15 Jul | 30 days of music / art / music / personal | 2 comments

Some people just have a je ne sais quoi about them, something that makes it clear they enjoy perfect little Swedish pop rock songs. Apparently, I don’t have that something.

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02 Jul | 30 days of music / art / music / personal | 2 comments

It seems that I, perversely, don’t have a favorite song.

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29 Jan | A is for Art / art / music | 7 comments

Popular music has evolved across the centuries of its existence from what is now known as “classical” (with the lowercase “c”) to its current “it’s not just awful… it’s god-awful” state. Nevertheless, “pop” music as it stands came into being at the end of the nineteenth century. The songwriters of Tin Pan Alley dominated the pop landscape while simultaneously inspiring songwriters around the world to expand the scope of pop songcraft for decades, until the radio overtook live performances of standards as the key method of dissemination of pop music.

With this change, pop took its next major step. The word “pop” came to mean (and is used here in reference to) every genre of music that received radio airplay and wasn’t classical. This change also meant that the artist became as important (or more so) than the song. Elvis Presley embodied this ideal, introducing rock and roll music to the average American in the 1950s and bringing the sexuality of black performers from that time to the (openly or otherwise) racist population. In the late ’50s, Elvis engendered so much controversy that he was notoriously filmed only from the waist up during an appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, so as not to advance the “moral corruption of America’s youth”.

Elvis was undeniably the first rock star, and his success as an artist is rivaled by only one other band in the history of modern pop. And really, if you don’t know which band it was, you probably ought not be reading this.

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24 Jun | art / music / personal | 4 comments

I was talking with my friend Tony last night about music for help on a project I’m working on. During the course of the conversation, his list of five greatest records ever came up. His five certainly all belong on the list, yet maybe two would slot into my top five.

This led me to thinking today about the concept of greatness in art. Anyone who thinks about such things seriously will have a list of their own five greatest albums. Many, if not most, will have a list comprised of worthy choices. And you’ll have dozens, maybe hundreds, of different albums on that list. What does that mean?

I think I’ve figured it out.

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