I Love You. You’re Perfect. Don’t Ever Change!
Well, this is an interesting problem to have: the comments on yesterday’s post, from Ken, Scott, Susie, Tim—they’re just wonderful. Between them, amongst them, they’ve effectively stolen my “thunder”—and seem, without having seen it, to be running through Steve’s outline on the topic, as well.
I’d thought it would take a couple more posts to bring this to a conclusion; instead, I’ll just do a bit of mopping up here, with thanks to all our Commentistas.
To simplify: I would have thought that one when complains, “They’re early stuff was better”—for any “they” you’d care to imagine—the rationale breaks down, first, into two large categories. To wit: if there were any way actually to measure such a thing, the comment would either be true or false; the comment would either be revelatory of something about the band and its career, or instead would tell us more about the person uttering that verdict.
For convenience, and for a bit of specificity, let’s work with an example: let’s pretend, in fact, that it’s 1991, and R.E.M.’s Out of Time has just come out. The band’s been together for more than a decade, and Out of Time is the album that has finally moved them into something like mainstream commercial success; “Losing My Religion” is the band’s highest-charting single, and the album is their first to reach #1 in the US charts.
Let’s imagine that it’s September, 1991; the University is back in session in Athens, Georgia, and the album has been out for six months (and “Losing My Religion,” the lead single, a month longer than that). You’re in a bar, sort of minding your own business, when the single comes over the sound system (or someone cues it up on the jukebox), and the guy on the stool next to you says: “Fuckin’ ‘Losing My Religion.’ Pop nonsense. Now, back in the day—in the Chronic Town days, back before the first album—now that was a band.”
If you’re smart, you just ignore him: there’s nowhere very interesting to go in this conversation. But let’s think about a kind of flow chart, one that begins with a decision about whether this comment has any merit on its own, or whether, instead, Mr. Barfly is telling us far more about himself than he is about Athens’s Finest.
If Mr. Barfly Is Right: The slick production values; bringing in Kate Pierson from the B-52s for a bit of hometown tailcoat-riding; the bright melodic line; the intelligible vocals: all signs point to the fact that R.E.M., who essentially invented “college” or “indie” rock, have now gone over to The Dark Side (i.e., Pop). We were first suspicious when they signed with I.R.S., and only more so when they jumped from I.R.S. to Warner Brothers. Now they’ve traded authenticity for bubblegum. They used to be amazing, powerful, back in the day, when they flew under the radar. Now they’re just corporate tools.
If Mr. Barfly Is Wrong: The music has changed; but change doesn’t always signify a falling off. Indeed, many bands (contra Scott’s comment yesterday) do get better and better—or better, then worse, then better—like R.E.M., like U2, like Radiohead. Like Girl Talk: I mean, seriously, have you listened to Secret Diary? In arguing that the mumbling Michael Stipe is superior to the 1990′s version who communicates clearly with his audience—or that the 1980′s edition of the band, with one competent musician, is superior to the 1990′s version, with three—yeah, that’s just embarrassing.
Now to be fair, some bands really do suffer a “fall”: some lose their way, either through a limited musical imagination (Red Hot Chili Peppers), changes in personnel (Genesis), and so on.
More commonly, I think, we’re unwilling to love the bands that we love change. The career of David Bowie is instructive here: it would be impossible to chart a simple trajectory from David Bowie (1967) through Reality (2003), though self-invention and re-invention has been the one constant. But when Bowie killed off Ziggy Stardust; when Dylan went electric; when Liz Phair invited The Matrix to produce Liz Phair (2003); when Nirvana hooked up with Butch Vig and made a brilliant and powerful and emotionally immediate album (Nevermind [1991])—each of these Ch-ch-ch-changes signaled to many of the faithful that the band or artist had lost his or her stuff. Time to start bitching about how much better s/he was “back then.”
This is not to discount the emotional, possessive, almost territorial, affection we feel for a band that we think we’ve “discovered,” as yesterday’s commentators so rightly point out. I guess I’d just close this topic with a plea for emotional honesty: that we try, to the degree possible, to distinguish “they’ve lost it” from “I’ve lost it,” or “I’ve lost them.”
I remember when this blog started — fresh, enthusiastic, full of crazy ideas! It was like a personal secret. But then came twitter, and the rest is history! Total sell out!
I’m such an idiot! I read this quickly, and my heart sank into my stomach: like, “Jeez, Alan! I mean, it’s not Tolstoy, but I’m trying!” And then it dawned on me…. Such is the magical power of that formula!
I think you’re exactly right, Kevin. In many cases, a band evolves in a particular direction that we don’t care for. Not necessarily better or worse, just different. It’s a matter of perspective: the point at which we begin to enjoy an artist is our perception of their “normal” output; deviations from that sound different and perhaps inferior.
A recent case in point might be The Decemberists. I liked their “early stuff” mainly because of Meloy’s playful use of language. I mean, anybody who can fit “bombazine” into a lyric is OK with me. But their current prog-rock-revival material leaves me pretty cold.
I don’t think they’ve “sold out” by recording on a major label (whatever that means nowadays). But they have moved in a direction I don’t find interesting.
To be truthful, I actually do think the new stuff is not as good as the old, but I realize that’s a highly debatable point. It’s certainly not worse in musicianship or anything like that. It just seems like Colin Meloy has started to believe his own press releases and has stretched his talents too far.
But I’m sure there are many people who prefer the new albums to the older ones. To them, the new sound is normal and the old stuff probably sounds immature.
I was there, in the begining, when it was great ! You missed out.
Boy, your summaries of Mr. Barfly being right and Mr. Barfly being wrong really betrayed your own personal views, huh? “Losing My Religion” is a great single, sure, but Out of Time-era R.E.M. is not as good as Murmur or Reckoning-era R.E.M. However, if you’d chosen Automatic for the People as your reference point, I would feel differently. That’s a great album that is still different from both early R.E.M. and anything else around it at the time.
Which I suppose, highlights the fact that every artist, as long as they’re alive, is still a work in progress. You referenced Dylan in your last Santana post, and that’s a great example too. I imagine that if you said of Dylan in 1984, “I prefer his early stuff,” you would be met with a chorus of “No shit!” However in 2010, making that same statement, you would sound like an idiot because you’re not accounting for his recent renaissance. Perhaps it’s partially the reductive nature of the “early stuff” argument that can get so frustrating. Your Bowie example is great because it’s so extreme, but many great (or even good) bands can vacillate between “good” and “bad” many times over a career, and deserve more nuanced assessments than we frequently grant them.
One issue related to “liking the early stuff” that we haven’t talked about is age.
Because–unless you’re Keith Richards and you’ve made some kind of unholy bargain in order to stay alive forever–musicians are growing up along with the music. The “early stuff” is by definition the youthful stuff.
Youth is often accompanied by raw emotion that can translate really, really well into pop music. Some artists are able to musically “grow up,” but others aren’t. And so the later stuff just feels…hackneyed, I guess, is the word that leaps to mind.
The paradigm here might be the aging rocker/pop idol who attempts to replicate his early hits. Obviously, sometimes, this is simply issue of musical quality: the later songs are just cheap knock-offs. But I think it’s more complicated than that: we don’t necessarily want to hear a 60-year-old singing about the preoccupations of a 25-year-old; what works for one doesn’t always work for the other.
Here, the issue is not just whether the music has changed or we’ve changed–it’s also about the person singing that music. Have they changed? Do we want them to?
Call it the Pete Townshend Paradox. “I hope I die before I get old” has a sell-by date.