Pop Music and Stupidity

[indjaseemun]

I've read once that the middle is not good for speaking the truth. The truth is where the extremes meet. That's ok. But this is a move, it doesn't have to be this way all the time.

You will certainly find more idiots that listen to american pop music in a room than in a room where people listen to classical music. But in my opinion it's not useful to say that people that listen to inferior music are stupid, only because we all know intelligent people who do, including musicians themselves. For example, Ildjarn has already stated he can enjoy any type of music. The guy from Acerbus too, and many other artists that people here like listen to stuff that are shunned here.

That's not for the creators of the site, they already know this really well. It's for the people that may take this music stuff too seriously. A tune is a tune. You either like it or not.

That being said, I agree with the website, and probably most of the smartest people only listen to the good stuff and abhor the bad. And yes, you become what you listen I think, and metal truly is an escape from the karmic cycle while pop music imprisons you more and more on it. Pop music is like schizophrenic voices in your head these days, a mish-mash of infra-human elements that gets people thinking music is whatever combination of words and sounds that feels good when repeating a lot. (baby baby baby, etc.). In comparison with a good pop tune like Aha's Take On Me, you can see how bad a lot of today's songs are.

There are also songs that, composition-wise, are mediocre, but because of their aesthetics becomes interesting, like that new pop song "I am Titanium".

[Humanicide]

I think you're hitting on the concept of 'Good music is good music. People can like what they want, but it doesn't mean it's good." This is something I've come to settle on. Personal taste can be an enigma. Although I think pop music is mostly drek - if someone listens to Madonna but is a notable professor, or surgeon, or another noteworthy position in their community, who cares if they listen to Madonna? Of course the probability they actually will is not too high, as you pointed out that intelligent people usually like more intelligent music.

The best art communicates something outside of the human experience, that is still relate-able - as this site has held steadfast to this idea over the years, the more that I find that I agree with it.

We can say that people who listen to pop music are dumb, but if we want to attract the smarter people in that crowd perhaps we can simply reject it in a neutral, objective manner. Something like "Most pop and rock music does not fulfill our musical needs. We listen to other genres!"

[Dinaric Leather]

I forgot who it was but someone here recently made the distinction between intelligence and wisdom. I think that knowing good music from poor music is more correlated with wisdom than intelligence. I know plenty of rather intelligent people who listen to pretty banal shit, on the other hand everyone I know who is inclined towards philosophy listens to primarily Metal, high-brow electronic music (Kraftwerk, Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream etc) and/or classical music.

[fallot]

More complex music is generally an acquired taste and requires some work on the part of the listener to appreciate. Intelligence isn't enough for that, but it helps. With metal specifically you've got the issue of it lacking consonance or there being difficulty in seperating sounds (which smooths over any subtlety in the composition) for the early listener.

But what I think is going on here is that you OP have a big heart and are not yet as invested in metal as some around here (just judging by your other posts on metal). So I think maybe your views will harden more with time.

[aquarius]

...maybe your views will harden more with time.

This is sort of what happened with me. Later on I found that 'hardening up' actually allowed for a greater appreciation of music itself, which in turn led to a more diverse range and of a higher quality.

The hardness helps one to be soft, and the soft to be hard.

I also think it's important to distinguish between music the individual enjoys and music that should be exalted in the metal community.

[Invisible Sandwich]

The way I see it, most people simply do not care all that much about music, viewing it perhaps as something they can put on for entertainment, if they actively listen at all. How we gain our active interest in music differs from person to person; in my case, it was due to large amounts of classical music performance. It probably also influences what sort of music we view as good. An intellectual (or at least a philosopher; as a college student, I meet many people who are probably capable of exerting the intellectual force to view life on a deeper level but simply don't) is more likely not to actively seek out music in favor of some high aspect of culture than they are to settle for the popular side of things.

It does raise the question (one already asked on this board) of what visual and textual art we'd consider to be coherent and meaningful, and how society at large interacts with the popular side of such.