| |
|
quote:Originally posted by Not Me Again:
But to my proper point; why is list culture so addictive in music?
Because it allows anyone to make authoritative statements without having a real broad knowledge of what records have been released. I think that for the most part, listmaking is an acknowledgement of one's own limited knowledge. Especially year-end lists---things that normally only reflect what an individual bought in that year, not an accurate summary and critical study of the myriad records which come out every year...
It's a music magazine trick, people are drawn to these things, they want to be told what is good, or argue their moot little points. The lists in magazines are normally the same old canon, as not to alienate anyone and to set in people's mind an accepted version of history that sometimes doesn't reflect anything more than what was popular and what the most money and critics behind it.
I think that people who really do have a serious interest in music understand that the picture is much bigger than a top ten list, that there is a huge number of brilliant, unique, and influential records that any given person has never heard...that musical history is built upon more than just zeitgeist records. It also tends to be genrecentric, so connections between genres go unmentioned, and people go on thinking that rock, jazz, blues, hip hop, electronic musics, soul, pop, punk, you name it - that they are all alien and mutually exclusive things, when they all come from the same source, and have a great deal more cross pollenation than most people realize.
Nevertheless, I'm always interested in what historians, musicians, and hardcore record collectors/freeform DJs have to say. But they very seldom resort to listmaking...
[ 28-01-2002: Message edited by: Flux = Pop Cultural Ninja ] |
|
|
