How to Appreciate Music: Part 1

You start appreciating before you start listening

Like many of you, I feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of music available to us today - often for free or a negligible subscription fee.

Ironically, we’re in a period where the structure for marketing music to eager listeners is utterly broken. A few artists have been able to break out and become international stars (you know who I’m referring to) and a few “classic” artists stand out for their success with modern listeners (as Rick Beato¹ lays out on his YouTube channel). But nobody has figured out a foolproof way to reach their audience, and as someone in that potential audience, there is no guarantee that you will be able to find new favorites, even if you go looking for them.

Learning how to find and evaluate music is a skill - not unlike learning how to make or perform music. I think of it like cooking - there are super-chefs and fancy restaurants, but everybody eats, and there are always different ingredients to try in new dishes. It all comes down to figuring out your palette - what can you eat, what tastes good, and what do you just plain need. And like food, we consume music; which does something to us, whether we “like” it or not.

My purpose in starting this newsletter was (and remains) “exploring wildly different kinds of music” and talking about how you can find ways to relate to it. As you may have noticed, I try to teach through personal stories that illustrate how I got where I am.

Beavis & Butthead and “Just liking the beat”

I’ve talked before, in other places, about how I was raised as an evangelical Christian kid on the outskirts of suburban Phoenix, AZ. Being one of the only youths in our church during the years of the Satanic Panic meant that I was bombarded with warnings about how “the World” was trying to tempt me and harm me with its music.

So-called “heavy metal” music² was the focus of the adult’s attention - scary bands with heavy makeup and disturbing onstage antics were an easy target for the Panic. But what counted as “heavy metal” was a moving target. I remember my church family going into conniptions when Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” topped the charts, and the open sexuality of Madonna and George Michael certainly caught their share of attention.

I remember being wound up about “girding your loins with the spiritual armor of God” against these threats, and going to school where I lectured my classmates about the evil of their music. Most kids laughed at me, and the few who took me seriously about the way I was analyzing the lyrics of their favorite songs would give me a common argument: “Man, I don’t care about the ‘message’ - I’m just listening because I like the beat.”

I didn’t know how to deal with that response, partly because I was then what I am now: someone who thinks too much and has difficulty “letting go” just to enjoy things.

I also recognized that they had a point. My grandfather was a Southern Baptist minister, and he had stopped me while I was listening to one of my favorite records in 1984 to warn me that “those drums they use are borrowed from Africa. The Africans use those drum patterns to summon demons, so when you listen to them, you’re summoning demons, too.”

I was listening to this:

So, from that point on, I grew increasingly aware that the moral panic about “worldly” music was based on utter bullshit.

I still had trouble relating to my peers when it came to music. Many of the same kids that devoured hair metal in the 1980s would form the audience that drove the popularity of Beavis & Butthead - the animated MTV series where two stoner kids sat on a couch watching music videos and declaring that “this sucks” or “this is awesome.”

By that point, I was able to go with the flow and just enjoy the show with everyone else - but it still bothered me that people could just mindlessly nod along with two cartoon tastemakers who put no effort into engaging with the material they were judging.

Pre-gaming your tunes

After going through all of that in my formative years, I was ready for substance when the Grunge movement and so-called “alternative rock” waves swept over us all. Deeper, more thoughtful lyrics were everywhere. R.E.M. was hailed as the “most important band” of our generation; Pearl Jam put Eddie Vedder’s therapy sessions into chart-topping monster hits; and tragic songsmiths like Jeff Buckley and Elliott Smith built up huge underground followings before their untimely deaths.

That’s when I started seeking out the stories behind the bands and using what I knew about the writers and musicians to decide what to try next. When I write my album reviews each week, I try to share with you the process behind finding that particular album, or the circumstances under which I found it. To me, the stories underpin the experience of the music itself.

So for me, the way I find new music relies on there being something out there to know about that music. This used to be the domain of the gatekeepers at major music magazines - and some of those writers are here on Substack, now.

One of those writers is Brad Kyle of Front Row & Backstage:

Wayne Robins is another:

And because I grew up with a musical ecosystem that skewed heavily towards male artists, male tastes, and masculine points of view, I find a lot of value in unskewing my intake by following people like Herizon Music:

Next time:

We’re going to talk about the differences between “Liking” and “Appreciating” in more detail.

1. Rick Beato: The 4 Bands That Will Still Be Played In 2100

2. Someday, I will get to the phenomenon of defining “heavy metal” music for people of different cultural backgrounds. The topic amuses me.