Artistic Integrity and Commercial Success | Part 1

Views From One Year Out

In February of 2015 Canadian rapper Drake released a surprise mixtape titled If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late. Subject to critical acclaim, label-related conspiracy theories, and surprisingly little memery IYRTITL was a bold, beautiful, and fresh sound for Drake at the time. Second only to Queen B, If You’re Reading This was easily the second biggest surprise album of all time. The tape’s unceremonious drop was a shock to hip-hop heads the world over, made even more impactful because it represented a tonal shift for Drake that had shockingly high crossover potential. The album was followed by a high-profile beef that summer as well as a collaboration mixtape with codeine crazy Future in the early fall. It was a banner year for Drake, and (as I’ve discussed previously) IYRTITL served as one of the catalysts for my hip-hop fandom.

In 2016 Drake segued all of this attention, acclaim, and even his surprise one-off viral hit into his next release Views From the 6. Then an album years in the making, Views was supported by a massive marketing budget, a slew of singles, and months of build up on Drake’s own Apple Music station OVO Sound Radio. All signs were pointing towards a great album. How could he fail after a year like 2015??

And Views didn’t fail. At least not fully.

Initial reception to Views (both fan and professional) was middling, to say the least. With all this buildup fresh in our minds, it was hard not to go into the album with certain expectations. After a surprising, fresh, and rap-leaning album like If You’re Reading This, you’d expect some decent bars. After a high-profile rap beef (that you won) you’d expect some flexing and teeth showing. After collaborating with another artist for ten tracks, you’d expect some different sounds to enter your musical lexicon. None of this happened. Some of it did, but the little that did was a half-assed version of what we expected. Views ended up being a long, masturbatory rehash of things Drake had already done better. Perhaps worst of all, it was safe. He didn’t experiment, he didn’t grow, he didn’t take any risks whatsoever.  

Months after release after all the dust has settled, Views is just an okay album. It’s serviceable. It’s just serviceable. From a sonic perspective, it feels as if 2015 just didn’t happen. It was like he fully embraced a genre, had all these new experiences, and then just threw it all away to pick up where he left off two years before. It was disappointing, but like a battered wife, I’ve come to enjoy Views for what it is. I still think it’s a bland, boring, overly long piece of mediocrity, but at the end of the day, it’s just okay.

The only problem is that the album performed phenomenally.

It’s gone on to sell one million copies, accumulate 1 billion streams, and have the most successful Spotify song of all time. So he did something right… right?

Within weeks of the album’s release, fans began to worry that Drake would see the numbers attached to Views and then go on to think “oh, okay, so this is what fans want.” Rapper, oldhead, and noted curmudgeon Joe Budden released a series of diss tracks directed at Drake with the sole purpose of “inspiring” him to do great work again. Fans and peers alike wanted to send the message that despite all the accolades and commercial success, Views was not a successful album. It was a plea to Drake. Please don’t settle. We’ve seen you do better. Don’t mistake numbers for success.

Birds and Vultures

Fast forward to 2017 and the reason that I dug this draft out of my cobweb-laden Google Drive folder. I love Travis Scott, but lately, he feels like he’s been on a similar trajectory to Drake. His 2015 album Rodeo is one of the reasons I “stuck around” to see what else the genre of rap had to offer. It’s one of my favorite albums of 2015, and I firmly believe that it’s a “trap masterpiece” that will be viewed as a turning point for the genre years from now. It’s lush, well-produced, and brimming with new sounds and ideas, unlike anything I’d ever heard in hip-hop or music.

I loved Rodeo and Travis Scott’s aesthetic so much that I spent the summer of 2016 revisiting his previous release Days Before Rodeo and listened to it so much that it currently sits at my seventh most listened to album of all time on last.fm. I feel the need say this to preface what I’m about to say. I love Trav, but lately, his output has been piss-poor.

In September of 2016 (after almost a year of delays and broken promises) Travis Scott released his highly-anticipated follow-up to Rodeo titledBirds in the Trap Sing McKnight. Birds faced a similar fate to Views in that it followed an awesome predecessor and was accompanied by months of hype and built-up expectations, yet failed to deliver across the board. Also similarly to Views, Birds in the Trap was inexplicably commercially successful. Racking up over 50 million streams in its first week, Birds became Travis’ first number one album, and (again) fans were worried that the artist may be receiving the wrong message.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about this “successful paranoia” exhibited by fans (myself included) and whether or not it’s warranted. It’s a very hipster-esque notion of discovering an artist and viewing their older work as superior, but it’s also about wanting to dictate (or at least guide) an artist and their work. It’s not wanting them to become too pop-influenced, or commercial sounding. It’s wanting them to retain some level of edge and originality in the face of an “easy” way out.

At the end of the day, someone is listening to these songs. It may be kids, and it may be fans, but either way, some message is being sent. At the same time, you have to respect these individuals as artists who will create whatever they feel the need to express. If an artist creates something solely based off of financial success, then they’re not much of an artist, are they? If I put out a song that makes me a million dollars in a week and then I sat down to write a similar song with the sole purpose of recreating that success… then I’m not really an artist, am I? I’d just be chasing that commercial high. I’d be creating art in the process sure, but it wouldn’t be coming from an artistic place.

To make an extreme pivot: for all I know, “The Twist” may have come from a deeply human place, but “Let’s Twist Again” sure as hell didn’t. That’s commercialism informing art. That’s an artist (literally) saying let’s do that again like we did last year.

Not that Drake is 2016’s Chubby Checker (or is he?), but I think that comparison is at least an interesting one to make. The internet shouldn’t dictate art or artists. Whether it’s through sales numbers, or through holier-than-thou commenters who think they know what direction an artist should go in. It’s easy to say “follow your heart” from the sidelines because there are millions of individuals whose livelihoods depend on the sale and perpetuation of music, but I firmly believe that the artist should be free to create. Your album should be an expression of what you feel. It shouldn’t be based on sales, your peers, or even your fans. Music is a sacred form of communication, and we’re not meant to understand all of it. If you’re worried about Drake creating an album similar to Views based solely off of him seeing that success and trying to recreate it, then Drake isn’t worth listening to anyway.

Read Part 2 Here

Read Part 3 Here

Read Part 4 Here

The Crossroads Between Objectivity and Nostalgia

Something I’ve spent the majority of my “adult” life grappling with is the intersection between art and nostalgia. It’s a concept that I’ve only recently come to recognize but has essentially acted as the thesis for this entire blog without me even knowing it. As a result, this post feels like what the past year’s worth of writing on here has been building towards.

Reflecting on my most recent metalcore-infested post I began to think “why do I love these albums so much?” Even within that blog where I’m gushing over these albums, I repeatedly felt the need to clarify that I don’t think they’re great feats of art. Is that because I’m embarrassed of liking them? Probably… But there’s more to it than that.

In that same post, I also talked about my positive (or not-so-positive) memories associated with each album, and I even gave a wine-like pairing of what I was doing while listening to each album. Earlier this week Of Mice & Men surprise released a new song called “Back To Me” with their new line-up sans-Carlile. It’s always a bummer to see someone leave a band (especially due to health-related issues) but it’s also a bummer to hear a band without the member that you held most dear. Listening to the new song led me down a Tidal-binge on the rest of the band’s greatest hits. Over their eight years as a band OM&M have undergone a significant shift in sound, transitioning from breakdown-heavy metalcore, then nu-metal, and more recently full-on buttrock. It’s not a transition I love, but God knows I respect their freedom to chase that artistic dragon. When I pressed play on the band’s 2011 standout O.G. Loko I realized something: when all’s said and done, this track (from an album I’ve barely listened to) didn’t sound all that different from the band’s 2010 album that I hold so dear. Someone coming to the band from an outside perspective would probably find the two indistinguishable.

A brief history of Of Mice & Men

I’ll be the first to admit metalcore is a genre that breeds repetition and cookie-cutter behavior. Fans know what they want, and most bands are happy to give it to them. That’s another one of the reasons I respect OM&M’s shift toward nu-metal and away from their origins: it’s a risk. At the end of the day, there’s not that much of a different between the band’s first album and the second. The difference for me was that I listened to the first ravenously during an awesome time in my life, and only listened to the second a few times at most. There’s probably someone a year my junior who feels the exact same way about the band’s second album compared to their third. And so on and so forth.

To get away from metalcore (and back to myself) I’ve spent the last several months ranking and re-ranking my favorite albums of all time. Some of the categories like classic rock were easy. Not only because it’s a genre I’ve been listening to my entire life, but those albums and songs have saturated our culture for decades. There’s some sort of rough consensus in the collective unconscious that The Beatles are great… and you know what? I agree. Because of this weird conflux of pop culture, history, and personal experiences, I can easily say that Abbey Road is not only my favorite Beatles album, it’s also an incredible piece of art that I feel no shame (or risk) in elevating on a high pedestal.

Then I look at hip-hop. The genre’s been around since long before I was born, but it was a genre I only started to personally engage with a few years ago. As a result, most of my favorite hip-hop albums are from that exact time frame. I know they’re not all “incredible” (at least not as incredible as Abbey Road) but part of that is recognizing my own inexperience with the genre. I know, I know, I know there’s older hip-hop I need to listen to that are essentially as “classic” as Abbey Road, but it takes time and effort to become fluent in a genre. I have barely listened to Jay-Z, UGK, Madvillain, Biggie, 2 Pac, and a whole host of other artists that I know are great. It’s like that guy who hasn’t watched Star Wars. He knows it’s a good movie, but you incredulously asking “Seriously? You haven’t watched STAR WARS?” just discourages him. 

I recently watched Casablanca for the first time a week ago (shout out to Mother’s Day). That’s a movie that’s frequently held up with Citizen Kane and Godfather as “literally the best movie of all time.” For years I’ve known that it’s great. It’s been on my “to watch” list… and you know what? It was pretty good. What can I add to the conversation about Casablanca that hasn’t been said before besides ‘yep, everyone was right, it is really good.’ There are other movies like Fight Club and From Dusk Till Dawn that I recognize aren’t peaks of cinematic triumph or artistic feats like Casablanca is, but you know what? I like them more. I like them more because I’ve seen them more, I’ve had more time to digest them, and I have more positive memories tied to them. That doesn’t mean they’re better than Casablanca, but I like them far more.

Back to music. 

In creating that list of my favorite albums I’ve fudged a lot of genres, added categories, and made incredibly arbitrary distinctions, all because I wanted to fit more albums on there. I don’t put all those genres or albums on the same level. My favorite metalcore album does not stack up to my favorite classic rock album, that’s comparing apples to oranges. Or apples to pool cues.

A separate conversation within this is exactly how long an album should take to be placed among your “favorites.” And even more: what about an album that’s new to you, but “classic” within its own field?

Up until this year… Hell, up until a couple months ago, I’d never listened to The Strokes debut album Is This It. Until 2017 the only three Strokes songs I’d heard were “Reptilia” (shoutout Rock Band 1), “New York City Cops” (shoutout iTunes DJ, you will be missed), and “When It Started” (shoutout Spider-Man 1 soundtrack). Ironic since “New York City Cops” and “When It Started” were swapped on the US version of Is This It due to 9/11… but I’m getting wildly off-topic here.

Pictured: A bastion of high art

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The point is that it took me seventeen fucking years to listen to one of the greatest “indie” records of my lifetime… But is it fair for me to claim that? Sure I like Is This It a lot, but I’ve only listened to it about 10 times according to last.fm. So is consensus swaying my perception? Is two-decade-old critical acclaim forcing me to enjoy an album more than I really do? Is personal shame making me think higher of the record than I should be? Maybe, but I don’t think so. Is This It is great, no matter how you cut it. Removed of nostalgia, I enjoyed it and continue to play it every couple days.

Meanwhile, another album that didn’t quite make the cut into my favorites list was 2016’s Psychopomp by Japanese Breakfast. It’s an album that I adore, but (again) I’ve only had a handful of months to really sit with the album and let it marinate. As much as I wanted to say ‘this is one of my favorite indie albums’ I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it. This is an album I’ve listened to more than the Strokes, yet it didn’t carry the acclaim of “definitive album of the 2000’s” and thus I didn’t feel comfortable ranking it up against the classics. Same with Car Seat Headrest’s Teens of Denial. I love the album, but I don’t feel comfortable enough with my personal feelings toward it, nor its place in history to confidently place it amongst my favorites of all time.

I’ll admit I’m overthinking all this. All these albums and movies are great, and at the end of the day, nobody really gives a shit about my “list” or ranking of these albums. Yet this is a concept I’ve been struggling with lately on an artistic level. How can you stack an album that you’ve been listening to for a decade up against anything else? How can a movie that been heralded as the greatest of all time (for 75 fucking years) really compare to anything that I’ve seen a dozen times? How do you even begin to compare the two? 

To bring this full-circle (and give a total cop-out answer) I think the answer is a case of “beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.” Those two OM&M albums are great. I think they’re an acquired taste for sure, but an outsider to the genre would probably hear two songs next to each other and probably think ‘these are different songs?’ 

I think all these qualifiers are sliders. Personal history. Critical acclaim. History. Context. Time. are inextricable from art. I guess I’d argue the art can still be judged on its own in a vacuum, but that’s not how anyone judges it… ever. We hear, see, and experience things on our own terms.

I guess if anything I’m arguing that personal history (nostalgia) is one of the most powerful influencers when it comes to my interpretation and experience of art. I use music like a time-traveling drug. You know that feeling when the holidays hit and you hear “Silent Night” for the first time? I have a calendar year’s worth of songs like that. I have albums that bring me back to distinct times, years, and moments in my life. I love that art can do that. I love that this coming August I can put on Frank Ocean’s Blonde and it will transport me directly back to Summer 2016. That kind of personal connection to music is something that can (sadly) never be duplicated. The beautiful part is that we all have our own narratives like that. We all have a list of albums… or movies…. or food… or podcasts… or whatever that evoke something within us. I’m just far more obsessive about documenting my own. 

My own history. My own context. Some far-off part of my own mind is the reason that I don’t like one Of Mice & Men album as much as it’s nearly-identical predecessor. Unfortunately, that conflux is something that can never be fully translated or explained no matter how hard we try. That unique perspective is the one thing we share, even if nothing’s shared. And that’s what we bring to art. That little piece of us that adds onto to something that’s already an inherently human and beautiful and pure creation. It’s what makes art beautiful. It’s what makes the world beautiful.

Taylor Swift, Musical Expectations, and Pre-workout Traditions

I’m a fucking weirdo. This blog (for better or worse) is a place for me to dissect my taste and the bizarre associations that my mind has created over 23 years. This particular post covers a quirk so weird that I can just say it straight-faced and it will be hilarious: I listen to Taylor Swift before I hit the gym. Yup.

As previously discussed, I am a creature of habit, and now Taylor Swift is as seasonal as pumpkin pie. What initially started as a morbidly ironic interest slowly morphed into genuine love which has now mutated into a nostalgic tradition that I’m as embarrassed by as I am perplexed. A second recurring theme I’m discovering through writing here is me thinking that I’m too cool or hardcore for whatever is currently popular. I first heard of Taylor Swift in 2009 as “Love Story” was capturing the hearts and minds of teenage girls and emotionally-stunned women across the nation. I dismissed the song as pop trash, shook my head and went back to whatever inaccessible metal I was listening to at the time.

Aside from my unwavering dismissal of all pop music during this period, I also disliked the fact that this particular song lived in such a gray area between pop and country. It was a milquetoast bastardization of two genres that I actively hated. Why I wasted so much mental energy on this type of negativity is beyond me, but I’ll retroactively chalk it up to aimless teenage frustration. What I didn’t know in 2012 was that Taylor Swift’s Red represented her first direct movement towards pure pop music and away from her country(ish) roots.

I, like the rest of the general populace, was first exposed to Swift’s “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” in the fall of 2012 as the song rapidly reached saturation point. I first heard the track through the hilarious Who Charted Podcast in which two comedians discuss the most popular music and movies of the past week. As the hosts ramped up to throw to the song my skin started to crawl. I knew what was coming, and I knew I wasn’t going to like it. I braced myself for the worst… then the song started. I loved it. I went in with my cochlear-guard up and ended up being disarmed by the song almost immediately.

At the end of the day, Taylor Swift is just pop music. Her job is to make something catchy that’s inoffensive and immediately appealing. So why did I like this when I was so against her music before? I think it all came down to expectations. Time and time again I’ve been disappointed by albums that I’ve mentally hyped up for months. I’ve also ended up absolutely adoring releases that I’ve gone into expecting way less after seeing negative reactions online. It just goes to show how much preconceived ideas, negativity, and the Internet in general can infect art. On one hand, it’s hard to not have expectations about something you’re looking forward to, but on the other hand, if your bar is too low or too high you risk being way off base and coming out disappointed.

At any rate, I went into this Taylor Swift song expecting a shiny plate of pop dog shit but ended up becoming absolutely hooked. The crisp opening note made me perk up. The half-reversed guitar riff made me listen even harder. Then Swift entered delivering a saccharine (but biting) line in a half-sung valley girl voice. Behind all this, a steady drum beat was carrying the song forward with an unstoppable momentum. A bouncy bass enters just before Swift sings the pre-chorus, and then the beat explodes as the song’s soaring chorus begins. After the second sarcasm-laden verse about her indie music elitist ex-boyfriend, the second chorus starts, and everything comes together instrumentally as Swift belts the title of the song out at the top of her lungs. By the third chorus, a subtle banjo enters the mix and Swift’s double tracked vocals begin interacting with each other while still echoing the same sentiment. “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” is a near-perfect shining example of the euphoric highs that pop music can achieve. Beyond that, it’s also a middle finger pointed directly at shitty exes, hopeless relationships, and pointless fights. It’s cathartic.

Later on in the same year, Swift released “I Knew You Were Trouble” as a follow-up single, and (it’s embarrassing to say, but) that song completely dismantled any other remaining reservations I had about Swift and pop music in general. It’s a very “2012 song” in that it’s loosely dubstep influenced with a wavy electronic sound and a beat drop near the end of the chorus. But this is the song that made me realize pop didn’t have to be (and couldn’t be) placed in the box that I’d previously created in my head. I’ve already discussed my love for 2006 pop music, but Taylor Swift (combined with the frank pop music discussion on Who Charted) gave me a newfound appreciation for the genre. Up until this point, pop music had never been something I’d actively searched out, but Swift single-handedly changed that.

I’m not quite sure how it first started, but one day I just happened to be listening to “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” on the way to the gym and discovered that I had subconsciously memorized every word. Whoops. The only time I felt comfortable flexing this embarrassingly extensive knowledge was in the privacy of my car. I could sing. I could sing as loud as I wanted and let muscle memory carry me and my car towards the gym. Immediately after, I followed that song up with Weezer’s “El Scorcho” presumably to check that my previous musical taste remained intact.

From there I simply reinforced my own tradition. I listened to “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” chased with “El Scorcho” for weeks upon weeks. Aside from knowing all the words to both songs, something about the (not-so-subtle) middle finger Swift was pointing towards her ex in that song drove me. The song was bouncy and light enough to pump me up, but still bitter and resentful enough to motivate me.

I’d start to interchange “Back Together” with “Trouble” after a few months, but I ended up burning myself out on both songs sometime around the beginning of 2013. I moved onto other songs because I realized it was actually helpful to make a song or two my pre-gym soundtrack since it got me into an irreversible mindset that could only be satiated by hours of cardio.

But from that point on I paid attention to Swift. Her fifth album and full-pop crossover 1989, her collaboration with Kendrick Lamar, Ryan Adam’s unironic cover of 1989, and Father John Misty’s (wholly ironic) Lou Reed covers all made their way onto a dark (but happy) pop corner of my phone. Swift has since gone on to reveal herself as the pop-music equivalent of the popular girl who acts nice in person then talks shit behind your back. This recent feud with Kanye West and camp Kardashian combined with her breadcrumb trail of exes and her feuds with other pop artists all seem to confirm the hypothesis that Swift is a snake and a liar who is likely playing the “America’s Sweetheart” card for album sales… but sometimes you have to separate an artist from their art.

I’m a fan of Swift because she’s made some incredibly catchy and well-produced pop songs. When you say “pop music” in 2016, it’s likely that 9/10 people would say “Taylor Swift” and I think that is motherfucking impressive. The two songs that sparked this, (like many others) are irrevocably tied to the fall/winter season and now serve as massive heaps of nostalgia fuel for me. I’ll still bust out that old pre-workout playlist to get me pumped up every fall, and Swift has become another in a long list of fucking weird bizarre traditions I’ve created for myself that make zero sense on their own. Whether a thirteen-year-old boy obsessively watching VH1, or a 20-something singing Taylor Swift to his steering wheel on the way to the gym, I’m a fucking weirdo. But hey, Taylor Swift: thanks for all the burned calories.

Art and the Freedom to be Weird

I’m pretty lenient when it comes to art. I’ve always hated the debate over art “is” because I truly believe there’s beauty in everything, and trying to constitute what is and isn’t art just leads to shitty semantic debates. Even some low-effort installation created in irony to make you question “is this art?” still has a point to it. Art is made by people that need to get something out of themselves. Sometimes it’s music, sometimes it’s a 20-foot sculpture. It’s not always pretty, but it’s a way for us to speak a different language and express the inexpressible.

Aside from music, writing, and the occasional video game, my free time is mostly spent mindlessly scrolling through reddit. A few weeks ago I stumbled across a link to an AV Club article that brought back a flood of nostalgic emotions. The article in question breaks down this specific kernel of nostalgia far better than I ever could, and as much as I’d love to talk about this book, I wouldn’t be able to add much on to what’s already written here. This article stirred something in me that made me question my taste in regards to art. Not music, not movies, not the written word, but Art with a capital ‘A’

I don’t often talk about visual art on here because I feel like I don’t have the vocabulary for it. I know what I like, but I never really questioned why I like it. When I say that I’m “lenient” in regards to art I mean that I’m not picky, and that’s another reason why I don’t talk about art; I kinda like it all. I don’t have a very discerning taste because I feel like I can (almost) always find the beauty in art. What I’ve come to realize is that while I enjoy all art passively, what I actively enjoy is fucked up.

The reason this article struck a chord with me is because it connected some dots in my mind and brought back a flood of memories that helped me remember a string of bizarre things I was exposed to as a child. It brought me back to a formative time in my childhood and helped me remember a series of massively impactful experiences that changed my artistic taste and lingered with me for the rest of my life.

1 - Lane Smith

The inspiration for this post was also, fittingly, one of my first memorable exposures to a unique art style. Again, the write-up above does a more articulate job of analytically breaking down Smith’s style, but more importantly, it served as the catalyst which helped me realize that two of my favorite books in elementary school were illustrated by the same person: Lane Smith. As a child, I read The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, andThe True Story of the Three Little Pigs ad nauseum. Both of these books are categorized as “postmodern children’s books” which skew and satirize traditional children’s fairy tales. If you have any doubt about where my overbearing skepticism and incessant irreverence come from, make no mistake the seeds were first planted here. Smith’s dadaist take on these stories is absolutely incredible. Filled with abnormally long tounges, contorted caricatures, and general fuckedupedness, these books helped me look at the world differently.

Seeing something as simple as a cow drawn in such a foreign style made me realize how different other people’s perspectives and interpretations could be. To see so many concepts that I was already familiar with (both visually and storywise) made me realize that not only were these bizarre interpretations valid, but they still worked. I still recognized this duck as a duck even though it didn’t take a “traditional” form that I was familiar with. These unique illustrations combined with the meta post-modern writing style were a door-opening combination for an elementary school-aged Taylor. There was no turning back.

2 - Stephen Gammell

Jesus Christ. If there was any indication that I had a fucked up start, it was first evident here. While I certainly loved Stinky Cheese Man, and The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, later on in elementary school I was forced to read more “substantive” books (i.e. smaller text) so I looked for something with a cool cover (how else are you supposed to pick reading material at seven?) As I sifted through the contents of my Elementary school’s shelves like a shitty, snot-nosed seven-year-old record collector I stumbled across something that stopped me in my tracks and made my hair stand on end: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Illustrated by  Stephen Gammell, these books were (and still are) absolutely chilling. The short stories ranged from rewritten classics to modern urban legends, and while the written contents of the book were amazing, the real draw for me at the time was the art. A simple google image search returns a myriad of illustrations that I can only describe as unsafe for children. I don’t know how or why this book was allowed in an elementary school library, but I have a feeling that’s something that wouldn’t be allowed in 2016.

This was my first time realizing that art could be weird. Not that I’d had massive exposure to high art as a seven-year-old, but it felt like the first time I was looking at something completely unique. It was like viewing the world through a whole new (disturbed) lense. It scared me, but in a good way. It looked cool. It looked otherworldly. I wanted more.

3 - Gerald Scarfe

In 1998 my family bought a beach house in Manzanita, Oregon. That log cabin was a magical place and it contains some of the happiest memories of my childhood. My family took a trip down to the beach nearly every weekend. It became an escape. One particular weekend I went alone, just me and my dad. My mother stayed home with my younger brother, so it was a father/son weekend… which probably would have meant more to me if I wasn’t still in elementary school. On this trip my dad let me watch Pink Floyd’s The Wall, a movie that I was apparently just on the verge of being able to handle. While I’m sure he meant well (he just wanted to share his music with me) The Wall fucking scarred me. It was R-rated, sure but I think (aside from wanting to show me my first R-rated movie) my dad forgot how dark the movie was. Everything from the masked schoolchildren, graphic violence, and obtuse depiction of sex scared the absolute shit out of me. Now that I think about it, this movie is probably the reason I’m so freaked out by gas masks. Just take a look at the IMDB Parents Guide to this thing… I was a kid who was too scared to watch this scene from Winnie the Pooh a few years earlier.

Aside from the minor emotional scarring, my biggest takeaway from The Wall were the film’s animated sequences. The movie covers a double album it switches between live action and animated for many of the songs. Probably because of my age, I paid more attention to the animated sequences thinking “hey it’s like a cartoon, cartoons can’t be scary!’ The animated segments of the movie drawn by Gerald Scarfe were in retrospect more surreal and depraved than the film’s live action counterparts. Most notably the film’s dark and horrifying depiction of war (in reaction to WWII) was seared into my mind. Similar to the above entries, Scarfe’s distinct style granted me a new perspective, in this case, it was a twisted perspective of morphing objects, violence, and sexual intimacy, but it was a new perspective nonetheless.

4 - Jonathan Gourley & Ralph Steadman

On a more positive note, as I grew and developed into an adult with an only slightly-fucked up artistic taste I tended to lean towards abstract and disturbing artwork (who woulda thought?) In high school I discovered both rock band Portugal. The Man and writer Hunter S. Thompson both artists who utilize surrealist imagery to enhance their respective creations. Portugal. The Man uses lead singer John Gourley’s watercolored artwork as the cover and liner artwork to most of their records. Meanwhile, Hunter S. Thompson famously used Ralph Steadman’s artwork as a visual component to his books Fear and Loathing in Las Vegasand Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72. These artists combined with things I’d find around the same time like Wednesday Wolf all represented a further development of the style I was drawn to as a child.

Personal history obviously plays a major role in my taste, but emotion aside, I can’t really explain the psychological reason why I’m drawn to such a distorted art style. Maybe seeing the “scary” view of something makes the real world that much brighter. Maybe it’s just seeing these everyday concepts twisted and distorted to such a degree that they’re almost unrecognizable. Maybe I just like art that resembles drug use. I have no idea. But in looking back at all this, one thing is clear:

I have a fucked up taste. I’m lucky.

I don’t want to end this on a note of me masturbating to how great my own taste is, but I genuinely feel fortunate that I had the freedom and access to take this path. Being able to have a fucked up taste, or an off-kilter personality is a luxury that can only be afforded by growing up unafraid. If I had grown up in a harsher environment, I wouldn’t have had the freedom to explore “weird” stuff because I’d be too preoccupied with fending for myself and trying to be cool. I never had to deal with bullying, racism, discrimination, poverty, or violence, so I was able to flourish and be whoever I wanted to be. I’m grateful in that sense, but I’m also hopeful. I’m hopeful that I can culture the same environment for my children one day, and I’m hopeful that this path will keep me open. I don’t want to be one of those people that shits on art, or is “scared” by art… and not scared in the same way that I was when watching The Wall, but scared in the way Christians were afraid of heavy metal in the 80’s. I don’t want to be scared of the next thing, I want to embrace it. Even if it’s weird or confusing, I want to at least have some grip on art and pop culture as I grow older… but I know that’s impossible. You can only be “cool” for so long, but I think this “open” mentality can be eternal.

Remaining open to new experiences and weird fucked up shit can only open your mind. Sometimes you’re not ready for it. Sometimes it doesn’t make sense, and that’s fine, but sometimes it can click with you in a way you couldn’t even conceive of before. The times when you see something, or read something, or hear something and say “fuck, why didn’t I think of that?” or “shit, this exact sound is exactly what I needed to hear right now.” The times when you’re tapped into something greater than yourself, when you’re experiencing something on a spiritual level, when you feel connected to another creator. That’s what art is about. That’s what life is about.

On Lyrics

I don’t think lyrics matter.

Well they do, but that statement was the only attention-grabbing way I could think to start this. What I mean is that I don’t think lyrics should be the main focal point of music. It took a bizarre combination of music genres for me to arrive at this conclusion, but let me see If I can walk you through my reasoning.

In my junior year of high school I discovered the Icelandic post-rock band Sigur Rós. The albums Ágætis Byrjun and ( ) specifically worked their way into near-daily rotation on my iPod. At the same time I also began to fall deeply into metalcore as I frustratedly grappled with my first real breakup. Metal’s harsh screaming vocals, pounding cannon drums, and abrasive guitar seemed to be a perfect reflection of how I felt internally most of the time. Any time I needed a break from that aggressive stuff, I’d go straight to Sigur Ros and use them as an escape. It was like mixing uppers and downers: I used these two genres to accentuate whatever I was feeling at the time. In jumping back and forth between two (seemingly) different types of music so frequently I started to notice some odd similarities. The primary connection I noticed was the way they both approached lyrics. As much as I loved the hardcore scene at the time, I almost never understood the lyrics. The typical criticism of “how can you even tell what they’re saying?” was completely valid. At that time I never had an answer to that criticism, but now I realize it was because I didn’t care about the lyrics; I cared about the music.

Lyrics are great. I’m a writer, I’m obligated to love the written word. Within the context of a piece of music however, I feel that lyrics shouldn’t be viewed as the most vital element. Even in hip-hop, a genre where the voice is the primary focus, there are still interesting ways to create music without focusing on the words explicitly… but I’ll come back to that in a second.

The connection between Sigur Ros and my newfound escape of metalcore was lyrics. Not the content, or the delivery, but the approach. Unless you spoke Icelandic, you had no idea what Sigur Ros songs are saying. Furthermore, some of their songs are written entirely in “hopelandic” a nonsensical language invented by the band which has no meaning. As the band describes hopelandic as “a form of gibberish vocals that fits to the music and acts as another instrument.” While that’s an interesting and novel approach, to an average listener (especially an American high schooler) the whole thing was unintelligible to me. As was metal. I began to realize that both genres were approaching vocals in the exact same way. Obviously you can make out the occasional lyric in a metalcore song, but to me the vocals simply became a part of the larger musical texture. I understood the emotion that was being conveyed without understanding exactly what was being said. I began to view the voice as an instrument.

While both of the genres were using vocals to the same end, they both had very different applications for me. Metalcore became the devil on my shoulder that screamed unknowable words in anger, and Sigur Ros became the angel who gently sang me into a lullaby-like trance. There was suddenly a duality to nearly all of the music I was listening to, it simply became a matter of asking myself what I was in the mood for.

As time wore on I got over that relationship and moved away from metalcore. I wasn’t that mad all the time, and I didn’t want to be. I transitioned into a more positive pop-punk phase which centered heavily around The Wonder Years. While their vocals are far cleaner than what I was used to, the ever-present nasally punk style was still difficult to decipher at times. After listening to The Wonder Years for some time I sat down one of their albums album and a lyric sheet in front of me and ended up discovering an entirely layer to the songs. Not only did I understand what was being said, I suddenly saw a deeper level that the music was operating on. There was something interesting about listening to an album dozens of times and only fully-deciphering it when you sit down with that as your intent. Listening to an album with unclear vocals makes a record replayable and allows the listener to fill in the gaps with their own meaning. Lyrics can add an additional layer to something that’s already enjoyable.

Which brings me back to hip-hop. One of my favorite hip-hop artists Young Thug started out as a very divisive figure within the rap scene. This article by the New York Post does an excellent job of articulately explaining why Young Thug’s music is fascinating. I often use that write-up as a primer when trying to get friends into Thug and while I think the whole article is a great read, it is long. I’ll post an excerpt here that’s relevant:

“genius.com is the watering hole around which today’s rap enthusiasts gather to parse lyrics and ponder the meaning of life. Young Thug has pages upon pages of lyrics posted on Genius. Many are riddled with debates not over what his words might be trying to convey, but what’s actually being said in the first place.

The refrain of “Lifestyle” crescendos with Young Thug’s syllables piling up like rush-hour wreckage. The crowdsourced consensus at Genius states that the rapper is “livin’ life like a beginner and this is only the beginning,” – but “beginner” sounds a lot like “volcano,” and the garbled ambiguity of the whole thing elicits a distinct pleasure.

Of course, that hasn’t stopped conservative rap fans from turning Young Thug’s inscrutability into a punch line. Less-than-imaginative listeners simply hear it as a stylish quirk. But it’s really a mode of being. Instead of skipping off into the hyper-communicative valleys of the Internet, Young Thug conceals things. He mangles his words in mumbles, swallows them in yawns, annihilates them in growls. He’s not concerned with being understood. So we listen a little closer.”

Within the past year there have been a whole crop of new artists in the hip-hop field taking after Young Thug. Up-and-comers like Lil Yachty, Lil Uzi Vert, and Desiigner have all sparked online debates over what “hip-hop” is and where lyricism fits within that.

My two cents (as you can probably guess) is that it doesn’t matter. Music is music. In fact, two of the artists mentioned above don’t even consider themselves rappers. So what does this mean? Are we headed for a Idiocracy-like future where all music is mumbled nonsense? I don’t think so. All I think this means is that the tides are changing. There will always be lyrical music, and people who need to get something out that can’t be communicated through sound alone. The difference is it’s just becoming more acceptable for this alternative non-verbal approach to be viable.

I love this type of music because I can project whatever I want onto it. That’s why I started to love it in high school. I could listen to the abrasive angry stuff and get my emotions out in a safe, harmless way. I could listen to Sigur Ros and reflect, or use it to bounce back from a spiral caused by too much of the other stuff. It all became a mirror of my own thoughts and emotions.

I still look at music the same to this day. Sometimes I listen to an album so much that I’ll memorize the lyrics, but my first listen is always dedicated to taking the piece in as a whole. Trying to decode what’s being said can end up taking away from the overall experience, so I don’t make it my sole focus.

Lyrics are just one piece of the music. You could pay just as much attention to the guitar, or the drums, or the beat, but lyrics are an easy thing to focus on because they’re decipherable. The lyrics are often at the forefront of the music (there’s a reason people call singers as a frontman), they give listeners a common point of reference and something concrete to focus on.

Furthermore, lyrics can add onto a song, but they can also detract massively. In the case of The Wonder Years, The Upsides was an album that I already loved before I knew every single word. Sitting down with the lyric sheet simply added an additional layer and gave me a deeper appreciation for something that I already loved. On the flip side, lyrics can be flawed, and it’s easier to notice flawed lyrics than flawed music. There are only so many words at the end of the day, but there’s an infinite number of sounds. A bad lyric can stick out like a sore thumb, just look at the mania surrounding a single lyric on Drake’s most recent album. Or listen to Ab-Soul’s verse on Chance the Rapper’s “Smoke Again” and tell me his plea for ass-to-mouth isn’t off-putting. Kanye’s magnum opus “Runaway” is a track I love but one that still contains a handful of lines and deliveries I don’t really dig. The song’s verses are followed up by a four minute outro which contains no words, but a garbled vocalization from Kanye. As discussed in this video those four minutes are a prime example of what vocals (not necessarily words) can do in a song.

I believe (at least within hip-hop) the lack of emphasis on lyrics can be traced back to Kanye whose early work represented a shift not necessarily away from lyrics, but towards a greater emphasis on sound as a whole. This was movement was capitalized by people like Lil Wayne who have decent rhymes, but were carried by swag and personality more than anything else. The current crop of “non-rappers” (Yachty, Uzi, etc.) are simply the next evolution of that.

Ultimately everything falls into a spectrum: on one side you’ve got extremely lyrical artists like Kendrick Lamar or The Mountain Goats, and on the other end you’ve got the complete absence of lyrics in groups like Sigur Ros or Explosions in the Sky. Don’t get me wrong, I love it all, and I’m definitely not “anti-lyric” I just believe taking a song as a whole is more powerful than taking it at “face value” and only paying attention to the lyrics. Every piece within the music is vital, lyrics are simply one component. Lyrics are as important or unimportant as you want them to be, but I think focusing too much attention on them turns music into a narrow art form. Emotion can be conveyed without words, and songs can tell a story through sound, we just need to listen to the whole thing.