I had a high school history teacher who used to say that “cutting corners was the American way”. He’d say this whenever we’d try to get away with something in class like taking a shortcut on an assignment, but he meant it in the broader sense as well. As a music fan (and sometimes snob) I’ve been known to lament so-called “mainstream” music versus lesser known, often independent alternatives. In this day and age however, even the indie bands are mainstream and the distinction between what I like and don’t like can’t be so obviously classified by pop or not.
When I was in high school I used to listen to what we then called “Modern Rock”. In retrospect this was a term that could have been applied to anything produced roughly between Nirvana’s “Nevermind” and Radiohead’s “OK Computer” in the 90’s. My particular pickiness at the time was with the” authenticity” of the music I was listening to. Synth’s made me want to vomit, drum machines filled me with rage. If you couldn’t reproduce it faithfully without machines, I didn’t want to hear it. It was my first act of music snobbery. This all changed however as I entered college and I was opened up to Industrial music. Suddenly those synths weren’t so bad, a drum machine had its place and as long as they were put to use making dark and/or heavy beats, I was fine. These were personal tastes for the most part; it wasn’t until after college that I truly began to move into the realm of pure music snobbery.
I think it was an album by The Vines that first turned me on to the fact that mainstream music was just a watered down approximation of lesser known independent bands or older, forgotten bands. I remember distinctly hearing what sounded a lot like riffs inspired by the band Failure in that Vines album and it annoyed me. Here was this band that had come out of nowhere and was making headlines and appearing on the cover of magazines, while Failure had barely even gotten radio play during their stint in the 90’s. It annoyed me because Failure was an excellent band, better than The Vines for sure, and if people were willing to give The Vines so much of their time then why hadn’t Failure shared the same success? For sure most of the answer lies in marketing, but it wasn’t as if Failure were on a no-name label. Granted Slash Records was never Warner’s top pick for sinking money into, but that wouldn’t have stopped them from giving Failure a top-notch media blitz had they felt it worthwhile. If not the label then what, what was the reason why a band like The Vines got promoted in its day over a band like Failure from the 90’s when everything seemed up for grabs?
It all comes back to cutting corners and the collective unconscious of the American consumer. Americans always want more and they always want it faster. Call it capitalism, call it nationalism, call it consumerism, whatever, Americans don’t have time to wait; they want it all and they want it yesterday. To this end, anything that stands in the way of obtaining these goals is viewed as a hindrance.
So how does this apply to music? How does this explain why seemingly mediocre bands make it big while technically better bands never get noticed? If we take as a given that Americans want more … faster and we assume that musical entertainment is one of the things they want more of, then we can start to paint a picture that makes sense. Using the (regrettably imperfect) example of The Vines vs. Failure, we will assume that The Vines allow the music listening public to get their entertainment easier than Failure and are therefore easier to market. Why are they easier to market? Why do they appeal to people in less time than Failure, therefore making them the path of least resistance? The answer is that they’ve allowed their sound to be what I called “watered down”. If we assume that a watering down of one’s sound is the prime requisite for making it big (or at least a contributing factor in being marketable) then what exactly does it mean to be watered down?
Watering down means providing the fewest barriers to entry and thus allowing people to access more of your music faster. What is a barrier to entry when it comes to music? The simplest way to describe it would be to say that a barrier to entry is anything out of the ordinary that might cause someone to pause and consider their thoughts or feelings regarding said piece of music. If we work from the assumption that people like things that they are familiar with then we can assume that something that provides the fewest barriers will be easily recognizable. In music, this is why (for me at least) it seems as if most mainstream bands sounds the same, usually within their own genre, but often between them as well. The average person picking up that album by The Vines is going to instantly be in touch with what they’re hearing. They aren’t going to have to consider whether they like it, they aren’t going to have to listen to it repeatedly in order to pick up on the nuance. They’re going to find something they like immediately, be entertained, and move on; more … faster. On the reverse, if they listen to the Failure album (let’s take something really accessible like “Magnified”) they are going to like most of it, but when a song like Small Crimes comes on, they’re going to be challenged by its meandering down tempo, it’s longer than average length, it’s use of a fade out/in two thirds of the way into the song, and it’s general sonic uniqueness. Anything challenging is going to keep the average listener from getting more entertainment faster. Because of this, the things we hear most often in the mainstream are going to be the least challenging.
Does this mean that music that isn’t challenging isn’t good? If you had asked me just after college, back in the heyday of my exploration of punk and hardcore, I would have said “yes”. I’ve since changed my point of view a bit. It’s not that music that isn’t challenging isn’t good, it can be good, it just isn’t challenging and I tend to prefer challenging music. Recently I’ve come to accept a larger portion of the musical spectrum than I ever have before and lot of this is because I’ve allowed myself to accept music that isn’t challenging, but is still good and most of all is sincere. Well what is sincerity in music then?
When Coheed & Cambria’s latest album “Year of the Black Rainbow” came out I didn’t like it very much, it’s still my least favorite Coheed album, though I’ve warmed to it a bit. The sound just didn’t appeal to me. At first listen, it didn’t sound like they were being themselves and this to me came off as insincere. I eventually came to understand that while they took steps on the album to redefine their sound away from what I prefer for them, they were doing so not because of marketing research, not because they were told to do so by some record label executive, but because they wanted to try something new on their own. That to me was sincere, even if I didn’t like the results. A band like Muse that produces a number of songs that are very approachable and have even been featured in such mainstream train wrecks as the Twilight films is still sincere to me. Are they pop music, are they mainstream? Hell yes, but in the way that they make their music one can tell they are sincere about what they do. They’re not being told to make music that appeals to people watching Twilight, but there is a crossover in their chosen sound that makes that possible. Is the label, happy? Sure, but I don’t think that’s Muse’s primary concern.
So why do “good” bands get screwed? It’s because the average listener cuts corners. In the constant pursuit of more … faster the more challenging, oft time’s better acts get left by the wayside. It’s not uniquely an American problem, it’s a human problem. I believe that the concept has been so magnified by the American collective psyche that like everything else we strive for, it’s become bigger, badder, and better, though our desire not to be challenged is hardly something we should be proud of or encourage in others. On the flip side, it’s easy to dismiss music that is obviously part of the mainstream and as someone who has acted in this manner for a number of years I suppose I’m just as guilty as those who seek not to be challenged. I suppose for my part some could say that I was seeking not to be challenged to find the good, sincere art in mainstream music and recently it’s a challenge I’ve taken up and with much success. Oh I’m still a music snob and it’s still going to be likely that I was listening to bands “before they were cool”, but my horizons have broadened and while it may not be faster, it definitely gives me more.
