Think about what music should do for you to enjoy it. Think not only about your favourite genre, but about ALL music in the world. How do you decide which is good and which is bad?
Now, most people in the world will just shrug and say “I don’t know, if it’s good it’s good!” and that’s perfectly fine. Music is, at its very core, a deeply emotional form of art. This is very important: Music should evoke emotions.
But how exactly is it possible for music to evoke feeling happy, sad, angry, confused, and many other complex emotions? Of course, lyrics and melody play a key role here, but their role is not as big as you’d think. I think it’s mostly a matter of production and arrangement/delivery. The same tune with the same lyrics recorded by a different set of musicians with varying concepts of ‘good’ music will probably evoke different emotions. For example, take this version of the Beatles’ classic ‘Help!’ by Oasis’ Noel Gallagher:
The impetuous Beatle-rocker, urgent and overwhelming at first listen, is turned into a piece of gloomy balladry by Mr. Gallagher, just by switching the arrangement, tempo, mixing, and vocal delivery. See? This is important to understand: The same song can evoke a plenitude of emotions depending on how it is treated. But how should music be treated?
Let me put it this way: Have a look at the charts. Everything on there is polished. Vocals are auto-tuned to fit perfectly to the music, which is produced so that every bass frequency can be heard banging out of car radios and club speakers from miles away but still preserve the lead singer when listening on your laptop speakers. If there’s a guitar on the song, it will probably be a clean acoustic or mildly distorted guitar, going through the song without hitting a wrong note here or there, like a machine. No noise, no surprises… No fun. It’s just too perfect. Sometimes it’s made to sound perfect by technical adjusting or there are just ‘skilled musicians’ at work. Just like these horrible virtuosos, who never even wrote a decent song, but hey – they can play thirty drum kits or three guitar necks at once. I’m still not going to buy their record, because I just don’t feel ‘it’.
Now here’s the thing about why that is: When you learn to play an instrument or sing, you’re told to abolish all the wrong notes to play perfectly. And that is, to some extent, true. I mean: To evoke emotions, you have to connect with the listener by playing or singing the notes you want to be heard. And you’ll also want all of the sounds you make to be heard. No blurred reverbed guitars, no walls of sound with shrieking guitars and muffled drums, a punchy bass and a voice hitting all the right notes. You can do that with studio techniques and musical craftsmanship. It will SOUND perfect. But it will never BE perfect.
Let me explain: Listen to what I consider to be the one recording to come closest to my vision of the ‘perfect pop song’. The Undertones’ ‘Teenage Kicks’:
Mind you: This is all but perfect. The guitars are slightly detuned, the drums and bass are muffled somewhere in the mix. The musicians are no virtuosos whatsoever. The singer, Feargal Sharkey, is no ‘idol’, neither does he have a ‘good voice’. But the song is maybe the most human song ever written. When Sharkey exclaims ‘I need excitement oh I need it bad’, he does not hit the notes quite right, he struggles. But you are able to feel the deep need for excitement in him: He means it and you know it.
‘Nobody’s Perfect’ – We’ve all heard that before. And you know what? It’s true. We all know. Everyone’s got their flaws. Perfection, human perfection that is, does not exist. Still: It’s an ideal we all strive for. Well not all, but some. Some others accept their flaws, live with them, and sing out loud anyway. All my favourite artists did that. And I think if everybody did that, the music world would be a lot better off.
The problem is that music education as well as the casting show culture and the music industry give you a false notion of ‘talent’. For me, talent is not the ability to sing or play. It’s to give a performance meaning and power.
So maybe you’ll think about that the next time you listen to music:
‘True perfection has to be imperfect.’ – Noel Gallagher, 2002.
