Saturday 16 April 2005

Pop goes the music

From the excellent book and film High Fidelity:
"Do I listen to pop music because I'm depressed, or am I depressed because I listen to pop music?"
Discuss.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Pop music is great - try Love Angel Music Baby by Gwen Stefani. Do you know that "Rich Girl" (adapted from Fiddler on the Roof) is produced by Dr Dre (Em's producer)? It's good too, and introduces others to that genre, like Baz Luhrmans (sp) Romeo and Juliet. Don't be so precious darling ;-)

Anonymous said...

So maybe PC listens to country music? What a lot of pretentious bs. I'll send you Gwen's cd if you want - I bet you haven't listened to any contemporary music in the last 20 years. It is the best pop cd I have bought this year. But maybe this can be a 'complimentary difference' in our relationship, as Branden says :-)

Blair said...

Well... take Joy Division - supposedly a depressing band. I've lost count of the times I've been depressed and they've given me some get-up-and-go. Atmosphere is a particularly inspiring track.

Peter Cresswell said...

Precious? Moi!? Au contraire darl. And do you really take me for a country music fan? Uugh! Country music is surely an oxymoron.

Q: What happens if you play a country song backwards?
A: The dog and the wife both come back, the bailiff returns your pickup, and the house isn't burnt down.

A friend once suggested that my musical tastes were "Lou Reed and opera." That's not a bad description, but he forgot about Duke Ellington. ;^) How 'bout contemporary music for me? The last contemporary music I bought were the new albums (ranked in order of preference) by Tom Waits (best), Graham Brazier and Nick Cave (he's lost it, hasn't he) and a DVD by the Manic Street Preachers. WTF the Manics were doing kissing Castro's ring I don't know, but they are making their new single available online free. It's out on the 20th.

FWIW I agree with Piglet that depressing music isn't necessarily depressing, but I'd suggest that music that insults our intelligence is, and Joy Division never did that. Music untouched by human minds should be left that way. Untouched.

So does listening to pop music make you depressed? I don't think so. It can certainy make you nauseous ('ah, ah, ah, ah, staying alive, staying alive'), but not depressed. But being obsessed with it is depressing. Better to be obsessed about something with greater scope, depth and integration. Like Wagner. :-)

I wrote about this here, in a piece called Something Better Than Rage, Pain, Anger and Hurt. Discusion ensued.