Peter Wooley’s Blog

I had a conversation with Tyler at US Digital many Thursdays ago about what makes music “good”, in objective terms. Anyone who has spent more than a half hour with Tyler will know how he feels about music. I’ve known him a bit longer, and have had several conversations about music, but never one that got so rudimentary. He said, and I have to agree, that good music is honest.

While listening to a story about the movie Juno on NPR, I heard both the director and screenwriter agree that honesty is what makes a movie great, so it seems only natural that music works similarly. Of course, how does someone judge the honesty of a track, an album, an artist?

The whole discussion arose over my general dislike of Björk, an artist praised in many geek circles for her electronic stylings and eccentric nature. She tends to use excessive amounts of dissonance between her vocals and instrumentals, and it drives me out of my mind. The music often feels uncomfortable throughout entire tracks, which pulls me out of the music and causes me to focus on the vocals and instruments. Bringing this up with Tyler, he expressed that he’d rather hear a track full of dissonance than perfect harmony, if it track felt more honest.

This point has been rolling around in my head for over a year and here’s what I’ve come up with: I’m terrible at judging the honesty of a song. While I’m not “into” pop, my default reaction is not repulsion to today’s Top 40. I can’t listen to an entire track, but it doesn’t upset me deep within my soul. Upon further inspection, I’m nearly always turned off by the cookie-cutter nature of the instrumentals and terrible lyrics.

On the flip side, discordant music cannot stay within my earshot for very long. I need to stop the terrible sounds that assail my mind. Thankfully, mostly because of Tyler, I’ve given some of these sounds another try and grown to love them—My Bloody Valentine being an exquisite example.

In essence, pleasing sounds make me happy, but once I can find the heart of the music—it’s honesty, I suppose—I can make a lasting decision about the music I listen to. That means I love Radiohead, The Submarines, and Howard Shore, but I still can’t stand to listen to Björk.

I’m now more curious than ever to hear how everyone else finds “good” music.