Don't Let Music Reviews Sway Your Music Taste

It’s 8 p.m., you just collapsed on your couch after finishing your weekly laundry and daily commitments, and all you want to do now is bump some tunes as your vanilla scented candle burns to a liquid wax. Your laptop is fully charged, headphones in arms’ reach, and don’t worry about the lighting (unless it’s D’Angelo you’re listening to). You scroll through your Spotify; do you go to your old reliable mixes or might you try out some new sounds? There’s been a lot of recent drops in the rap game as well as new indie albums gaining some buzz. Compare the tracks, features, and album art and decide which looks more appealing and which band/artist do you have more of a history with? Start playing one, but maybe you’re making too much of an instinctual decision. Don’t use your lizard brain but your Brian Eno brain. You’ll probably feel some sort of subconscious inclination to check out what the critics have to say because hey, it’s intrinsic to want to fit in, and you don’t want to waste this small bit of free time in your night on something that’s not worthwhile.You browse the web, opening multiple tabs with multiple albums from multiple sources. Your pupils dilate at the bold numbers quantifying talent: 9.3, 58, 3.4,72, N/A. This feels a little artificial, you think, but who cares about their actual reasoning. Each critic takes at least 2,000 words to express their opinions on the album, that’s not to be taken lightly. You could search up the artists’ history, recent news, and listen to a track or two from each album in that time, so why not just follow that number? Numerous people in the world we consider to be the greatest minds looked at reality quantitatively. It also has seemingly philosophical quotes in bold, BOLD, and when has bold ever led you wrong? So you listen to the highest scored album. Wait a second is this different from their last album? It sounds exactly the same. Did their sound not grow at all? Well I guess I liked the last album, but I’d like some variation in their presence.You spent the last 50 minutes looking for that one song, the one that would justify the album receiving an 8.8. You never found it, or maybe your attention started to dwindle by the time it came to the track that was the magnum opus. Regardless, you’re left with an over awareness of your urge to pee and an overwhelming sense of a waste of the night, as if you just watched an episode of “Masterchef” where no one was eliminated. Maybe if you had followed your friends’ suggestions or merely your first instinct of which album cover was more interesting to you, you might have had a better night, but instead you followed the idea that someone who probably shares a very different set of values and has a very technical idea of good music could guide you to what sound you’d like to hear tonight. Maybe you did enjoy the album but you’re not sure why? Did hearing someone else with more ethos praising the sound distort your opinion of the album entirely? Maybe you legitimately did enjoy it without an opinion other than your own. If so, that’s great you, you probably like every album by Beck too.We can’t listen to music with a disregard and disdain for the past and the future, but we can listen to music consciously. Focus on how the lyrics make you think or feel, possibly even how numb the lyrics can make you. Let the bass be the pat on the back you need in the morning or let the trumpets be the ringing in your ears on your ride in to work. Maybe you won’t hear anyone talk for hours alone in your apartment, so instead be preached to in heavenly hymns through verse. Listen attentively with a hesitant but appreciative ear. If you aren’t deciding the music you like, you’re not growing closer to the real you. Take off the flak jackets strapped to your torso by critics and biases and let the waves explode against you unbridled. Be naked, (the people at Woodstock knew that) and let the music you listen to be the translucent hazmat suit which gets you through the social and physical toxicity of life.I’d argue that we tend to regard some of the most historically critically acclaimed albums, “The Greats,” as revolutionary primarily because we’ve been told they’re great for so long and with such fervor. Does this concept of substantial regard for an album’s greatness hold up with albums which were released only a week ago, is the question. Withstanding the test of time is what makes an album great some might say but really music is highly situational. The way that we interlock music and memories is truly wondrous and not something to be cast aside. How one can relate the Smiths’ self entitled album to a second breakup during sophomore year of high school, and all the Nutella which came with it, or the way we can relate Smash Mouths Astral Lounge to our drastic meme induced transition into satanism.