{"id":7529,"date":"2016-04-04T21:03:22","date_gmt":"2016-04-05T01:03:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/?p=7529"},"modified":"2016-04-04T21:03:22","modified_gmt":"2016-04-05T01:03:22","slug":"making-music-sincere-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/2016\/04\/04\/making-music-sincere-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Making Music Sincere Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

At college, I\u2019ve often felt the pressure to be a more cultured person. Especially as an arts editor at The Michigan Daily, it sometimes feels like everyone knows more about art than you\u2014I feel like I have so many blind spots when it comes to movies (The Godfather,<\/em> Forrest Gump<\/em>), TV (Gilmore Girls, The Sopranos<\/em>), and, especially, music.<\/p>\n

To a degree, I\u2019ve made strides to correct my blind spots, and it\u2019s sometimes not that hard to do. I realized recently that I really didn\u2019t know much of Kanye West\u2019s music, and, like him or hate him, he dominates culture so much that I feel like I need to know him. So I\u2019ve been listening to his music a lot, even if it\u2019s in the background while I\u2019m doing other stuff, and now that\u2019s one blind spot that I\u2019ve begun to correct.<\/p>\n

But after listening to new music for hours, after going through playlist after playlist in pursuit of greater music knowledge, sometimes I need to just relax and play the music that I\u2019m comfortable with. And that often means bands I discovered in high school or even middle school: Fall Out Boy, Simple Plan, The Story So Far, Yellowcard, All Time Low, A Day to Remember.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

My Chemical Romance is one of those bands that usually gets dismissed as something you listened to when you were in your middle school goth phase. Pretty much any band classified as \u2018emo\u2019 fits that label. But you know what? I listened to the entirety of The Black Parade<\/em> a couple days ago, and that shit is so good! Gerard Way\u2019s voice is funny to imitate, but it\u2019s so good, and the production is so good, and every hook is so infectious, and the lyrics themselves aren\u2019t bad. The album got really good reviews when it was first released, being praised as \u201cone of the most cohesive, engaging rock records of 2006,\u201d \u201cone of the best rock albums of the last decade,\u201d and \u201ca piece of work that will challenge every preconception you ever had about the people who made it.\u201d<\/p>\n

So why do people tend to laugh a little when that band is mentioned? Why do I feel a little reluctant to wear a My Chemical Romance t-shirt to a party that isn\u2019t themed?<\/p>\n

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We all think of our tastes in music as evolving. We tend to think that whatever music we\u2019re listening to now<\/em> is the best music we have ever listened to, that whatever we listened to as kids was automatically worse because we objectively didn\u2019t have as much musical knowledge. And so when we are<\/em> reminded of those songs we used to like, we don\u2019t get to enjoy them sincerely; we enjoy them ironically. We can dance to them and sing along, but we have to laugh a little and remind everyone around us that we know this isn\u2019t good<\/em> music; it\u2019s just nostalgia working its magic. Apparently none of the music from our childhoods can be enjoyed on its own terms anymore.<\/p>\n

Okay, let\u2019s be fair: some music we used to listen to was<\/em> genuinely shitty. I have no interest in returning to \u201cDon\u2019t Trust Me\u201d by 3OH!3 or \u201cShake It\u201d by Metro Station, though even those songs would still probably trigger a frisson of nostalgia at a party. There are some songs out there whose infectious hooks feel genuinely empty; I don\u2019t really admire 3OH!3 for creating one catchy hit. There are some songs that are catchy despite not being especially well-crafted.<\/p>\n

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But most of the songs we loved when we were younger were great for a reason, and listening to The Black Parade<\/em>, I don\u2019t feel any embarrassment. There\u2019s nothing ironic about how fucking good Gerard Way sounds when he sings, \u201cMy eyes are shining brrriiight\u201d on \u201cFamous Last Words.\u201d There\u2019s nothing ironic about the irresistible urge I have to tap my feet whenever the chorus of \u201cDead!\u201d kicks in, nothing ironic about the heartfelt mourning of \u201cCancer\u201d or the iconic piano opening of \u201cWelcome to the Black Parade.\u201d Great art resists irony.<\/p>\n

In a way, I\u2019ve already written this same article. In a post<\/a> about the Disney Channel show Phil of the Future<\/em>, I described the way people laugh at mentions of shows from their youth, as if those shows were enjoyable then but hold no value now. I argued that it\u2019s worth it to check out the stuff that you used to enjoy, because there\u2019s a good chance it\u2019ll still hold some value. That\u2019s partly what I\u2019m trying to say again, but with regards to music\u2014just because you liked something years ago doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s automatically shitty.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But I\u2019m also saying irony is a dangerous thing for art. It\u2019s easy to dismiss your younger self, but think back to the time you first discovered those bands. Yeah, maybe \u201cI\u2019m just a kid and life is a nightmare\u201d sounds laughably angsty to us now. But it held a certain appeal for a very specific generation, and it probably helped a lot of confused adolescents realize they weren\u2019t alone.<\/p>\n

And hey, maybe it could still help you as an adult. As adults, we\u2019re so quick to layer everything in irony, but maybe what we could all use is a little more sincerity. And after all, if there was one thing Simple Plan and My Chemical Romance were, it was sincere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At college, I\u2019ve often felt the pressure to be a more cultured person. Especially as an arts editor at The Michigan Daily, it sometimes feels like everyone knows more about art than you\u2014I feel like I have so many blind spots when it comes to movies (The Godfather, Forrest Gump), TV (Gilmore Girls, The Sopranos), […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7529"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2178"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7529"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7531,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7529\/revisions\/7531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}