Friday, September 25, 2009

Good Taste/Bad Taste

It bugs me the way people talk about taste in media (particularly music). They act like the rule is you either have good taste, liking good music and hating bad music, or bad taste, where you either don't care about or dislike good music and love bad music. Most people think, or at least talk as if they think, that it's impossible to have both. Well, it's possible.

I have good taste in music: I like the Submarines, the Weepies, Maria Mena, the Beatles, and half a dozen others you're even less likely to have heard of than the first three I named. And there is some music I cannot stand, like Taylor Swift's "Love Story" (addressed briefly here). But there is some genuinely BAD music I like. For example, I think Nickelback is incredibly fun. I'm not saying I "enjoy them ironically," whatever that is supposed to mean. I just like listening to them. I know they lack compositional talent. The song "Nickelback sucks" demonstrates that by pairing "How You Remind Me" with "Someday." They have the exact same chord progression and remarkable similarities between the two videos. That doesn't change the fact that I like them.

In summary, just because someone has bad taste in music, doesn't mean they don't have good taste in music, or vice versa.

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