On Resenting Popularity

A few days ago, I came across this article at Spinner.com: I Hate My Hit! 10 Songs Disowned by the People Who Made Them Famous. The article touches upon a common occurrence in music that I’ve long thought is a big shame. It’s a little unnerving to me that people so easily attach a song’s reputation and reception to the song itself. Haven’t we all heard stuff like this?

“That song was really great until that car commercial ruined it.”
“I used to love that song but now it’s just overplayed.”
“It would have been a good song if the radio didn’t kill it.”

This kind of stuff makes me just want to shake everyone’s shoulders and say, “What guys!?” What do you mean.

The philosophy behind that kind of thinking really gets under my skin. I don’t feel that any music I enjoy could ever be ruined for me by any kind of external force. If the radio can ruin a song for you, how could you claim to have ever really enjoyed it, if liking it is so dependent and conditional on how many other people like it too? It’s a shame that it has become both common and socially acceptable (even expected, in some cases) to use reputation and popularity as factors in determining whether or not you claim to enjoy something, and, in too many cases, likely whether or not you actually do enjoy it.

I know I shouldn’t speak for others, but I will speak for myself. I catch myself subconsciously wanting to scorn stuff that is really popular. I catch myself wanting to go for the less obvious favorites when picking a song from an album, because there’s this small part of me that’s wired to believe that if I think an artist’s most popular song is actually their best, then I’m just appreciating their work on the surface and not diving in deeply. Why do these thoughts exist? I don’t want to blame some vague, distant object like a society or a culture, so I’m going with this reason: deep down, I have some insecurities, and feel that I need to validate myself somehow, and appreciating stuff that other people don’t get (being misunderstood) seems like a pretty good way to do that; seeing stuff that other people don’t see gets me thinking that I have some deeper, truer appreciation for art and it feeds my superiority complex. Or: I have doubts about my self-worth, and getting to believe that I get something more deeply than the masses gives me not just a sense of connection with the art I’m appreciating, but a sense of ownership, and then I get to walk away happy with a feeling of validation and worth. Getting around those misguided ways of thinking is totally my problem. But something tells me that I’m not the only person in the world to have experienced these kinds of thoughts. Something tells me that it’s common.

Like I said, I don’t want to speak for others here. I do want to speak for myself. Frequently, I have to consciously correct these ways of thinking. I have to stop my thoughts and go through a process to realize how ridiculous I’m being. Thankfully, I started realizing this a long time ago, so for the most part, those misguided thoughts don’t get in the way of my actual opinions. When they come up, I know that giving in to them doesn’t bring me any closer to music that I enjoy, but rather it pushes me further and further from the point of it all: connection, sharing, joy. Music should bring people together, and not be a means for a person to become separate.

It bothers me as well that artists sometimes get this way with their old material—that they too come to feel and believe that songs of theirs have been ruined by popularity. I can understand being an artist and not wanting to feel like you’re eternally defined by one song you wrote that you don’t even believe is a good representation of your music as a whole. But I think there’s a big difference between wanting people to look past the hits and between denouncing a song you wrote because you don’t like the rep it got.

Using an example from the list that I frequently think about, I believe it’s a shame that Thom Yorke is both so adverse to the idea of performing “Creep,” and so resentful of the song’s fame. I think it’s a shame that in general, in my experience, Radiohead fans have such a negative reaction to Pablo Honey. I’ve heard Radiohead fans brag that they’ve never even listened to the album the whole way through, and I still can’t figure out what about that would make anyone think it entitled them to bragging. Do I think Pablo Honey can be favorably compared to any other album in Radiohead’s catalog? Not so much. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a great album! It doesn’t mean that “Creep” isn’t a really good song. “Creep” captures the desire we all have to be and feel accepted, and it’s beautiful. It blows my mind that there are probably tons of people who’d scoff at me saying “Creep” is an awesome track because they believe feeling superior is a means to feeling accepted.

I’ve also taken notice that Brand New has adopted a similar attitude toward most of their first album, Your Favorite Weapon. I feel similarly about their debut as I do about Radiohead’s: it doesn’t even touch upon how profound and amazing their later releases are, but that in no way negates any artistic validity the record does have. I understand that, in some ways, Jesse Lacey is resentful of Brand New’s first album because of the false image it promotes of the band. He wants fans to see past the angst-filled boy wishing diseases and car crashes upon ex-girlfriends because he wants it to be realized that he’s got more than that youthful anger inside of him. I think what it gets down to, for me, is that I think it’s unnecessary to denounce your youth to prove that you’ve grown up. To quote Dumbledore, “Old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young.”

The reason I think Your Favorite Weapon is a great record, and the reason I will always think it’s a great record, is because the stories it contains are timeless. That’s always the reason. Whether or not we mature and move past that point of angst, of wanting to stay young, we were there. It’s the same reason why I think children’s books make up some of the most important literature ever penned. There is something beautiful about being young, naive, quick to give into impulses and emotions, curious…that we too often grow up to forget. Ultimately, I think there’s more maturity to be found in embracing the parts of your past that have changed, than there is in resenting, or even just ignoring, them.

Some bands are pretty good about it. Wilco has progressed from the alt-country days of A.M., but every so often they throw in a song from their debut into their set. When I saw Jeff Tweedy do a solo show in March 2009, he played “Casino Queen” and it was really fun to watch. He also played “A Shot in the Arm” and “I’m Always in Love,” both of which are from Wilco’s third album Summerteeth, and two tracks from their double sophomore release Being There. He’s not saying, “Hey we have some ambient sounds now and ‘Less Than You Think’ is unnecessarily 15 minutes long so we don’t play old songs anymore.” Songs represent moments in time, and I think it’s so admirable when artists not only realize that, but embrace it. (Keep in mind, I don’t want to throw stones at any of my favorite bands, even if I do disagree with some of the attitudes some of them have adopted.)

I think it’d be cool if one day Radiohead opened an entire tour with “Creep,” or if Brand New started rotating all the songs from Your Favorite Weapon into their show. I already have great respect for both those bands, but that potential gesture would increase my respect far beyond what it already is. I hope we can all take time to remember that songs are songs, and most of them were probably born in someone’s basement or kitchen or shower or car ride home, a voice and a guitar, and the ones that get popular are no exception.