Not hating any music

[Polymorphia]

Browsing this little sub-forum, I see many people with firey opinions on various bands, songs, lyrics, and I realise that I'm not a particularly opinionated person when it comes to art or music, or at least when it comes to disliking it. At the most I'll be ambivalent about a song, I don't think I consider any musical artist 'shit'... even your trite written-by-committee pop of the day, even if I hate its principles, I don't dislike it when hearing it, though I may never seek it out (maybe this is the cause, I don't really choose to listen to music I think I might dislike). I even find it hard to evaluate one album as being better than another (I might say one album is an artist's best, but I'd be stumped if I had to rank them in a meaningful way).

I don't think there's even one song that I actively hate. Even if it's bad objectively, I don't hate it in-the-moment. I'm like those reviewers who never dish out anything lower than a 7.

Is there something wrong with me? CaB, can you teach me to hate music?

[Pauline Walnuts]

Try this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGwWNGJdvx8&list=RDEM_Ktu-TilkxtLvmc9wX1MLQ&start_radio=1

You can thank me later.

[pigamus]

Oh! Is that who Ed Sheeran is? My brain just registers that as "advertisement, your video will begin shortly", not music as such

[ASFTSN]

How do you feel about absolutely losing your mind over music you REALLY like?

[Polymorphia]

Try this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGwWNGJdvx8&list=RDEM_Ktu-TilkxtLvmc9wX1MLQ&start_radio=1

You can thank me later.

Just put the first song on... I don't even dislike it? It's too bland, too generic to hate. Music that'd be fine in a supermarket. On a technical level, it's perfectly competent as well. We'll see if I start hating him after a few of these.

How do you feel about absolutely losing your mind over music you REALLY like?

If I'm reading this right, I certainly do get intensely passionate about certain songs (I pontificate about krautrock to anyone who'll listen), but it's almost as if I can only rate songs from 7-10, as if I don't hate, only love (and tolerate) music

[ASFTSN]

I think I'm sort of in a similar mindset these days. There's so much music other there worth investigating I don't really bother getting enraged about something I don't like. I used to when I was younger I suppose, but that's just part of being a twatty teenage music fan.

Even when people say things like "Oh the album would be good but that production ruins it or something" I feel just like....well that's the piece of art, isn't it. That's it in its entirety. It's not going to change, so I'd either like to move on and find something similar but with that particular element more to my taste, or delve deeper into what I don't like about it, see if there's some acceptance or re-evaluation I can come to about it.

It is quite fun to pretend to take stances against types of music or elements of music I don't like and can even be useful to find what I do like, but it doesn't actually make me hate it.

Unless it's got aggressively cranked autotune vocals on it, then it can get to fuck.

[Jockice]

I used to know a guy who like me was a local paper music journalist. Unlike me he liked almost everything. I don't know how he could do the job with absolutely no critical facilities, although of course all local performers (and indeed performers in general) just want reviews that say how great they apparently are.

I say almost because there were two acts he didn't like. One was Morrissey. You know, fair enough, divisive figure and all that. But the other was Madness. One of the most universally-loved British pop groups of all time, yet the bloke who liked everything else hated them. I just could never work that one out.

[Sin Agog]

If I'm reading this right, I certainly do get intensely passionate about certain songs (I pontificate about krautrock to anyone who'll listen), but it's almost as if I can only rate songs from 7-10, as if I don't hate, only love (and tolerate) music

I 'member when I were a member of those ratings sites I'd sometimes get self-conscious at the sheer volume of 4-stars I was dishing out.  It utterly spoiled that pretty bell curve everyone was aiming for.  But the fact is, you eventually know yourself, down in your furrow, enough not to faff around with things made for other people's scenes.  Which isn't to say you should allow yourself to slip into senescent, calcified comfort zones.  I guess if you're still gleaning new revelations from that well-worn box of trinkets then have at it, but it can easily parlay into stranger danger.

[Icehaven]

When I was younger I used to actively hate some music on (misguided, juvenile, boringly rockist) principle, but I've mellowed a lot now, however...
If you really want to know what it's like to hate music then take a tune you don't much like/are indifferent towards and play it over and over and over and over a few hundred times in a variety of situations including plenty where it really isn't appropriate and at a volume just loud enough to stop you hearing things you need to hear. Better still, just take a part of the song, 30 seconds or so from the middle, and stick that on repeat as you go about your day, not letting yourself turn it off no matter what you're doing. I promise you you will hate, HATE, it after just a few hours.
I am of course describing a condensed version of what happens to music when it's used on adverts, and worse still it even works on music you previously liked. It pains me deeply that, failing the onset of dementia or amnesia, I'll never hear the outro of Blur's The Universal again without thinking about British Gas, and knowing my luck even if that happens I'll have forgotten it was ever a real song and just start worrying that I've left my heating on.

[ASFTSN]

Yes, repetition is the exception here. I probably "hate" some of the songs I was forced to listen to 7 or 8 times a day while working in retail.

[rue the polywhirl]

If you're looking for music to hate, check out Idles. I reckon you could wager a lot of peace agreements based upon a unifying hatred of Idles.

[NoSleep]

I think at some point you may decide that some elements get regurgitated far too many times. Very little music is actually bad, just mediocre, unoriginal, lazy, kids sounding like their grandads, etc, i.e. you've already heard it before done better, maybe for the first time ever and with more conviction. Hearing something I've never heard the likes of before is always going to be more exciting to me, like the first time you take a drug; brand new music is a drug in this respect.

And not all music comes in song form...

I wonder what you make of musicians like Derek Bailey, or CaB fave, Phil Minton.

[Famous Mortimer]

I wonder what you make of musicians like Derek Bailey, or CaB fave, Phil Minton.

If you want to recreate the Phil Minton effect without tracking down any of his work, scream into a bin for five minutes then have a bunch of your friends tell you what a genius you are.

[wosl]

I used to know a guy who like me was a local paper music journalist. Unlike me he liked almost everything. I don't know how he could do the job with absolutely no critical facilities, although of course all local performers (and indeed performers in general) just want reviews that say how great they apparently are.

It's funny though; dig through old music press reviews and articles and you find many of the ones that are more tentative and less harshly judgemental have aged better than those that go the whole hog on a roasting.  There can be something airless about unequivocal dismissals, whereas reviews that at the time seemed tame or blandly considerate - because the reviewer's mind isn't made up - can end up looking perceptive and prescient.  In any case, second-guessing initial responses would be an important part of a good journo's 'critical facilities', you'd like to think.

[the science eel]

Any of you go along with the idea that if you're passionate about what you like, then you're equally passionate about what you hate?

[wosl]

If passion is love, than how can hate be passion?  Loving hating would be a waste.

[ASFTSN]

Any of you go along with the idea that if you're passionate about what you like, then you're equally passionate about what you hate?

Not necessarily. Indifference gives me more mind space to be passionate about what I do like.

[Polymorphia]

I wonder what you make of musicians like Derek Bailey, or CaB fave, Phil Minton.

I've enjoyed what I've listened to of Derek Bailey. Just gave some of Phil Minton's work a go, bit of a difficult listen but I quite enjoyed it, being fond of a lot of experimental music/sound art in general, maybe that gives me a different mindset to trying to evaluate music. Or maybe it means I should view popular music with more disdain like a lot of experimental artists seem to

[the]

I used to work with a guy who occasionally drove us to meetings a 2-3 hour journey away, and back. Myself and other passengers would put loads of music on to fill the time, and he would always genuinely be totally happy with whatever we put on, even if it was a bit abrasive or stupid, for the whole duration.

I could never work out if he had this zen-like ability to be endlessly amused by and comfortable with any music, or if there was a void inside like someone who'd had all their musical tastebuds burned off. The jury's still out. He he was happy to listen to it for hours, but you also got the sense that the music was somehow devoid of meaning to him and left no lasting impression.

[jamiefairlie]

It's not the music itself, it's what it represents. Perhaps that's now a generational things that's gone, subcultures were critical to personal identity and music was a shorthand for your own tribe and therefore for yourself. Hating other music therefore was a way of condemning those other lifestyles and attitudes that were opposite to your own. Not unlike identifying with a political party or movement.

[NoSleep]

If you want to recreate the Phil Minton effect without tracking down any of his work, scream into a bin for five minutes then have a bunch of your friends tell you what a genius you are.

Entirely unfair and untrue.

[the]

It's not the music itself, it's what it represents. Perhaps that's now a generational things that's gone, subcultures were critical to personal identity and music was a shorthand for your own tribe and therefore for yourself. Hating other music therefore was a way of condemning those other lifestyles and attitudes that were opposite to your own. Not unlike identifying with a political party or movement.

That doesn't relate to love/hate of music though, that's more or less the definition of being a poseur.

[NoSleep]

Or maybe it means I should view popular music with more disdain like a lot of experimental artists seem to

Are you assuming that? I remember hearing Evan Parker enthusing about 50's rock 'n' roll before one gig. And Derek Bailey started out as a Charlie Christian enthusiast and went from there. There was an aspect of Bailey's philosophy that questioned the packaging of music to sell to the public (the idea of the song itself, as a repeatable product, compared to an improvisation that might never be reproduced; he even questioned making records of improvisations, albeit seeing the sense of selling them to keep him going) but I don't think there was any antipathy towards other music forms as such (his documentary TV series about improvisation covered lots of genres, although strangely bypassed jazz, which had been his own starting point).

[jamiefairlie]

That doesn't relate to love/hate of music though, that's more or less the definition of being a poseur.

It does though, the music has to be integrated into the bigger picture. Take Joy Division, part of their appeal to me was the whole Factory "independent arty  outsider" image, the artwork, the lack of overt promotion, the disdain of commercialism and so on. The music had to be aligned though, it wouldn't have worked if Erasure had been the main band.

[BeardFaceMan]

If you want to recreate the Phil Minton effect without tracking down any of his work, scream into a bin for five minutes then have a bunch of your friends tell you what a genius you are.

Ah come on now, its not just sceaming. He gurgles and gurns too.

[wosl]

Or maybe it means I should view popular music with more disdain like a lot of experimental artists seem to

They don't all distain it.  Gavin Bryars, who was in Joseph Holbrooke with Derek Bailey and Tony Oxley, worked with John Cage, and co-founded the Portsmouth Symphonia before gaining wider recognition with 'Titanic and Jesus' Blood.., has professed admiration for the Beatles. Charles Hayward is an Abba fan.

[purlieu]

There's a lot of music that makes me uncomfortable to listen to. Probably about 95% of music that could be described as "rock" or "rock n roll" (when separated from the whole indie/punk/post-punk strain of things starting in the late '70s). Most 'song'-based music that isn't overly melodic (The Fall and other such nonsense). Jump Up dnb (the Pendulum sound). Ed Sheeran, Sam Smith and other smug wanker pop singer songwriter stuff of the last 10 years.

That said, hate is such a passionate word and I can't give this kind of music that level of passion. I have an aversion to it but I've no interest in spending my time disliking it. I may hate being forced to listen to it (on the odd occasion this has happened), but if I'm going to indulge any negative emotions than I'll save them for people who are damaging the lives of others. There's enough unpleasantness going around in the world and in my life as it is, without getting bogged down in actively hating things that are fundamentally irrelevant to my life.

Or maybe it means I should view popular music with more disdain like a lot of experimental artists seem to

A huge number of experimental artists I know and/or follow online are very vocal fans of pop music. There can be a certain snobbishness towards 'popular music' from some academics, but y'know, fuck them.

[Sin Agog]

The experimentalists tend to either come from another planet where such earthly concerns barely register, or have a marked admiration for anyone who can fill in the void with a pop song that feels like it's always been there.  It's the rabble of fans who turn these assemblages of noise into life creeds.

[jamiefairlie]

There's a lot of music that makes me uncomfortable to listen to. Probably about 95% of music that could be described as "rock" or "rock n roll" (when separated from the whole indie/punk/post-punk strain of things starting in the late '70s). Most 'song'-based music that isn't overly melodic (The Fall and other such nonsense). Jump Up dnb (the Pendulum sound). Ed Sheeran, Sam Smith and other smug wanker pop singer songwriter stuff of the last 10 years.

That said, hate is such a passionate word and I can't give this kind of music that level of passion. I have an aversion to it but I've no interest in spending my time disliking it. I may hate being forced to listen to it (on the odd occasion this has happened), but if I'm going to indulge any negative emotions than I'll save them for people who are damaging the lives of others. There's enough unpleasantness going around in the world and in my life as it is, without getting bogged down in actively hating things that are fundamentally irrelevant to my life.

Yeah, one of the advantages of modern tech is that you can totally disconnect from mainstream modern entertainment and still get everything you want.

[Polymorphia]

I'm not entirely sure which artist I had in mind now... maybe it was one of the early industrial or noise artists (perhaps William Bennett of Whitehouse?), and even then I'm not certain