I'm aware of Dylan saying this time and time again, but what's to say his songs can't make someone think anyway?

I don't know man. Tunes are tunes, absoultely, but they are sometimes able to make you think.

Last time I checked, Dylan's interviews are completely cryptic and meant to fuck with the press/itnerviewer.

Take their #1 pick(according to my SETLIST) song..."Comfortably Numb."

Each time me and millions of people hear it, there is just surges of emotions all over the place when we listen to it. We get involved personally with the song, same with THE WALL album, and the DARK SIDE OF THE MOON album as well.

THE CLASH's most songs were of a political-inspired nature, pissing on the hypocrisy of the world. I mean, why you think they named their album SANDINISTA! from anyway? "Clampdown" is about the state slamming down on the people, while "Rock the Casbah" is about people digging music despite a dictator's best attempts.

Yes, music is great to listen to...but people get involved, and that includes your intelligence.

These bands only top the charts though, because it's what the mainstream radio stations choose to play. I'm going to use Radiohead's Kid A as an example. Kid A is probably one of the most innovative and original albums of the past decade. Maybe more; hell, I rank it up there with Dark Side of the Moon and The White Album, and so do many other music fanatics. But it's greatness comes from its innovativeness and originality. It's unlike anything else the band did. Innovation is a marketing risk; if something is so differenty comparitively to the norm, there is a chance that it won't sell. And that's what it all comes down to. The Record labels, for the most part, care about making money first, and artistic statement second. The same is true about any artistic and subjective medium. Why do you think Michael Bay has a career? Because boobs + explosions + Will Smith = drunken frat boys best friend.

Most of the respective critics loved Kid A. After getting used to it, fans fell in love. Since its release in 2000, it has become the groups most acclaimed piece of work. It recieves much more praise than the band's predecessor album, OK Computer which continues to sell more copies, despite fan and critic oppinion. Why is this? OK Computer's guitar tracks and mix of folk-pop and psychedelic hard rock is more marketable than the ambient techno tracks of Kid A. Why? Because the former has been done successfully (by which I mean commercially, not critically) several times over. It's the same reason Geffen Records was fed up with Neil Young when he made a string of expirimental albums in the 80s. Casual fans--which, unfortunately, make up most of the world, and more importantly, the radio-listening demographic--want something they can get into easily. So, anything innovative and obscure is bound to be a risk among casual fans. It's merely business.

It has nothing to do with different taste, or at least I feel. It's economics. Record labels hand the radios what they know will get requests and plenty of airtime. More airtime = more listeners. More listeners = more potential record-buyers.

If you want to equate popularity to quality, look no further than that god aweful shitstorm that consumed the radio during the 70s and 80s called disco. It was pure evil, and designed for yuppies and young stock brokers to listen to in exclusive dance halls and night clubs after-hours. Later, when the singles bars and dance halls closed, they'd jump in their Porsche, and throw in a mix tape consisting of the likes of Abba and the Beegees, and drive to the local adult bookstore to spend several minutes in the back of the store, hiding their faces. Then, when they'd get past their shame and embarrassment, they'd compose themselves, approach the clerk, and ask if they could purchase the latex woman on display.

Popular Music can be music of quality. Sinatra achieved it in his generation. The Stones achieved it a decade later and Pink Floyd did a decade after that. But for every "I've Got You Under My Skin", there was a "Come on-a My House", for every Beatles song there was an appalling "Monkies" that were as equally successful and of course some pretentious cock sucker with a guitar trying to make significant music but no one equaled the members of Pink Floyd.

The public is unpredictable. It is a matter of the times that we live in. People have moved away from expecting quality. That whole pimple on God's ass that I call the 80's that saw a decline in cinema and music was the death knell for rock music almost. A tremendous period of genius and excess lead to the collapse of it all. Just like twenty years before, the big bands pretty much went the way of the do-do with easy listening pop, be-bop and rock & roll destroying it all.

I still haven't seen a truly great album since Nirvana's "Nevermind". In the old days, a musician went to a recording studios and laid down four tracks in a four hour long recording session. They could get an album out withing three months. Now with all the bullshit synthesizers and drum kits and post-production, it takes an artist over a year but we accept it. Why? A combination, really. We buy the shit and if we buy it, the record companies will produce more revenue. It's business, really. Not their fault. They are trying to make a buck and we confuse it for stuff they force upon us when the fact is that it's all some pretty fucked up vicious cycle.

"Why do hated bands top the charts?"

That was the original question, and it's alarmingly a) presumptuous, b) self-contradictory. Somebody likes them. They're topping the charts because a lot of people are buying their stuff. The market to which they are being catered are buying into it. Audience targeted, audience sold. Made it, Ma, top o' the world and all that kind of business. Whether that's bandwagon jumping or being really easily pleased is besides the point.

And what charts, anyway? Pop charts? The name itself is pretty autonomous, no? Popular music. It's a measure of popularity; commercial success, if you want to put it that way; who has the most marketable or profitable music. Why people should start expecting anything which lies outside a popularity scale is puzzling. "Crappy bands" doesn't come into it as a term, or at least shouldn't, because "crappy" is on the scale of good/bad, not popular/unpopular. It seems only natural to me that popular music charts are always changing but not really changing, going round in banal cycles without any real innovation - it's just fashion; it's the same with clothes, with anything. To expect anything long-lasting in something as ridiculous as a "Top 40 tunes of the week" list is going about it the wrong way. At the same time, though, you could ask the question, "Why do Good bands sell millions of records?" Not because they're necessarily good, but because they happen to be popular. And why did they happen to be popular? Because it's what was "in" at the time; they got a lot of radio play and hype and were recognised as the in-thing. They'd still be good, they'd still be crap, regardless of records selling - it's all about being in the right place at the right time. Music, like Cinema, is an industry as much as it is an art. And you have to allow for a significant overlap in that respect. You shouldn't be an obnoxious snob.

Because, in many senses, there's a fine line between being a music fan and a music snob. So you discovered Dylan or the Beatles or whoever in your teens, learned to play a few chords on guitar, hell, you might even download every single album ever by one artist. Before you know it you have some kind of idea as to what greatness is, and you have some sort of authority over what is good, what is bad, what should be made and what shouldn't be made. Hell, you might even have the right to shit on other people's tastes, who knows?

And this suddenly makes you a music fan? You can now list "music" in your list of hobbies when applying for jobs and everything? Cool. But what if somebody loves sitting down on a Sunday afternoon listening to the updated weekly pop charts on the radio and getting really excited about who is where, etc.? Isn't that as obsessive and into it as churning out a few chords in your room on a nice, sunny day?

The term "music fan" is problematic, for me. Usually because it denotes only a certain taste in music. You're not necessarily a fan of music as a medium, but a fan of a certain kind of music. You don't like drum 'n bass and techno, and even if you consciously shit on anything which shows up in the weekly charts, you undermine this by not actively going out of your way to listen to Bach or Beethoven, trance music or extreme heavy metal... not that I want to get into listing genres of music, because that kind of thing is absurd, anyway. A lot of so-called "music fans" actually have rather limited musical tastes, though; they'll some cynically profound lyric or abstract poetry over any kind of overture for Cello in E minor or something.

The DJ is a fiend to be spat on, because he's just taking other people's music and splicing them all together. But then DJs have a large fan-base. Hip-hop DJs are considered an integral element of hip-hop music, it's what gives the "hip-hop" feel, of hip-hopping from one beat to the next in tandem with the lyrical stone-stepping from the rapper. But then you get Citizen Joe who discovers hip-hop music and falls in love with it, because there's some sort of emotional or spiritual connection there, it makes him think, and he decides that hip-hop is the music for him. In fact, it's the only music. "Bah," he says, "that shit they play on the radio ain't even music. All that guitar shit."

But then next door to Citizen Joe is Citizen John, who likes that guitar shit so much he wants to slit his wrists and let the crimson pour all over his brand new Stratford. He's sick of the world, and wants it to end, and finds that he connects best with music which voices the thoughts he never could. And "sad" music makes him feel happy in a strange sort of way (because Art is strange like that, right?). "Happy music," he muses, "Fuck that shit. Who wants to get high and listen to music about smoking marijuana all the time?"

"Hey man," says Citizen Bob, spliff in hand and head bouncing back and forth barely in rhythm to the syncopated, bassy reggae riffs blaring out of his speakers. "You gotta love this reggae shit, it's the biz."

"But no," cries Citizen Pete, "you're not even listening to reggae, not real reggae; you're listening to Bob Marley. Marley's just a reggae performer who - guess what - hit it big for no particular reason, made it into the charts, onto the radio, and so he's the pin-up boy for what people call reggae. I, on the other hand, listen to all kinds of reggae, and have studied Jamaican music in general from 50s calypso through to 60s ska, rocksteady, reggae, ragga, dub. Which is why I know people like Lee Scratch Perry, Dennis Alcapone, Dave Barker, Clement Coxsone Dodd, Prince Buster, King Tubby, King Stitt, Jackie Mittoo, and you only sit there with your fucking Bob Marley posters claiming to be a 'reggae fan'."

"Easy, there," says Citizen Jack, "but I couldn't help but notice you said ska, from Jamaica? But me and my friends, Citizen Josh and Citizen Jane, listen to ska all the time, and also to a bit of oi!; we are massive punk fans, and I'm delighted to know you are too."

"Yes," pipes up Citizen Biff, baldy head shining strong and Dr. Martens radiating all their ox-blood glory, "I like ska also. Me and my friends, Citizen Boff and Citizen Buff, love to smash black people's heads in to the sound of some wicked, heavy ska. We're massive ska fans. Fuck that reggae stuff, though. That's not music."

"Music!" cries Citizen Ginger, "Music music don't abuse it, that's what I say. Music music you should never refuse it. I say that too. I love music. I can't wait to listen to the radio and tune in to the sounds of Justin Timberlake and Nelly Furtado! Man, I love those guys."

"Pah," says Citizen Fred, "that's not music. None of these are music. You're all talking about greatness, and none of the music you're saying is great is even that memorable. It won't be remembered in two decades if that. Go back to the '20s, I say. When I was a boy I listened to jazz."

"Jazz is modern," replies Citizen Frank. "I know this because I happen to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of 20th century music. All of these musical tastes are modern. 20th century. A product of radio, television, the internet, downloading; it's all crass. You should go back, back further, to the times when real musicians lived, when real music fans crowded theatres and concert halls to hear the wondrous sounds of Bach, of Mozart, of Schubert."

"Don't forget Chopin," replies Citizen Horace. "How could you have forgotten Chopin? He, and Wagner."

"Wagner is overrated," says Citizen Will. "I never cared for the Romantics, anyway. Monteverdi and Vivaldi were the true musicians of our history."

"Bollocks," says Citizen Wanker, "Rock, Rap, Reggae, Rocksteady or Jazz, Renaissance, Romanticism, Baroque or Punk, Ska, Swing, Folk or Metal, Techno, Trance, Drum 'n Bass or Classical, Hip-hop, Trip-hop, Doo-bop or Funk or Fuck or Whatever; they're all popular in their own ways, are they not? For the people who love them, majority or minority, bandwagon or cult, diverse or niche."

"Popular?" says Citizen Shmuck. "Popular doesn't come into it. I thought we were talking greatness?"

"Fuck this," says Citizen Fuckface, known for swearing a lot and thus never taken seriously. "The whole fucking lot of you are snobs. Pretentious fuckers. You're not even fucking music fans. You're too ignorant. You're only interested in how music might represent this or that. Music isn't even a representative artform. It's relational. Musical form should be at the basis of music appreciation. And anyway, what if bands or acts are popular? Did they seek to be popular? Yes. They have commercial aesthetic - some of them more than others. What doesn't sell now might sell later, what didn't sell then would be a hit now; and all that."

"Oh shut up," all of the rest of them cried, "You're taking this whole thing far too seriously." And then, in chorus, they chanted, "Musical form? Musical form? Commercial, commercial, commercial aesthetic? What kind of talk is this, it's rather pathetic. Ignorant, us? Pretentious, me? Representation? Relation? Appreciation? Constipation? Inflation? Degradation? Globalisation? Apocalyptication? Resignation? Signification? Simplification? Reductivation? Stupidification? Sink-a-bally-cation? Notification? Pro-creation? Pro-creation, yes yes yes! Off to bed we go, off to bed. Make love, not war. War what's it good for good for good for. To hell with war, get on the floor, get naked and ride, and syncopation and rhythm and bouncing and douncing and trouncing and ouncing and louncing and crouncing and jouncing. In fact, to hell with music. What's it good for?"

"I don't know," said Citizen Fuckface. "But I like it an awful lot."

Capo, you take pride in being the unbiased Citizen Fuckface, right?

Capo, so what exactly is your point?

I don't consider myself biased or elitist either. I simply put it on a par of cinema in terms of say Michael Bay. I'm not even knocking popular music. Most popular music was good or better in most of the 1900's. However after the early 90's alt movement, I think popular music took a huge dive into shitty boy bands, singers, and bad hip-hop. Though the 70's-80's disco era was horrible in terms of popular music.

My point is most of the bad music of the last ten or so years is enjoyed on a shallow basis. A friend of mine listens to the new hits, and tosses off past musicians as "old." Anyone who considers a song from the 90's, or last year "old" is an idiot to me. Most people from my experience are judging music in terms of materialism and "what's hot."

Hey, you stole my point. Asshole. Meany. You suck. I bet you're the one who took a shit in the sandbox. Swine. Doppel-ganger. I don't want to play with you anymore. Jerk.

I beg to differ. I pictured another member here when I read the Citizen Fuckface part. But I don't want to offend them, so they'll remain nameless.

You pictured me you fucker.

Pleaze girls....I'm Citizen Fuckface. I certainly have the credentials with the 30+ hate PMs from Irishman, 7 from DJ, 3 from DC(I still remember "WORLD TRADE CENTER-Gate!";)) and even one from Sicilianbabe.

As the residential Asshole, Capo was inspired by me. If not, then I demand by who.

I fucking swear the fucking most you stupid cocksucking motherfucker.

Boo-hoo, you're just pissed that its me not you.

Hard work always accomplishes the American dream.

I SWEAR A LOT AND NOBODY CARES WHAT I HAVE TO SAY.

I AM CITIZEN FUCKFACE.

No, I AM SPARTACUS!

Spartacus, Fuckface...

I swear, if Buttmunker jumps into this argument, I'm going to sleep!

Good grief this thread suddenly got hi-jacked.

That's what I'm talking about...emotions. No thinking involved.



So what? If it doesn't sound good, it doesn't matter what the song's about.

Let's take a look at one of my favorite movies of all time: Paris, Texas. It's a film about a man facing his past, returning to his ex wife and his son. A lot of films can carry that plot, but what sets Paris, Texas apart from the rest is the manner in which it's delivered. The haunting score, the beautiful visuals, the total unpredictability, the emotional power of the final scenes.

The same with music. You can write all the thought provoking lyrics you want, but if it doesn't sound good, what's the use? If I want to think about something, I'll sit up in my room and read a novel.

emotions and thinking are tied in mate.

You think of emotions as impulsive.

Plus, "haunting score"....why exactly IS it haunting?

Save the space if you want to explain why, since it would prove my point.

Emotions are impulsive.

Yet you decided that score was haunting. Whats so different about it than say VERTIGO or whatever?

Jesus, I'm starting to sound like Capo!

I didn't decide it was haunting. It just gives that effect.

This is stupid.

You don't sound like Capo. If you sounded like Capo, you would have a 4587438520 word post, consisting of only 2 sentences and 4897782658479235732 commas.

I agree.

Besides, I wanna be me...not Capo.

Thinking is my favorite part of music. Many times the lyrics themselves bring the song to an entirely new dimension. Just look at a Bob Dylan or Elliot Smith song, with shallow lyrics they can easily be your cliche singer-songwriter type of music.

Do you tell Neutral Milk Hotel that their album themes are pointless because of this? Shit, just download the instrumental versions then.

Why do you listen to Rap DVC? The thing that separates the rappers I like from the ones I hate is first and foremost the lyrics. I'm sure someone can say Sean Paul's production is better and more catchy then Proof's, but it's pointless without any depth to it.

Anyone can make a catchy song. Put some poppy chords together, poppy bassline. It's easy. But thats the thing, making music just to sound catchey is a cop out. I love heavy Metal, but only when it has depth behind it. Someone can be the fastest guitarist in the world but it's meaningless when there's no depth to it.

I'll go back to that quote you thought was stupid, because let's be honest, when you're dealing with most people who make these bands rich, you're dealing with people who use music as a trend.

Personal pronouns, as ever, such as "you", "I", "me", "him", are irrelevant and metaphorical. At once the author talks about nothing and everything, everybody and nobody. There is no singling out where I'm coming from, because I don't know anybody well enough to single out. Ask what exactly is my point, and you shall be met with silence, because frank talk falls on deaf ears, and after all, I'd hate for me to talk literal and then be dismissed as not having depth. Not explaining yourself seems to work for Dylan around here.

Something only makes you "think" if it hits with you emotionally. Which is why high school lessons on poetry and what this poem or that poem might mean can sometimes be really painful, because the poems they choose to "de-cipher" are fucking shit, often written by contemporary poets for the sole purpose of being taught in a classroom. That's about as poetic as a fucking dildo.

Why have I suddenly started to swear a lot more, and why are my points about pop charts being continually ignored (though not without claims against elitism or bias)?

Dylan's lyrics, Smith's lyrics, Cohen's lyrics, Doseone's lyrics, Nas's lyrics; they don't have inherent depth to them. I don't even know what depth is if it isn't some kind of emotional strand which stems from personalised communication between Memory and Desire (for those are the two concepts I would argue comprise all rational thought).

Dylan's lyrics are about as shallow as a kids' swimming pool if you're completely indifferent to what he's writing about. Or they might be the most meaningful lyrics you've ever heard if you like the way he sings them but don't know what he's singing about. Or, like me, you might not speak Icelandic, but think Sigur Rós play some of the most meaningful music and/or lyrics you've ever heard. Or, like me also, you might go to see José González live and be surprised that he brings you to tears by covering "Put Your Hands On Your Heart and Tell Me" by Kylie Minogue, that well-known Australian pop queen. But if Kylie Minogue had come on and sung it to a well-worn catchy beat behind it, you might have cried in pain, right? Ear-splitting cliché music. You might be a music fan to the point that you don't really like all that much music because music is about depth to you and most of it you hear isn't all that deep because most of it you hear is on the radio or in the charts because you happen to consume it passively or actively every single day, and you do that because music, although you would argue against it, might be a trend or fashion or industry more than it is an expressive artform.

Why is Sonata No. 14 by Beethoven referred to most commonly as "Moonlight Sonata"? Why do people feel the need to give a meaning to pieces of music which might also give it the burden of having to represent something outside of its own form? "To evoke feelings of the moonlight shining down below" and all that rubbish, but it might have easily been called "Sunshine Sonata" and you suddenly start thinking about a tranquil afternoon in some long grass with a lover and the sun beating down on you.

And if you're in a nightclub listening to, well, a tune which was produced and performed and recorded in order to be played in a nightclub and make people dance, to be played really fucking loud, loud enough so the bass hits your heart and produces an unconscious rapture throughout your body, so that in a sense the music is flowing through your veins and before you know it, because you're part of a crowd who's also dancing along to this pop chart shit, you find yourself dancing along to it too, moving your feet to the rhythm of the Scissor Sisters, grinding into a girl's ass to the slow beats of Usher, swinging your arms and flicking your wrists to 50 Cent singing about candy shops and lollipops and removing girls' tops. If that isn't loving what you're hearing, if that isn't two-way emotional masturbation between you and the music, if that isn't depth, I don't know what is.

Then again, whoever's writing this, whoever is claiming to be the author of this post, whoever that or this or him or I might be, may be talking rubbish, may be confusing people with abstraction and pathetic drivel. He might even be considering to give it all up, to throw the idea of debate out of the window because he finds himself having to defend music he might not even necessarily like, but finds himself contrarily being pulled down by his ankles by a heavy force into a dark whirlwind in which music fans expose their own irrationality and ignorance with a term thrown here, a term thrown there, buzz-phrases and clichés in order to describe what they term clichéd and mediocre, and the whole thing is very discouraging, because it results in a whole lot of negativity, of fickle tastes and reductivism which are just as bandwagonned and fashionable and short-lived as the bandwagons and fashions and trends they're shitting on.

capo can you explain your signature

I don't enjoy anything less than excellence.

Is 'excellence' very different from 'depth' in terms of abstraction (not the literal meanings)? Is that statement in your signature (maybe a quote, I dunno) not elitist? In short, do you really believe in all the stuff you wrote previously or was it simply for the sake of argument?

I have neither the time nor the interest to pursue things I don't care about. I don't buy a dog if I don't want a pet.

I've had that signature since this thread. It means that if something engages me, emotionally, aesthetically, spiritually, intellectually, it has some deal of excellence to it. It has to. I don't know how to defined depth. But I disagree with the common notion that it resides in thematic exploration. At heart I am probably a formalist. I find a lot of depth in the structure of things, the existence of things; to me things have meaning, they don't lead to meaning. It's the kind of approach that is difficult to surmise in words, it's rather very abstract, driven by thought and feelings, emotions and instincts. My appreciation of Art absorbs the active consumption of that Art; I don't hold myself at a distance from a work, I don't like to cancel myself out of the equation and talk about things such as "the audience" as if I'm not part of that very audience or "author's intentions" as if I have any authority as to what that might or might not have been.