Is music important to you?

Do you really care about music?

Is music second only to sex in your life?

If you have spent your teenage years in a western country these questions will not be familiar to you because it is assumed that the answer to them all is YES! Absolutely! Naturally!

There is an enormous industry that exists to feed your desire for music. If the desire is not there it must be created.

I have never met anybody who didn't like music to some degree, with the exception of deaf people, and even deaf people are exposed to the "of course you like music" propaganda (by music teachers, naturally). The point of this page is not that the desire to listen to music is alien to people and has been created by evil manipulators but that the option to care for music to a reasonable degree is not given to young people. The only option is to be seen to be thoroughly obsessed by music and to proclaim that obsession loudly, clearly and publicly at every opportunity or be considered a freak, a philistine and soulless.

To clear up the point I do like music. The key word is like. I am not obsessed by it, it does not control my life. I have a preference for one type of music over another just as I have a preference for particular scenery, perfume, fabrics and methods of making coffee.

Music was a very minor part of my life for many years. I sold my cassette and LP collection in 1985 because I needed the money and I didn't buy any other form of recorded music for 15 years. I always had something more important to spend my money on. I did not refuse to buy music, I just didn't get round to it. Music was always available to me on the radio, if I could find nothing better to do, and most of the time I could, in fact, all of the time I could. I did not avoid music, I just didn't buy any. Some people may find the idea unthinkable, but I just got on with my life and there were no problems. Those 15 years without music were some of the happiest of my life, not because I wasn't listening to music, but because my life was full and satisfying. I had no need of music and I did not miss it.

Recently I have let some music back into my life, I have a small number of CDs and I listen to them sometimes, often quite loud and with powerful emotions running through me, I don't just play music, I listen to it and experience it. Although I enjoy this music I think it would be true to say that I spend more time each month having sex than playing my CDs, and that was not meant as a boast.

The idea that you can have a full and satisfying life without listening to music for several hours each day is utterly alien to many people. They have swallowed the idea that music is essential, that music is what life is for. They swallow that idea and they spread it. Music is Life is a very powerful meme.

Teenagers do not have a choice as to whether or not to be obsessed by music, their choice is limited to which music should be seen to be their life.

There is an enormous industry that exists by stimulating and servicing the demand of teenagers for music. It cannot be left to be an option for teenagers to like music a bit, but not enough to buy it. The music production industry is in a symbiotic relationship with the children's media industry. Children's television is full of promotional videos for records and concert tours. Half the airtime on Saturday morning television is filled with music videos and interviews with "popstars". The music producers want the publicity, the television companies get to fill the airtime. I often wonder who pays who for what in such circumstances. This uneasy relationship can take on new twists when the musicians make records which are in effect three and a half minute commercials for their own brand; naming the band in the title and chorus and introducing band members individually in the verses. The children's television presenters and wannabe popstars are so far up each others bottoms that they probably cannot see the issue.

Another mind boggling institution that nobody seems to challenge much is the music chart. How many sad people must there be out there for whom the total weekly sales figures for records is the biggest thing happening in their life? Why should anybody really care? If the world had its head screwed on right the music charts would appear only on the inside pages of specialist music industry magazines. But in the world we live in for some people this stuff really seems to matter. Why? Do these people have shares in the acts or record companies? No. They have absolutely no real reason to care at all. I am as mildly curious about which musician is selling records as I am curious about what the most popular holiday destination or brand of soap powder. But when I watch MTV (sorry watch is the wrong word, it suggests too high a degree of commitment, when I see MTV) it seems that knowledge of what is number one this week is the most important piece of information that mankind has ever been privy to.

Not caring much about music is not an option. Of course you care. You have to, many people rely on your obsession for their living. Actors are forever droning on about the importance of Shakespeare. Nurses constantly warn that we are not spending enough on healthcare. Teachers are constantly making sure that education is always the first priority. Musicians, music journalists and music media presenters are constantly fanning the flames of our "natural obsession" with music. Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll! It is more important than life itself. Life without music would be not worth living.

Young people are like sheep. If they constantly get the message that music is the most important thing in their life they begin to internalize it. Hitler would be proud of his protégés, they have proved his point that if a lie is big enough and repeated often enough people will believe it. Not only believe it but be willing to kill for it. The big lie is that music really matters and life without music is unthinkable.

Do teenagers from African tribes get obsessed by music, staying up all night listening to newly invented drum beats? Did the teenage children of the Pilgrim Fathers sew the names of fiddle players on the back of their jackets? Of course not. Obsession with music is not a human universal. A liking for music is. The obsession is engendered by our culture and the manipulation of a huge exploitative money making industry. It is also fanned directly by individuals who jump on any suggestion that music is not profoundly important. People will fall over themselves to condemn any suggestion that music is trivial or unimportant.

There are nearly seven billion people in the world today. Many of them can make music. There is an enormous back-catalogue of great music from the past. There are fresh new people constantly coming of age into the music producing industry with the burning desire to produce even more music. People are going to college to learn how to be record producers, the unspoken assumption being that they will each work forty hours a week for the next thirty years churning out more music. There is the constant problem of oversupply to contend with. To keep the market in music going it is not enough for you to know what you like and like what you know. You must be driven to constantly buy new music, to spend a significant fraction of your income on music playing hardware and music playback software. If you don't want new music you must be educated until you do.

I used to work selling Hi Fis (among other things) to people and as part of my job I offered extended warranties. Trying to sell a five year warranty on a HI Fi is very hard work, half the people I spoke to told me they doubt they will be using the same Hi Fi in three years time, many delighted in telling me that they will probably be buying another in less than two years. They often paused and looked at me at that point as if expecting me to endorse their music obsession. Poor sad bastards. People boast about how they spend too much on CDs in just the same way that they boast about how they drank too much at the weekend. They expect social approval and admiration for their obsession. They expect it because usually they get it.

It is not just youth culture that spreads the message that music is essential and of course everybody needs it. One of the longest running programmes on the BBC is called Desert Island Discs. The idea is that the interviewer invites a celebrity to imagine they are marooned on a desert island, all alone with no communication with the outside world. However, by some miracle they get to choose 8 records to take with them (presumably originally 78s that would have worked on a clockwork gramophone). So the entire premise of this show can be summed up in the phrase “Now then, important person, explain to the gullible listeners which 8 pieces of music you could not live without...” The show almost always begins with a question along the lines of “Tell the listeners why music is so important to you.” I cannot recall any guest ever saying that music was not important and they only agreed to come on the show because it was cheap publicity and a good ego massage, even though there have been several shows which gave me the strong impression that was exactly what was going on, the eight records were probably picked by a secretary or PA.

Enjoy music just as much as you want. But get a grip on the obsession. Ask yourself if you truly believe it is quite as important as people make out. Also ask yourself what good is done by reinforcing the idea that music obsession is healthy. If music is really so important it doesn't need people falling over themselves to express that opinion. Nobody goes out of their way to say that sugar is sweet or water is wet. If music is so important and vital and is rightly the centre of every thinking person's life then expressing that opinion at every opportunity would not be necessary.

Along with not taking music obsession too far I suggest we should all try not to take musicians too seriously either. Why care what these people do with their lives when they are not producing the product you consume? I don't care what politics my dentist espouses so why should I care about the politics or sexuality of musicians? They are our servants; like waiters or cooks. Treat them with respect, not awe.

Most people's relationship to music is entirely that of consumer. It is my belief that anybody who identifies themself to any significant degree as a consumer of anything is doing themselves down and demeaning themselves. Try never to identify yourself as a consumer, whether of a product or a service or a fashion and particularly not of a drug. Always be bigger than what you consume. Of course everybody consumes, but it is not healthy for you to make any form of consumption central to your identity. It is also a good idea not to make a loyalty your sole central defining characteristic either, because if the thing you show loyalty to (nation, class, union, football team, regiment, party, band or whatever) lets you down you have to rebuild your self image from scratch.

Words and Music

Music with words can be dangerous. If you give music too much credence, which seems to be the normal attitude of modern youth, you are in danger of taking in a huge load of nonsense.

Adding a good tune to fifth rate poetry can make a first rate rock anthem. A good driving beat and Bon Jovi or Tina Turner style vocals can make manifest bullshit sound like the wisdom of the age. Just listen to Nutbush City Limits, it sounds to me like the random reading of roadsigns from a passing tour bus spliced into a good jam session, but the way it is performed makes you want to dedicate your life to finding some inner meaning in this wonderful work of profound poetry. Even if there was some meaning there would it be wise to turn a rock song into a creed? Never.

The closest I come to subscribing to the views of a rock song is to Imagine by John Lennon. If you have read a good proportion of my site you will know that I share atheism with John. But that is as far as it goes, I don't go as far as suggesting an end to possessions, John's voice seems to taunt me I wonder if you can... John Lennon was a supremely capable self publicist, a very good songwriter, a fair pianist and a competent rhythm guitarist. He was not a world class philosopher. Being a musician, of any grade, is not a qualification to become a guru. Being famous, and rich because of that fame, makes a person less well qualified to think objectively about the problems of the world to my way of thinking.

Words with music are very dangerous because they can allow repulsive and illogical ideas to penetrate into your brain. I recently heard a great rock lick on the radio and I started to started to click my fingers and nod my head to the beat, then I realized what it was I was grooving away to; Spirit in the Sky. A sugar coated pill of irrational meme pollution. God, Heaven and Hell, predestination and the afterlife wrapped up in a classic rock beat. Music can wrap up any number of damaging or clichéd ideas and slip them past the sentries of logical thought. To keep your thoughts free of this pollution I suggest we should all strive consciously to detect any message that songs are passing to us, once we have detected it we can process it logically and find out if we want to wall it off, to keep it from infecting our thoughts.

Probably more important than the obviously dangerous ideas are the trivial bits of nonsense that songs contain:

You are my one and only,

I was born to love you,

your love light shines, (what on earth is a love light?)

only you,

you were made for me,

heaven is missing an angel,

God made you for me,

I hope I die before I grow old,

this love is for ever,

we will never part,

you are my destiny,

I will never be happy/sad again now that I have lost/found you.

Songs are always chock full of memes like this, they spread from brain to brain and song to song. Many are rather rancid ideas that get a fresh airing every few years in a new song.

I think we are doomed to have more and more such second rate memes propagated because of the inevitability of the creation of ever more pop/pap music. Do we need any more music? It is not an issue, it is coming anyway. New people will want to make a name for themselves. Songs will be written, clichés will be turned into lyrics. Videos will be made, breasts will be flaunted. CDs will be sold. It has all been said, it has all been done, it will all be said and done again; it's business.

“Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung.”

- Voltaire

Atheism

Politics

Life

Feedback

Forum

Blog

Home

Aural Flouride

Advice

The Day The Music Died

The Colour of Music

Let's Talk about Sex

Sex and Evolution

Fashionable People

Kill the Puppy Dogs

There's Nowt as Queer as Folk

Don't Eat Me!

Women and Islam

Women Priests

In Praise of Big Women

Masturbation

Teenage Sex

Palace Admits Prince Charles is Gay

Polygamy

What The Bible Says About Abortion

The Passions

Meatheads, Slobs and Pencil Necked Geeks

Is Equality Possible?

Why do Mannequins have Nipples?

McDonald's: Easy McTarget

Ticket Touts

Tweet

© 1999 - 2011 by Martin Willett.

mwillett.org: Debate Unlimited