Wednesday 27 June 2012

Not equal, just equally important

If you read my first post (and who would start on the third one?) then you might recall I said I felt I had a reason to start a blog. Obviously it's so I can explain my position on the importance of treating all music equally. As I've said, all music has value to someone and I think that should be respected.

Does that mean all music is equal? Not necessarily. It's possible for things to be equally important without being equal. Any parent with more than one child will tell you they love their children equally (okay, any decent parent will), but that doesn't mean the kids are all the same. One might excel at sports while one more musical in nature. But if the coach of the athletic child tells the parent their other child is worthless because they're not into sports, what do you think will happen? The parent will be pretty annoyed with the coach (well, a decent parent will anyway).

Let's talk about movies for a minute. Are you a fan of comedies or dramas? Science fiction or love stories? If you are sitting around with a group of friends and someone says their favourite (Canadian spelling, remember?) movie is <insert name of movie you hate here>, you will probably tell them you hate that movie. You may tell them about a movie you like more, and explain what's so great about it. It may turn out that they liked your favourite movie as well, or you two might find some other flick you both like. I'm pretty sure your opinion of that person is not tied to the fact that they liked a movie you hated.

If we translate those two scenarios above into music, the outcome can be quite different. You say you like a certain song, and suddenly another person in the room passes a value judgement on both the song, and also on you. "That song sucks! How can you like that? Ugh!". The words may not come out exactly like that, but someone will likely be thinking along those lines. Maybe you're the one who has done that to someone else. Obviously nothing is so black-and-white as these situations, but I'm trying to say that it seems okay to almost everybody to criticize a piece of music without thinking about how that might bother the fans of the song.

That's not to say that I like all music equally myself. I'm no different from anyone with regards to having an opinion about certain songs or artists. The big difference is that I don't believe it's okay for us to judge a song, and I see it happen all the time. That's the reason I've avoided naming any particular songs (or movies in today's examples). I'm trying to avoid your immediate reaction to a title because you might love the thing while somebody else reading this blog might hate it.

In the coming weeks, this blog will be less and less about making my main point (I think I've established it pretty well with these first three), and will move into talking about music in many ways. I will get more specific and mention particular song titles, and particular artists. I'll encourage you to listen to some of my favourite songs, and explain why I think it's worth your time to do so. You might even suggest a song to me in the comments. Hopefully the other readers will resist criticizing, give it a listen, and maybe find more great music to put on their iPods. (Well, the decent ones will anyway).

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