actual quality of the music from the cultural impact a band/album had. Nevermind by Nirvana is the classic example of this. It was by no means the first album to have such a sound and in comparison to much of the other, more underground, American Alt. Rock/Post-Punk/Pre-Grunge/whatever you want to call it, which was around at the time, it wasn't anything near the most amazing album released at that time - yet it still consistantly tops lists of "The Greatest Albums of the 90s" etc. purely for the marketing it received at the time and the icons Nirvana became.

In conclusion, once you've heard a decent quantity of music across a wide(-ish) range of genres and time periods, some bands do start to stand out more than others, but due to the vast range of factors involved, no matter how much debate is had, bands will never be conclusively quantified in terms of greatness.

Rozie

JC 2K3 wrote:

@Rozie

Yeah, but it's all ultimately subjective really.

How "talented" a debater/music critic someone is is also unquantifiable and therefore subjective.

Err, no. That's not how it works. Just because we can't measure it with clear cut numbers doesn't mean that it differs entirely from person to person, and there is no objective standard.

I do, however, understand your point. Some bands, to us experienced music listeners, stand out as being clearly miles better than others, and many of us with similar mindsets tend to think the same(with many exceptions - our views on Muse and Radiohead, for example).

And there's a good reason for that.

The problem is, most people aren't into music - they like casually listening to pop songs, but have no desire to expand their musical horizons any further. Because of this reason, I kinda feel that certain people's opinions can be ignored on the basis of them not having heard enough music.

But this still leads into some form of objectivity if we are to consider that they're into that music because they don't know enough about music.

Another problem is seperating the actual quality of the music from the cultural impact a band/album had. Nevermind by Nirvana is the classic example of this. It was by no means the first album to have such a sound and in comparison to much of the other, more underground, American Alt. Rock/Post-Punk/Pre-Grunge/whatever you want to call it, which was around at the time, it wasn't anything near the most amazing album released at that time - yet it still consistantly tops lists of "The Greatest Albums of the 90s" etc. purely for the marketing it received at the time and the icons Nirvana became.

I think it was a fantastic album for what it was - simpler songs are often the best, doesn't make them pop songs. It wasn't the best album of that time, but they could do much worse picking it as one of the greatest albums of the 90s.

In conclusion, once you've heard a decent quantity of music across a wide(-ish) range of genres and time periods, some bands do start to stand out more than others, but due to the vast range of factors involved, no matter how much debate is had, bands will never be conclusively quantified in terms of greatness.

But because of the fact that some do start to stand out more than others, it is objective.

The fact that you can't quantify it is irrelevant - you can't quantify anger either, yet while the level of anger may differ from person to person, what anger is, doesn't.

JC 2K3

Ok, well put it this way, say there is an objective grand order of music that exists - us humans could never apply it, so what's the point?

Rozie

JC 2K3 wrote:

Ok, well put it this way, say there is an objective grand order of music that exists - us humans could never apply it, so what's the point?

But we do apply it... just not 100% specifically. There are plenty of things we objectify in that manner - like group psychology.

JC 2K3

It all seems a bit pointless to me..............

Malice

Stev_o wrote:

Check out Kent great Swedish band

If you're going to mention foreign language bands, some links would be great! I'm going to recommend my recent discovery of a Moldovan band called ExNN. Their homepage is here and their MySpace page is here. I got their album Vnutri recently. It's upbeat pop rock and the fact that the lyrics are in Romanian makes it a little different From what I can gather they are also releasing the album in English.