Earlier today I was twittering a few random thoughts on future blog posts. I floated the idea of writing ‘The Songwriting Crimes of Bob Dylan’, and ‘The Songwriting Crimes of Stock, Aitken and Waterman’.
A couple of twitterers (tweeters? Tweetmates? Twitees?) raised an interesting opinion or two
Marie Tueje said (I’ve paraphrased and edited a few tweets, purely to make it scan):
Surely the major crime of SAW was being too successful?
Their writing is formulaic, sure. Subjectively, a lot of it is bad, in the sense that I personally do not like it…but objectively I think it’s difficult to argue that they wrote bad songs…
Despite this I do believe that one must be able to say ‘x is bad’ and that there be a barometer below which there is bad music
Syniq said:
I agree with @MarieTueje on this, unless you’re talking about Richard Clayderman, in which case ERASE HIM FROM TIME!
I’m not sure I agree – the idea of a work of art being objectively good is difficult to sustain. For that to be true all good art would translate across barriers of time and culture, which it clearly doesn’t.
Something can be good within a context – Bob Dylan is good to by the standards that Bob Dylan fans consider relevant, but I could (and at some point will) give what I regard as objective reasons to see him as a talentless no-hoper who got lucky.
Objectively good music? I don’t think such a thing exists. What do you think?
Related posts:
The objectively good song exists! It is Bad Romance by Lady GaGa. You can’t tell me I’m wrong. Or you can, but I’ll just ignore you. As I often do.
Love Pete xxx
Yes. Well done, Pete.
I’m torn.
Matters of taste can never be 100% objective. If they were, everyone would feel the same way as everybody else about every song. You could argue that some people are just wrong about what’s good, but I don’t think judgment of good/bad can exist outside of human perception.
On the other hand, certain songs really do feel less effective than others. And if you push too far, you find yourself outside the realm of what can be defined as music altogether. John Cage’s “4’33″ is an interesting thought experiment, for instance, and it may even be art, but it’s not music.
I disagree, I think. If the mythical objectively good song had been attained, it would have already been written – possibly centuries ago – and everyone would have quit right then and there. But they keep trying and succeed or fail on criteria that cannot be explained, cataloged, or even witnessed. How dismal would it be if some lab-coated production assistant knew the “formula” that would excite the sensibilities of every human music fan. It’s bad enough that some people think they do…
I have thought so much about this. No big conclusions but I will say that I think there is a craft to songwriting and the better you know the craft the better you can achieve what you’re after. Also, I think craft is objective, whereas art is not. As a result, you can have a piece that succeeds as craft but fails as art — and vice versa. For example, I love Bryan Adams song “Have You Ever Really Loved A Woman” and so as art it works for me. From a craft-standpoint, though, the the song is not so great. Musically, it’s brilliant, but the lyrics, god, they really, really suck at points.
Jeff (www.cerebellumblues.com)
I’m with you, Jeff – Art and craft aren’t the same thing. You can shape and craft a piece of music until it ‘works’ but you can’t turn an artless song into an artful one.
I do think you can be objectively good for a purpose eg. objectively good for getting young people in the right kind of nightclub dancing – that’s something that we can measure and quantify. But I don’t know what universal standards you would use to measure that dance song against a country ballad say.
This is an interesting question, as various musical styles can be incredibly diverse. Trying to see whether or not ancient Japanese music is objectively better than modern american progressive Jazz/Hip-hop fusion music will yield different answers from different people. Some will say that there is no objectively good music.
Intervals considered consonant in one style will be considered dissonant in another. For instance, a P4th is considered dissonant in western counterpoint music (as far as I know, correct me if there are exceptions), yet it is an inversion of a P5th, which is considered consonant.
There is obviously a taste factor in music. Hamburgers might not be popular in Indonesia (forgive me if they are), but they might think another food is very tasty which people in Canada might find revolting. Music can be the same way (listen to John Cage music, and you will see that anything can be considered music by someone).
Thus, one might think that there is no objectively good music, as everyone has different opinions. However, what if someone conducted a study in which people all over the world listened to two songs (it doesn’t matter what genre, it might be best to have the two be the same genre, though, I haven’t thought about that) and simply stated which song was better (even if they hated both)? Would there be a tendency for everyone in the world to like one better than the other? What if you repeated this test over different decades with different songs.
If any one song can be generally considered better than any other given song, then it follows that there is one song which everyone would (on average) enjoy better than any other song (remember, genre doesn’t matter). Is that song, then, the example of the closest humanity has ever gotten to creating the objectively perfect song? What if humanity is wrong?
One additional point we must keep in mind in this sort of debate is this. The world right now is very influenced by the western system of music. Some music might be very hard to find people who like it. This doesn’t mean that it is good music (or does it….?).
In summary, if there is objectively good music, who says what that music is? The expert? The local teenager who strums his electric guitar late in the night? Mozart? Metallica? Vivaldi? Is no one right?
I don’t have the answers to these questions, but I think I can reasonably say this: music is somewhat like a language. The job of the musician is to communicate with his/her audience. If the message gets across (it doesn’t have to have lyrics to do this), the job of the musician is done. I do understand that there are limitations to this theory, as some music doesn’t necessarily have a message, but is music (some ambiance music).
Music is an amazing thing! Don’t let this question distract you from making it.