11/4 – Cult – Electric Peace Ok, this was definitely a surprise win for me, and made me wonder why I’ve never heard of the Cult? I mean, can anyone demonstrate how they’re not as good as Poison or other 80’s pop/hair bands? I suppose that’s not exactly a ringing endorsement of someone (you’re as good as Poison!) but my point is that we all know a couple of Poison songs that were huge hits, but I’ve never heard of the Cult before, and they’re just as good. I think the theme of things being electric got a bit overdone (basically every song says something’s electric!) but I certainly enjoyed this album. In my thinking about Poison, I got to wondering about a deeper problem – how much of the music that we claim we like and that is awesome is only that way because we grew up with it and heard it so many times? Whereas I listened to this with absolutely no emotional connection, I can’t hear ‘Talk Dirty to Me’ without thinking about a whole slew of past events and at least spending a few moments waxing nostalgic. This has nothing to do with the quality of the song or the music, only when I heard it. Presumably, if the Cult had been what I was listening to them and what was popular, we’d be talking about their songs as nostalgic and Poison as this lesser-known similar band. The problem is we don’t have an unbiased sample. Or perhaps we do. Maybe when we meet someone who’s never heard of, say, Poison, and play them a song, we can observe their reaction to it as the unbiased critic. And when they say it’s not all that great, we should take note of that? Doesn’t work with everything – finding people who don’t know the Beatles is tough, and trying to use children problematic since children often lack the language and critical thinking skills to really explain how they feel. Still, it’s something to think about and might be worth some discussion this weekend.
Posted on: Fri, 07 Nov 2014 13:19:13 +0000
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