Objectively Good? Part I

by Hilary Crowe

Good music gets me out of bed every morning, the kind of music that gets the baser cranial anatomy sending good vibrations down tangles of nerves and vessels, straight to the heart. Quite honestly, I don’t know where I’d be if an equally bored peer in the U.S. government hadn’t recommended Rocket to Russia, or if I wasn’t able to convince my Dad to buy his 14-year-old daughter Fun House. My ever-developing love of music has since led to extracurricular successes and the happiest moments of my young life.

But as with all in love, my heart is easily broken, perhaps band break-ups, make-ups and deaths have tugged at this girl’s heartstrings and weakened them a bit too much. I don’t dare play Iggy Pop’s primitive, sensual snarl for my female friends, and I avert my eyes when playing Fugazi’s lithe yet limping “Cassavetes” for anyone who makes it past “Waiting Room.” I cringe when I hear of a Stooges reunion tour, but weep when I learn it’s sold out.

So, when I happily agreed to guest DJ on a friend’s radio show here at American University, “Dueling DJs” as he proudly dubs his creation (see "Five Songs" for another take on the program on WVAU), it took a few days for the weight of my decision to crush my enthusiasm. It took that time for it to finally sink in that in just five short songs, 24 minutes, I would have to convert nonbelievers and agnostics, to jockey against my opponent for their electronic votes. Hunched over my laptop at my campus-issue, faux-oak desk, frantically scanning my iTunes library for the perfect songs to compose my winning playlist well past 1:00 AM, I couldn’t help but wonder: “Is anything really objectively good?” Especially the abstract and creative medium of music? The more I reworked the ordering and placement of songs - Sonics next to Stooges or perhaps just before Fugazi? – the more I thought not.

In my book, The Stooges beat the hell out of Radiohead any day, but many critics and coeds would heartily disagree. Who’s right? Some would judge a song’s greatness by its hook. Is it catchy? Melodic perhaps? Iggy thrives on dissonance, while Thom Yorke prefers soaring melodies and sophisticated harmonies. Lyrically, what’s better – a cacophony of raw, primal yelps paired with a piercing growl lamenting sexual and social frustrations, or a breathy incantation of higher emotion without those man-imal calls to instinctual drives? Here, goodness seems to be relative not only to the song’s context, but also, as the adage goes, to the mind’s eye of the beholder.

(Please continue this essay in Part II or scroll down.)

(Photo of graffiti art by Banksy, who offers photos free of copyright. Banksy is also the graffiti artist.)

culture
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