No Accounting for Taste - Music - Forums : Best Ever Albums

Listmeister

Gender: Male
Location: Ohio

It would be helpful if I was clearer in defining my terms. First, it may have been a mistake to use the word "better." When I used it, I was talking about the way people speak about the music, not what it objectively was. "More enjoyed" might be a better term.

But from a personal perspective, "better" (now that the word is out there) is going to mean more enjoyable. You see phrases like "this album is under-rated" by which we mean that it's better than it's position in BEA would reflect. And from a population perspective, yes, "better" does mean what more people are enjoying.

yourself wrote:

Two almost identical songs could because of outside factors (marketing and press exposure, luck) achieve very different levels of success and popularity. Is one "objectively better" because of these outside factors?

The outside factors should be compensated for if they can. This is why I love this website, it is fairly free of those factors, and so you can get to what is truly the 'best' (by which I mean, most enjoyed by the most people). By contrast, the Billboard 200 is based on what people are buying, which is very different from what they are listening to. It's a pretty good guage of how popular an artist's last album was, because people who liked the last album are going to buy the next one. When Lady Gaga's next album comes out next November, it's going to go straight to number one even if it's complete crap. Why? Because so far she's made really enjoyable albums (that is, enjoyed by a lot of people).

yourself wrote:

A song goes very high on the charts in one country, but doesn't appear on them at all somewhere else...is it objectively better in one part of the world than it is in another?

An album is very acclaimed and popular at the moment, but over the years falls in bea's charts and critical reputation. Is it becoming objectively worse despite being the same album?

The majority of music ranked highly on bea is western popular music, does that make it objectively better than other kinds of music, from other places in the world?

Well, yes, to a certain extent. To take a recent example, Adam Lambert's "Never Close Our Eyes" was HUGE in England. Didn't even make the Hot 100 in the States. Why? Because it resonates with the British music listening public, and not with the American listening public. Therefore (again, ignoring external factors like marketing), it is better for the English than for Americans. Same for different time periods. Same for the Western World as a whole. I'm sure there's an equivalent website coming out of China (and if there isn't there should be) ranking the best Eastern World albums.

yourself wrote:

Popularity, acclaim, chart success...taken just on their own say nothing about the qualities of any given piece of music, they are outside factors, things that happen to a piece of music. When were looking for objectivity it should be something intrinsically measurable in the music itself.

I disagree that popularity says nothing at all about the quality of the music, especially when looked at from the long perspective. The older a piece of music is, the more those external factors get factored out and people can look at the music objectively. Beethoven's 5th is a high quality piece of music, and it's perennially popular.

I'm not saying popularity = quality, or even that chart success=popularity, but I will say that quality is a huge factor in what makes a piece popular, and in the long run, a bigger factor than marketing or luck (once it gets past a certain threshold of listeners.)

(Quality * Number of Listeners) + Marketing => Popularity => more listeners => more popularity until it reaches an equilibrium commensurate to its Quality. This formula sometimes works in reverse, such as when a song gets a huge amount of initial airplay and then never gets heard again. The popularity dwindles because the number of listeners dwindles until, again, it reaches equilibrium. Shawn Cassidy's Da Doo Ron Ron was a #1 single. Has anybody heard it since 1977?

(BTW, if you check my own Top 50 list, it does not reflect what is popular, best sellers, or critically acclaimed. Like everyone else's, it's a list of "what I like".)

yourself

Listmeister wrote:

It would be helpful if I was clearer in defining my terms. First, it may have been a mistake to use the word "better." When I used it, I was talking about the way people speak about the music, not what it objectively was. "More enjoyed" might be a better term.

But from a personal perspective, "better" (now that the word is out there) is going to mean more enjoyable. You see phrases like "this album is under-rated" by which we mean that it's better than it's position in BEA would reflect. And from a population perspective, yes, "better" does mean what more people are enjoying.

I disagree that popularity says nothing at all about the quality of the music, especially when looked at from the long perspective. The older a piece of music is, the more those external factors get factored out and people can look at the music objectively. Beethoven's 5th is a high quality piece of music, and it's perennially popular.

I'm not saying popularity = quality, or even that chart success=popularity, but I will say that quality is a huge factor in what makes a piece popular, and in the long run, a bigger factor than marketing or luck (once it gets past a certain threshold of listeners.)

(Quality * Number of Listeners) + Marketing => Popularity => more listeners => more popularity until it reaches an equilibrium commensurate to its Quality. This formula sometimes works in reverse, such as when a song gets a huge amount of initial airplay and then never gets heard again. The popularity dwindles because the number of listeners dwindles until, again, it reaches equilibrium. Shawn Cassidy's Da Doo Ron Ron was a #1 single. Has anybody heard it since 1977?

(BTW, if you check my own Top 50 list, it does not reflect what is popular, best sellers, or critically acclaimed. Like everyone else's, it's a list of "what I like".)

When I say popularity says nothing about a piece of music, I mean it says nothing about the chords, melody, themes ect.

Hopefully I am able to make myself clear with this:
When you say “quality is a huge factor in what makes something popular”, you are saying popularity is an effect of quality. That does not answer what quality is, which is what we are discussing. We can't decide if popularity and quality correlate until we know what quality actually is. Only once we know what creates quality, could we go about determining whether the popular albums display the characteristics of quality more than less popular albums. Otherwise its just circular reasoning “we can measure quality through popularity..what makes something popular though?....how much quality it has of course!". The way you define "better" as most "most enjoyed" is the same self proving sort of thing. Of course more popular abums are the most enjoyed, more people know them and enjoy them! Were just turning "quality" into this mysterious intangible thing instead of figuring out what it is.

And I just can't agree that anything "good" will get what it deserves. Is their perfect justice in anything else in the world? Why would there be in music? If I was to make the greatest most likable album ever, and never release it, or tell anyone about it, it would never be known or get credit. But the music itself has not changed. And that is what we are talking about, the music itself. Also, this website is not some perfect collective measurement, it attracts people with rock-based, indie and/or classic rock leaning tastes. Its a collection of mostly those views, with little in the way of metal-heads, or people who listen to mostly jazz or mostly classical or mostly world genres.

Also music does not reach an equilibrium in popularity, it is always in flux. Look at the wikipedia page for the composer Vivaldi. He was popular in his day, ignored for many many years, then rediscovered in the last century. I wrote this earlier in the thread: I’m not sure if this is related to my of my points, but people often say that time reveals what the truly good and deserving classic are. I think it would be more accurate to say time eliminates the competition so it is easier to call something classic without questioning it.

Shadowolf

Gender: Male
Location: San Francisco, CA

meccalecca wrote:

I hate that phrase too, but to compare music taste with politics is absurd. Politics revolve around facts and have very very high stakes. Music is art and has no need to exist in a black & white world

Some good, relevant points! But I wouldn't say that politics is truly black and white, even if it's made out to be (and arguably should?). I say as an agnostic, religious-political debate and "fact" can be gray (how 'bout that "Promised Land" between the Jews and Palestinians?)! Or abortion -- the core of the debate is quite subjectively philosophical: "Is the fetus a (living) human being?". Or the death penalty ... a moral question.

But you're right, politics is different from art! Still, that doesn't mean that art is so different a world.... after all, punk, hip-hop and the hippies were political. Many musicians sing songs of politics, and participate in it. And stupid as it might sound, people DO pick music almost entirely on political ideology too. Whether it be neo-Nazi's with their R.A.C movement.... or fans disowning Michelle Shocked after her anti-gay remarks.

Art movements as the Construvists and Social Realists were quite political, as were the Dada-ists. Diego Rivera believed "If it's not political, it's not art" (...and so thought his wife, Frida Kahlo, was painting silly child stuff). I think (I may be forgetful who actually thought this) it was the Die Bruckes who believed that artists had power to change the world, even more-so than politicians (Hitler would consider their work "Degenerate", which were burned or sold).
Still, you may be right to think some of it arrogantly egotist, and some artists like Duraid Lahham, has said, "Art is useless as a tool for political change", but I tend to consider the perspective of those I disagree with too. ;3

I think it's easy to see music and art as not so "involving" or high-stake as politics -- but if so, it wouldn't have centuries of history being censored or burned. Consider how art exists in North Korea. Or subtly in China, in which its mainstream music scene is mostly kitsch love songs (Rock is almost entirely underground, invented in China in the 80's against post-Cultural Revolution Communism. It is still suppressed for fear of influencing another Tienanmen, though they're more laxed today).
Art is communication, invites discussion, and has strong cultural influence in shaping how we think and dress. It represents our nations with grandeur statues and architecture. In song, we march and chant in patriotism, or revolution. Politicians both fear it and utilize it as propaganda.

And sorry, I've gotta disagree on giving a person more music-related books so he'd know more on music! They can be a legitimate gateway to "discovering" more music, like music blogs. Besides, if you picked up some books on a certain subject, it's fair to say you picked it out of interest to learn more, to develop taste, or to expand that taste - why put hours into that book of such specific a topic, after all, out of a billion other books of a billion other subject matter??
However, how I DO quite agree with you in how it doesn't necessarily mean anything - is in how that person uses that source material to "educate" himself to discover many more things. Reading it, and not "following through" what you learn, doesn't mean for much! =3
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Necharsian
Best Ever User

Gender: Male

Listmeister wrote:

Taste is mostly subjective, but it can be quantified objectively. That's what the compiled charts on this site are about.

Objective =/= Aggregate.

meccalecca
Voice of Reason

Gender: Male
Location: The Land of Enchantment

Shadowolf wrote:

And sorry, I've gotta disagree on giving a person more music-related books so he'd know more on music! They can be a legitimate gateway to "discovering" more music, like music blogs. Besides, if you picked up some books on a certain subject, it's fair to say you picked it out of interest to learn more, to develop taste, or to expand that taste - why put hours into that book of such specific a topic, after all, out of a billion other books of a billion other subject matter??
However, how I DO quite agree with you in how it doesn't necessarily mean anything - is in how that person uses that source material to "educate" himself to discover many more things. Reading it, and not "following through" what you learn, doesn't mean for much! =3

I think we only disagree in language. I think someone can have developed or educated taste, but that does not mean that taste is anything more than subjective. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. We all hear, feel, see things differently. That's what makes us who we are. Imagine how horribly boring this world would be if we all just decided that The Residents' Duck Stab is unquestionably the greatest album ever made. Dissimilar tastes allow a wide variety of artists to prosper.
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Shadowolf

Gender: Male
Location: San Francisco, CA

meccalecca wrote:

I think we only disagree in language. I think someone can have developed or educated taste, but that does not mean that taste is anything more than subjective. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. We all hear, feel, see things differently. That's what makes us who we are. Imagine how horribly boring this world would be if we all just decided that The Residents' Duck Stab is unquestionably the greatest album ever made. Dissimilar tastes allow a wide variety of artists to prosper.

Yes, you're quite right, very much agree. I think variety is the spice of life, and that applies to people too. They say that "where everyone thinks alike, no one things very much at all." =3
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mickilennial
The Most Trusted Name in News

Gender: Female
Age: 35
Location: Detroit

Pushing this to the top of the deck since perspectives three years later might find the conversation interesting or prove a viable discussion. But to echo myself here, I still very much believe that this argument can be simply summarized as "A valid opinion is an educated opinion" ideology.

Last edited by mickilennial on 12/16/2016 19:09; edited 1 time in total

SquishypuffDave

Gender: Male
Age: 33

I don't have a lot of faith in any person's ability to know why they like or dislike any particular piece of art. Personally speaking, if I were to try to put together a list of which musical qualities I most prefer, it would completely contradict itself. There would be as many exceptions as there would be correlations. To view someone's appreciation or non-appreciation of a piece of music as valid or invalid is still completely nonsensical to me. It's like calling a waterfall invalid, or a panda's sneeze invalid.

When I listen to music, if I'm thinking about how it was constructed or what the artist's intentions were, that's a sign that the music isn't working. I'd much prefer to be in an ascended state of alert non-thought. Not that I'm disinterested in the technical process, but that's very much separate to my appreciation of the music itself.

Quote:

When you walk into an art gallery for the first time in your life, you may see some new things. You will develop an opinion - "I don't like it". You have little knowledge of art or art history though, so you can't say why. Either two things will happen:
1) You'll walk out, continue thinking "I don't like it", not knowing why. But hey, you got a little "taste" (no pun intended) of it. Just enough to think about it in the future, maybe. Or never.
2) You'll want to VALIDATE your opinion, in which you must educate yourself on a little art history... just enough for referential comparison, and to understand why that piece is what it is -- or in your opinion, tries to be what it is, but fails. Through objective facts, you create a subjective opinion... and not just any opinion -- a valid one. Which shows your taste or distaste.

The desire to validate your pre-existing opinion on a piece of art would suggest you have no interest in finding new things to appreciate about it, so already we're down the track of rationalization rather than self-discovery. This scenario also reeks of false dichotomy. In fact, I don't even see a clear relationship between the two listed outcomes. You could go to the museum and think "I don't like this and I don't know why, but I am also interested to learn more about the historical context of the piece", or you could respond with "I don't like this and I'm curious to know why, so I will examine my own psychology in order to get to the root of this reaction, rather than studying the context of the artwork". This has always been a more fruitful method for me, to ask myself "How would you describe your negative response? Is it unsettling, or does it provoke moral outrage? Does it remind you of something about yourself you dislike?"

My own approach to experiencing new art (if it's not an effortless event) is to look for the most effective way to enjoy it. Sometimes marveling at the technical accomplishment is the greatest appeal. Sometimes I'll find greater enjoyment viewing a work as a representation of its creator, especially when it reveals some of the artist's flaws. The benefit of academic study and increased exposure to different works is that my set of interpretive tools is larger and I therefore have more ways in which I can appreciate more art. This also tends to be why I read reviews, because often they reveal new ways to appreciate the work that I never would have come up with on my own. In some cases, learning more about something can make me enjoy it less, but these cases are certainly in the minority. If they weren't, then I'd probably lose interest in critical analysis.

Applerill
Autistic Princess <3

Gender: Female
Age: 30
Location: Chicago

Hmm, I think my taste in music has indeed changed a lot, but the conclusion I had in theory years ago has been further proven to me by research: All music is beautiful in its own way; we just need to find out what makes it special.. Of course, just as I'm not sexually attracted to every person I meet, I might not get euphoria from every album I listen to, and that's okay. That's why my music ratings are only for my personal responses. (After all, everyone who knows me knows that my sexual taste differs greatly from the norm).

It also means that each of those pieces of music has completely different contexts for enjoyment. One of my favorite ways of proving that objectivity in music is impossible is that, from a scientific standpoint, things can only be objectively measured if using the same standard, and since the whole definition of art is to have different standards, then that is completely impossible.

Romanelli
Bone Swah

Gender: Male
Location: Broomfield, Colorado

Moderator

Applerill wrote:

Hmm, I think my taste in music has indeed changed a lot, but the conclusion I had in theory years ago has been further proven to me by research: All music is beautiful in its own way; we just need to find out what makes it special.. Of course, just as I'm not sexually attracted to every person I meet, I might not get euphoria from every album I listen to, and that's okay. That's why my music ratings are only for my personal responses. (After all, everyone who knows me knows that my sexual taste differs greatly from the norm).

It also means that each of those pieces of music has completely different contexts for enjoyment. One of my favorite ways of proving that objectivity in music is impossible is that, from a scientific standpoint, things can only be objectively measured if using the same standard, and since the whole definition of art is to have different standards, then that is completely impossible.

For someone who says that the bolded statement above is how you feel, you sure do trash a lot of music...
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