A Venn diagram of musical taste

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I believe that people whose main form of discourse is saying that things suck will have their own level of hell.

(They would have to suck on a giant rubber teat for eternity, or else their feet would be dipped into boiling lava.)

It’s not even the incessant negativity that gets my goat. It’s the drive-by nature of such discourse: “This sucks”. The end. No explanation, no defense, no contribution to humanity. I respect logical people who disagree with me more than illogical people who agree with me.

I wouldn’t mind “this sucks” if it came with why or how. Why does something suck? How does something suck?

This is important for thriving in a world that tries to do your thinking for you.

Can you back up what you say? Can you exercise the powers of reason that you have inherited on a species-wide level? Are you more than a mere consumer, acting solely on on/off switches? Buy/don’t buy, sucks/doesn’t suck?

In music, I’ve separated this discourse into three areas: good music, interesting music, and music that I like. (All remaining music, of course, is bad, uninteresting, and not to my liking.)

I keep these distinctions in mind when I evaluate music. The bad person in me will say, “This sucks!” But then the rational part of me will try to figure out why. And sometimes it happens that I end up liking bad music, or uninteresting music, or (horror of horrors) bad and uninteresting music. And sometimes I come across good music that I don’t like – and I try to respect it as such.

Of course, one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. Your ideas of “good”, “interesting”, and what you like are bound to differ from mine. (If they don’t, get your own damn tastes.)

So above is an extremely rough diagram laying out examples of what I mean. If you buttonhole me (please don’t) and get me liquored up (it won’t happen), I can go on for hours about this stuff (yes, I am single).

The point is, be aware of why you say and think what you say and think. Just because you think something sucks doesn’t mean that it’s bad or that it’s uninteresting. Maybe you’re the one that’s bad and uninteresting.

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