Critics in general have terrible reputation. In my opinion (which by the way is not a phrase most critics use) probably half of them desire no more than to turn a witty phrase or deliver a withering observation. Critics in general seem to me (another little qualification that critics hardly ever add) a joyless bunch whose self-satisfaction masks some issues they have tried to cover up with positioning themselves as arbiters of taste. Some critics are in fact clever. Some are insightful. But I have found most of them to be no better or worse than your friend who doesn't like something because "it sucks."
It took me some time to realize that there's no objective best or worst when it comes to matters of opinion. I had a friend - who really, really wished he could have been a critic that people would listen to - who got mad at certain critics because he didn't feel the way they did but also they were in newspapers so more people heard their opinion instead of his. People are strangely threatened by someone not liking the things they hold dear. The cure for that is to not think of the things you like as "the best" but to understand that there are many reasons for people to like things & it's fine if they don't like what you like. Honestly, more people than not don't like much of the music I like, & it affects me not at all. I would assume the fact that I mostly don't like what they like has never troubled them, either.
One of the things I often say - & I am sorry because I have discussed this many times before, most recently on the blog here - is that the only thing that can be said about an opinion is how informed it is. If I ask you about an artist & you tell me, "That guy sucks" but I ask another person & they know much more about the artist, I am probably going to take that person's opinion more seriously. Both opinions are equally valid - you like what you like - but an informed opinion has always been more helpful to me than an uninformed one. I myself have been surprised when people have taken an uninformed opinion by me as seriously as they have. One good friend of mine I discovered never listened to Talking Heads' last album because I told him I didn't like it much. I wish I had said "But I fucking love the song Blind!" Ooops.
The role of critics in my life - the ones I like to read - has not been to either justify my opinion or to influence my opinion but to give me context for their opinion. We may end up disagreeing - I enjoy this one fellow online who does videos about Star Trek but we disagree about a lot - it also helps that he's funny - but I feel more confident learning about someone's opinion if they can tell me more about that opinion.
Which is a long-winded way of saying I don't do year-end best-of lists on Self Help Radio, just spend a couple of hours playing some of the music I listened to a lot this year. I call them my favorites & that seems to me to be to be the fairest way to describe that - after all, if there truly were an objective "best of," then by definition wouldn't everyone's list be the same?
Think on that. More tomorrow.
It took me some time to realize that there's no objective best or worst when it comes to matters of opinion. I had a friend - who really, really wished he could have been a critic that people would listen to - who got mad at certain critics because he didn't feel the way they did but also they were in newspapers so more people heard their opinion instead of his. People are strangely threatened by someone not liking the things they hold dear. The cure for that is to not think of the things you like as "the best" but to understand that there are many reasons for people to like things & it's fine if they don't like what you like. Honestly, more people than not don't like much of the music I like, & it affects me not at all. I would assume the fact that I mostly don't like what they like has never troubled them, either.
One of the things I often say - & I am sorry because I have discussed this many times before, most recently on the blog here - is that the only thing that can be said about an opinion is how informed it is. If I ask you about an artist & you tell me, "That guy sucks" but I ask another person & they know much more about the artist, I am probably going to take that person's opinion more seriously. Both opinions are equally valid - you like what you like - but an informed opinion has always been more helpful to me than an uninformed one. I myself have been surprised when people have taken an uninformed opinion by me as seriously as they have. One good friend of mine I discovered never listened to Talking Heads' last album because I told him I didn't like it much. I wish I had said "But I fucking love the song Blind!" Ooops.
The role of critics in my life - the ones I like to read - has not been to either justify my opinion or to influence my opinion but to give me context for their opinion. We may end up disagreeing - I enjoy this one fellow online who does videos about Star Trek but we disagree about a lot - it also helps that he's funny - but I feel more confident learning about someone's opinion if they can tell me more about that opinion.
Which is a long-winded way of saying I don't do year-end best-of lists on Self Help Radio, just spend a couple of hours playing some of the music I listened to a lot this year. I call them my favorites & that seems to me to be to be the fairest way to describe that - after all, if there truly were an objective "best of," then by definition wouldn't everyone's list be the same?
Think on that. More tomorrow.
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