Music Snobs Unite!

Melissa Maerz

Home

Music Snobs Unite!

Some responses to my query about music snobbery:

KEITH HARRIS WRITES:

It is not ever admissible to be ashamed of music you like. Of course, everyone is ashamed of something they like at some point, but the ideal is to be comfortable with what pleases you. And my beef with music snobs is that they're way too suspicious of pleasure, and that fucks with their ability to process their aesthetic responses honestly. When you O.D. on modernist ideas about art-as-pain, then you start calling what you actually enjoy "guilty pleasures." God, that phrase is so creepy and Puritan.

Criticism is a process of explaining what you enjoy and why. So, if you like something for nostalgic reasons (this reminds me of x and makes me happy) or for social reasons (my friends like this and this is how we define our group identity) that's as cool as liking something for strictly formal reasons (if there is such a thing)--IF you acknowledge that as the reason you like something. The problem isn't what someone likes or why, its when they don't examine what they like and write differences in opinion off as matters of "taste."

KATE SILVER WRITES:

My brother sent me a copy of the bootlegged DJ Z-Trip and DJ P mix Uneasy Listening vol. 1. It's an incredible collage of electro and funk beats matched to pop radio classics like Madonna's "Like a Prayer," Midnight Oil's "Beds are Burning," as well as favorites from Heart, Bruce Hornsby, and many others. Sheepishly, I admit that I get the most excited when I hear even a few bars of Kansas's "Dust in the Wind."

TIM CARNAHAN WRITES:

Well, I have a few albums that do seem to fall out of rotation whenever friends come over. Guilty pleasures, I guess. This music was on heavy rotation during childhood car trips and I tend to have that visceral, ephemeral, almost physical reaction when I listen to it. Billy Joel's "The Stranger." Barbra Streisand and Barry Gibb's single, "Guilty." Wham's "Carless Whisper." I can't say I'm embarrassed that I own these songs, but I certainly know that enjoying this stuff only really works when I'm alone--because only I have the specific memories of listning to these songs, memories that formed the powerful physical and emotional associations the music evokes. I mean, "Guilty" is really a cheesy song. But to me, at the age of five, driving through South Dakota in the middle of the night, it was a mysterious and sulty song that both frightened and attracted me. I still get that feeling when I listen to it. So, am I going to pull it out and slap it on during a party? No way. It's not embarrassment, it's finding out where the music fits in your life and letting it live there and not getting so attached to how it comments on you as a person.