Sh***y music?
Hell is other people’s music: why we think we have better taste in music
Of course, writing “sh***ty” and putting a picture of Céline Dion is not the best way to make a point, but I swear that the pairing is not my doing. It belongs to Carl Wilson, who in 2014 published a book called Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste.
Well, actually is not Wilson’s fault. The title of the italian translation is Musica di merda - Shitty music, don’t ask me why. The book, a hefty 298 pages, is an analysis of musical taste and uses the “poor” Céline as a scapegoat.
The studies and research included are particularly interesting, as they attempt to understand how taste can shift and peek out of the box depending on various contexts. Because let’s face it, each of us has, at least once, thought, “This guy doesn’t understand anything about music,” automatically placing ourselves above the other person. And each of us has our own Céline Dion.
But why her?
Obviously, there are many reasons. Let’s just say Carl was in good company. Rolling Stone called Dion’s voice “pure furniture polish,” while Maxim magazine, in 2005, ranked “My Heart Will Go On” — the Titanic song, to be clear — third among the most annoying songs of all time. In 2006, a BBC special named it the most annoying song ever. I mean, go Céline!
The main element Wilson critiques is what he calls “schmaltz.” Derived from a Yiddish term originally used to describe chicken fat, it refers to “any musical moment saturated with overt sentimentality.” We might say “it’s too cheesy”, though not in the way you’d describe Ed Sheeran, but more like a Disney song sung by Amber Heard, written by Paris Hilton — essentially, a pointless thing.
Continuing with the pointlessness: this constant search for the high, or rather, the very high, haughty note is something that diverts attention from emotional connection, focusing instead solely on vocal prowess. And the constant repetition of this formula obviously doesn’t help. Wilson’s sharp critique continues throughout the book, which I highly recommend.
But what can this book teach us about taste?
Actually, nothing definitive, because science, as a means of understanding reality, cannot resolve the dilemma. Some pseudoscientific experiments, such as surveys and focus groups, allow us to sketch out broad guidelines through which taste is shaped.
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For example, there’s a painting called “The Most Wanted Painting,” the result of an experiment conducted by Komar and Melamid, two artists who tried to create a painting based on Americans’ tastes.
There are also opposite versions, namely “The Least Wanted Painting,” and versions from other countries. Just out of curiosity, here’s the “Most Unwanted Painting” from Italy.
(We all know that we could easily find this painting in any contemporary art museum, but that’s another story.)
There’s also a musical version. This is the most-wanted song, and this is the most-unwanted. It turns out that the first one is a ballad, with many harmonic changes, featuring — of course — a saxophone, and repeating “Baby” often. A bit like Céline’s pieces, then.
Taste is considered “another kind of knowledge.” Montesquieu — sorry, perhaps some of you know him by his full name, Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu — defined taste as
“the ready and exquisite application of rules that one does not even know.”
The perception that our tastes are better than others is similar to the perception that we always act correctly. The emotional connection between a song and our experience is something that cannot be replicated or transmitted. It’s impossible to make others understand how listening to a song made us feel at a specific moment, and how our brain now associates that song with that feeling. This also leads to a kind of regret that we can’t transfer this emotional connection to others, as we expect them to feel the same things. But simply put, people are all different.
And that’s exactly where the “Okay, then you don’t understand anything” reaction comes from.
Montesquieu divides taste into natural and acquired. The former is associated with all the pleasures we experience through our senses, while the latter is all that we can measure through our knowledge of the world and can therefore improve. And that is why, when I listen again to the music I loved when I was 11 years old, I feel a sense of embarrassment.
What I was listening to when I wrote this:
