As I dig deeper and deeper into what it means to be a rational person, it becomes harder and harder to just except that I like something, just because I like something. Nowadays, I want to know why. Why do I like this? Or, in a more utilitarian way, what does this do for me? Now, I understand that some might find this sad. They might say, "why can't you just except yourself for who you are?" and "why do you have to question everything, why can't you just live for the moment and enjoy the now?" My answer is that I don't know, but I sure would like to. I think this is why I am, and in my heart of hearts have always been, an agnostic. My passion is to question things, and the answers, though lovely, sit in the backseat of that car.
With music, however, this takes a very abstract form. Many wise persons have said that it is of the utmost futility to argue matters of taste (In matters of principle, stand like a rock; in matters of taste, swim with the current. *Thomas Jefferson). I don't disregard that wisdom easily, but I do have my own reasons for talking about music, books, TV and movies as if there were a right and wrong answer. I understand that taste is subjective (and this is very much proven for me by the success of CSI, Tom Clancy, and the ShamWow® guy).
Yet, there are two reason why I love to talk, and yes even argue, about taste. The first and most important reason is simply; cause it's fun.
My obsession with love of music began when I was 12, and I remember almost the very moment I realized it. I was staying the night at my buddy's house and we were spinning the Sublime self-titled joint, which at the time was still hot off the press. I was new to the scene (this is when it was still called punk or alternative, just before most people started calling it indie), and my musical experience up to that point was limited to ABBA, which my parents loved, the new age stuff my older brother was into, and top 40. Let's just say that when we hit the track "Santeria" my eyes went very wide. My world would never quite be the same. I quickly decided to dub over half of my old Tears for Fears cassette and have never looked back.
Since that night, I've spent countless hours spinning tracks, learning guitar chords, and, yes, arguing about music. I think it is part of loving something that we want to talk about it, and more, make value judgments and test them on our peers. As much fun as I had listening to Sublime, I had almost as much fun looking down on the people who fell into the boy band revival that was happening at roughly the same time. There was a difference between me and those people, one that may be hard to pin down exactly, but an obvious difference all the same.
Which leads me to the second and maybe less important reason to argue about music. That is that what you consume says a little something about who you are. It is not as simple as some right-wing, hip-hop disparaging pundits would have you believe (e.g. loving the song "Santeria" does not necessarily imply I want to murder my cheating woman), but it does tell you what a person chose to put into his head, given the almost limitless variety available in this day and age. Armed with these two reasons, I feel comfortable saying, arguing about music, or in fact, any matter of taste, is not completely pointless. At least, it isn't as long as you're not in it to win it.
But, to come back to my first point, I find myself asking what does music do for me? This article, though a bit of a long read, is certainly worth thinking about. It make my heart a bit heavy to do so, as it makes some good points about how many of us, perhaps, love music too much. I have my own response to this, and a possible reason that music is important that the author did not address, but that's not what this post is about. After the jump, this (probably overly-long) post is, as the title suggests, going to talk about the difference between great bands and great songs. In my mind, these two things are separate events, and though they pair up often, this is not always the case. Then I'm going to address songs that standout for the albums they live in, and albums—like Sublime's "Self-titled"—that make their presence felt throughout the whole musical universe.
I think most people are familiar with great bands, though they will often disagree about whom exactly to include in this category. For myself, I limit this to collaborations only. Don't get me wrong, I love Paul Simon and Bob Dylan along with some other solo artists, but there is a strange magic in great musical teamwork. For example, though a lot of people love Sting, I don't know many people who would argue that he has maintained the same relevance as he had before he broke up The Police. This happens all the time, with obvious examples like The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, or tragically, one of my personal favorites, Hum.
But even with that caveat, what makes some out of the millions of strivers out there (as of today, more than 7 million on Myspace music) better then the rest. Contrary to the rumor you might have heard from your high school band leader, there is no mathematical formal for good music. If there were, the record companies would have discover it decades ago and massive flops would be a thing of the past. There is no magically "suck knob" (not a phrase I coined, though I wish it was) that a studio engineer can turn to make crap into gold. What there is, is something harder to pin down. Some kind of strange chemistry that may happen whenever a group plays together, or that develops slowly over time. When it does happen, though, it is easy to recognize. There something about a band when it works, it can accent the strengths of the individual members, it can cover their weaknesses. It makes the whole somehow greater than the sum of the parts.
I would say all of those bands mentioned above also have great songs, and most of them have at least one great album. One could say that having a great song, or a great album, is a requirement for a great band. I think this rule works most of the time, but sometimes, though it is rare, a band can be great without ever writing a flagship song/album. The examples I would name, however, are all sort of out of the mainstream. Following this logic, I think it would be better to say that great bands without a great song/album never reach mainstream audiences. I think this happens most often with progressive and/or experimental musicians who have crazy skills and wild creativity, but have trouble balancing musicianship and accessibility. In other words, they create sound that requires heaps of raw talent (makes your brain go "Whaaa?") but fails to really touch you on a basic level (doesn't make you want to dance, laugh, cry, etc). Some names I'd put out there as guilty of this: Don Caballero, Yes, Aesop Rock, and Karate (though Karate came damn close to a great song with Sever, and damn close to a great album with Unsolved, so I wouldn't argue too hard if someone thought I was wrong on that score).
Again, with songs, there are plenty of good ones and oodles of okay efforts (not to mention millions of horrible mishaps). Yet, there are some that are more then just good. These are the tunes that do more than just make you feel, they transcend their own confines and achieve a state of epiphany. They inspire. Moreover, when these songs hit they change the way you see a musician's work forever afterward. After hearing a great song, the tendency to idolize a group or performer becomes much stronger. You listen to their new stuff with a much more critical ear, you find new significance in the work that came before.
My favorite example of a great song is The Beatles' "A Day in the Life." This song first appear on the album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," and up to that point The Beatles songs had always been quality, but at the same time, had never strayed far from the nest of accepted pop sensibilities. The joints "Help!" and "A Hard Day's Night" were certainly groovy, and you could see glimmers of the future in certain tracks on "Rubber Soul," but nothing on these albums made The Beatles what they would become. Nothing set down here would tell the whole of music history to look at this band any harder than it looks at any other talented contemporaries like The Kinks or The Animals. "A Day in the Life" was different. There is nothing easy to take from the song. No obvious moral to the story. The verses are easy enough to listen to, but in the end it descends into orchestrated chaos. What John and Paul had created here was no easy pop melody, but something much more slippery, much less focused, much harder to internalize... and yet, when you hear it, it slips inside you. It feels important somehow, and yet you can't say exactly why. That melody finds a home in your mind, that chaos finds a role in your dreams. This song is, you realize, simply more.
This happens so rarely in music, that it almost seems accidental. Even trying to think of more cases is a challenge, and it seems like I've been exploring music with way too much veracity, for way too many years, at this point in my life. I would nod my head at MJ's "Billy Jean," expound over the incredibly powerful use of extended metaphor in Jawbreaker's "A Boat Dreams from the Hill," heartily agree with Talib Kweli and High Tek when they rap the rules of hip-hop in "The Manifesto," bow toward Bob Marley's "Redemtion Song," explain with Hum "Why I like the Robins," and (of course) climb the "Stairway to Heaven." (We'll leave Chopin, Vivaldi and other classical cats out of this piece for now).
It is hard to say what is rarer, a great song or a great album. An album can be a masterpiece even without having any one standout, incredible song. In fact, I would say one of the telling attributes of an outstanding album is that you never want to break it apart. It works best just spun from beginning to end like a good book. A good example of an incredible rock album without a major song is At the Drive-in's "Relationship of Command." Even without a single, this record catapulted the band so quickly from their safety net of obscurity that they shattered on impact. What RoC had going for it, is it never really strayed too far from the titular theme. Each track was just another nuance in an overarching (and mostly angry) look at the powerless' relationship with the powerful.
Getting an album to reach greatness can certainly be helped by an overarching theme, but that doesn't necessarily do the job. The Beatles were master albumists. All of their joints seem to have a consistent underlying current, and though I personally love every track in Sgt. Pepper's, I would hesitate to call it a great album. All of the songs in Sgt. Pepper's stand just as well alone as together, and listening to them all in a row doesn't really make the experience that much better. I would not say the same, however, for "Abby Road," where each song seems to almost be the logical conclusion of the last. "Abby Road," like Radiohead's "OK Computer," certainly meets my standard for greatness.
To conclude, the moral of this story is that though they often come together, these three categories are exclusive and can be achieved all at once or one at a time. But, to come full circle, why even separate music into categories? After all, even as individuals, our tastes change over the years (or even days) until what we once thought great becomes barely listenable and visa-versa. For a none-musician, I can only point you back to the two reason laid out above. But for the fellow strivers in the audience this can take on a different significance. If you write music, whether it be just for kicks or for profit, and you want your music to be more, here is your road map. It won't get there on it's own (that takes talent, opportunity, and sheer luck), but it'll show you the way.
Not to get too Bill & Ted here, but it was one of those old greek dudes who said, "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." What Aristotle, the father of logic, is getting at here is that all distinction are, to some extent or another, merely arbitrary (great song, good song. Square, rectangle. What's the difference really?), but bright people make these distinction, all the while knowing that they aren't real, because that is how shit gets done. Logic, being another of my passion, is probably going to come up quite a lot in these posts, so consider yourself duely warned.
We draw these lines in the sand
just so we can have some impact on our universe,
Even understanding the truth
will always be just out of reach.
Like a donkey,
chasing a carrot,
tied to a stick,
strapped to his back...
