I listen to all types and forms of music, and I appreciate each song/artist in it's own right. It's hard to say what exactly turns me on to some artist and makes me cringe when I hear some things. One word can be used to describe this phenominon...
Subjectiveness
Thats right, everyone experiences music differently. Now this
concept applies to all art in general, but I would like to focus on the
musical aspect of it. Since my band Boomslang opened up for Jackyl, I
have heard quite a fair share of praise and grief. And as it happens
we are in the process of writing and recording our next studio album.
As musicians in this band, we all share the same goal. We want to be
successful and make music our jobs. And obviously to make money at
this we have to find something tangible that appeals to a large enough
audience to warrent significant investment in our cause. But how does
one create something that appeals to such an audience? Well, you can
go off of what you already know. You can listen to what is popular and
model your sound around a combination of these influences and with a
little elbow grease make a gold album in no time right? Well, one
would think... As it turns out, everyone's perception of what they
consider popular music is skewed as well. When you go up to someone
and ask them who was the most popular artist this year. Everyone would
give you a different answer. I won't get into it deeply but there are
way too many factors that go into and answer to such a question that
results cannot be reliable to any degree.
Another thing that is
annoying to me is that skill and talent have little bearing on the
marketability of art. Take a look at bands like Meshugga, Dream
Theater, Opeth, and Lamb of God. They have more talent and ability
between them than 99.999% (repeating) of all of the bands that ever
existed in all of time. But, why aren't they the most popular Metal
bands of all time? Thats because only a small percentage of people can
actually process the shear amount of notes and complexity of such
music. Very few people have the ability to listen and distinguish what
is really going on in thier music. To someone who isn't a skilled
musician, all of this music is just pure brain overload. I could be the greatest drummer of all time, but if the music is too difficult to listen to, then who cares...
So what is the perfect combination of skill/talent/simplicity/list goes on and on.... etc... to make selling albums?
If you find out, let me know...
