This article - which is just about a series of tweets - made the rounds on Facebook a couple days back. The article is entitled "Steve Albini On Why He Hates Steely Dan." To be fair, he never said he actually hated them - you can read the Twitter thread here. He said, a shot across the bow, "I will always be the kind of punk that shits on Steely Dan."
Personally I think it takes a great deal of energy to hate something. It's wearying. There's music I don't think about, & music I really don't like, but to say I hate any music is to imagine I've invested actual time into caring about it. & I don't like it, so why should I care about it?
Albini writes well, & is funny besides - I would need to have the money the Steely Dans have & their legion of fans to be able to withstand an insult as powerful as "Music made for the sole purpose of letting the wedding band stretch out a little." I mean, I feel wounded by the shrapnel of that remark!
On Facebook, there were the usual agreements & disagreements, with all the requisite huffing+puffing on one side ("he's only saying that because his music is worse than theirs"), & the smug "me too"s on the other side ("I've always said that!"). The amusing middle ground was the people who would say, "I totally agree & yet I love Steely Dan."
Many might think this is about the power of one person's opinion. How influential & amazing Steve Albini must be to cause such a reaction! It's actually not about that. It's about the insecurity of one's own opinion. Because there are few things that threaten a person's sense of self more than finding out someone else doesn't like what you like.
Which is just weird, right? Why should people like what we like?
It's very simple: we imagine we like stuff because it's the best. Why else would we like it? & if someone doesn't like it - especially someone famous! - it's like being told, it's actually not the best. Something you really love isn't the best. Why on earth would I like something that isn't the best?
This is a scenario I encounter over & over again, & have my entire life. I once told an acquaintance who values "sad music" that a record I recently heard I found terribly sad. This person listened to the record & he told me, "It's not sad at all." I said, "It may not be sad to you, but it's very sad to me." He seemed downright perplexed.
There is a prominent podcast person who, when he interviews musicians, he makes sure to ask them if they like some of his favorites. It's so painful for me to listen to this - a person who is more famous than I am desperate for his musical heroes to validate his own opinions - that I can't listen to that podcast anymore - especially if he talks to musicians.
There's a fellow I met who told me he & his friends were working on a way to determine which music was "objectively" the best. Why would someone want to do that? My first guess would be that they want to be able to "prove" they were listening to the best music.
These are things I've said a million times before. There is simply no way to be objective about subjective opinion. Things from the past that we consider "great music" were saved by elites with whom the vast majority of us have nothing in common - there were doubtless things created that many people enjoyed but didn't have the power to copy, save, etc. Using something like popularity (& in Grammy-speak, profitability) to gauge the artistic value of something becomes a dubious proposition because you find yourself weighing what you like against things you won't. Ditto things loved by critics.
For fuck's sake, just love what you love. It's nice when people like what you like - as a person who plays things I like on the radio, it's gratifying to have someone tell me they like what I play. But when they say, as a couple of people have, "You have great taste in music," I hear that as, "You like the same kind of music I do."
One of the acquaintances I mentioned above was regularly infuriated by movie critics. He usually disagreed with them, & that was upsetting for him in itself, but what really bothered him is that more people read their opinions than heard his. The very idea that their wrong opinion was more widespread than his right one caused him a great deal of anxiety.
It only bothered him because he believed the things he liked were good, great, the best & the things he didn't like were bad, terrible, the worst. He was (& probably still is) so painfully insecure that any disagreement with him was a powerful threat. (As an aside, I've known so many people like this, & almost all of them also hated to be "judged." Because they imagined someone like themselves would be judging them?)
How happy I would be if people didn't use words like "best" & used words like "my favorite" instead. Or if we all had radios shows! Do you know how you can tell what musicians I don't like? I don't play them on my radio show!
For me, discussing things I don't like isn't any fun. Like I said, love what you love. & let other people love what they love. The only way someone else's opinion can affect yours is if you give it the power to. Otherwise, your opinion is the most important for you.
Oh no I can hear people disagreeing with me already!
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