THE COMMENT
“What? You haven’t heard of or listened to so-and-so? They’re huge! How could you have not listened to so-and-so? They’re a cultural phenomenon, they’re a fundamental part of modern music! If you haven’t listened to so-and-so, if you don’t know x song, how can you say you know music at all?”
This is a specific variation and interpretation of a comment that I’ve heard a lot. There’s a range of things being said here, but the core of it is “how have you not listened to so-and-so?”. The other stuff might be implied or given as a follow-up, but it all stems from “how have you not listened to so-and-so?”— hereinafter referred to as ‘the comment’.
The comment is problematic, and sneakily so. For the most part, people don’t really think about it when they say it. It’s just something to say, it’s a common phrase. It’s a thoughtless question that’s usually diffused by a thoughtless response. Between two people who aren’t actually invested in the content of the question, it initiates a perfectly innocuous exchange. The issue comes when somebody is invested. If the commenter pushes, insists that the artist in question must be listened to, makes it personal and real, they reveal the accusatory nature of the comment. Or, if the commented upon sees and addresses the accusatory function implicit within the comment, the commenter feels attacked and will likely become defensive. They were expecting a thoughtless/thoughtless interaction and instead got an “um actually” that seeks to undermine something important to them that they may have taken for granted.
But what is the “implicit accusatory nature”? Why isn’t it a perfectly innocuous thing to say? I’ve claimed that appearing innocuous makes what’s bad about it worse, but what’s bad about it in the first place? To answer that, I need to establish a couple of core concepts. First, the idea that there is infinite music; second, the inevitable human reaction to that idea, that being the existence and nature of musical canons.
INFINITE MUSIC
There is infinite music in the world. That’s obviously not literally true, but it’s certainly a practical truth, an effective truth. On Spotify alone there are tens of millions of songs, amounting to hundreds of years of music, with about a year of additional music being uploaded every week. It’s not humanly possible for a person to listen to all the music that’s already been made- the human lifespan just isn’t that long. It is not mathematically possible for a person to listen to all the music in the world as it continues to be made, because music can only really be experienced at a set pace, and that pace is slower than the rate at which new music is made.
Even if there were a compelling argument to be made that most of that is “not worth listening to anyway” or otherwise somehow less “important” or “significant” or whatever else (there isn’t, I firmly believe that’s a terrible argument, but even if it weren’t): there is just so much damn music. Pick a genre and a decade. I guarantee that if you look, there’s enough music there to last you a lifetime, were you to go through and actually listen to all of it, actually try to get to know it. That is to say, even if you massively reduce the scope of what you’re trying to listen to, there’s too much. You can cut out the “white noise” music, you can constrain yourself only to the “important” music, it doesn’t matter. There is simply too much music to actually listen to. People are making so much music, constantly. All the time, all the time, and they have been for centuries! There is so much damn music.
It does not matter how you calculate it. It does not matter what your interests are or how efficient you are at consuming media. There is infinite music. That is true, it is a true thing. Music is infinite. There is infinite music.
MUSICAL CANONS
This understanding, that music is infinite, is necessary to understanding what’s so off about “how have you not listened to” (hereinafter referred to as “the comment”). The comment rejects the idea that music is infinite by suggesting that the vast majority of music is irrelevant— not even worth counting. There is instead a finite selection of real music. Relevant music, important music, music that everybody should listen to because of some variety of reasons that make it the music that matters. The comment presumes the existence of some kind of universal musical canon that selects for “important” and “legitimate” music. Belief in the truth and correctness of a musical canon provides justification for the dismissal of all music outside that canon— the dismissal of infinite other music.
A “musical canon” is what I call the body of music that is left when a limited actor (literally any person) reduces the infinite scope of music into something they can actually attempt to process and understand. The reduction of the infinite into a canon, into something manageable, is not a bad thing. In fact, it’s entirely necessary. We can’t work with the infinite. We aren’t infinite beings, we simply don’t have that capacity. The problem comes not when you reduce the infinite into the finite, not when you adopt any given musical canon, but when you subscribe to the exclusive reality, inherency, or superiority of a given musical canon. The issue I take isn’t with people presuming the existence of musical canons, it’s with people presuming the existence of universal musical canons. To narrow your scope is a perfectly valid and necessary way to process and interpret information. To dismiss and disregard everything outside of that scope is not. That is foolishness, arrogance.
It’s important to understand the actual function of a musical canon, of a reduction of the infinite. It is not to describe the limits of the infinite— it can’t be, that’s nonsense. It’s the infinite, it’s limitless. Rather, the function of a musical canon is to describe the limits of a person’s experience. Or of an organization, or a culture, or whatever it is that is having the experience. Reductions of the infinite must always occur on the end of the receiver. Always. There is no way to apply an accurate reduction to the source, because there is no way to apply a reduction to the source in a way that doesn’t warp the source, because there is truly no non-destructive way for the reduction to be applied to the source. The reduction must happen on the end of the receiver.
It’s so important to be aware of how musical canons operate functionally because it makes clear how inappropriate it is to presume your own musical canon is also, or ought also be, another’s. That behavior pushes one person’s experience, one person’s established limits, onto another. It falsely frames the commenter’s experience as objective— or at least, as more important/true/real/valid than alternative experiences. It supposes that some musical canon is “better” than another. For such a statement to be made, you would need comprehensive knowledge of the infinite, which is not possible. The most you can ever reasonably push is to say that the process by which you reduce the infinite is more effective or more useful than another’s. But to do that, you must establish a strong correlation between the realization of the desired effect and the act of the reduction process. None of that is to mention the fact that such a claim presumes compatible value judgements, presumes a shared desired effect. Such a thing is not only uncertain but, I think, highly unlikely.
Musical canons aren’t just frustrating and difficult. They’re a tool; they can also be super helpful. Subscription to a canon doesn’t really legitimize the musical experience, but it does legitimize the limits of an experience. It legitimizes the connection between fellow subscribers; it keeps them connected to the same thing by making that thing small enough for nobody to get lost. From the inside the effect feels similar, and that localization of the feeling of legitimacy is an excellent way to form connections and make more effective communication with others.
Listening to some “necessary canon” doesn’t necessarily give a thorough understanding of music, or even of what was listened to. What it does do is teach about the person, group, or culture that produced that canon. If the canon is decided by an individual, you’re learning about that person and what kind of music they like and think is important. If the canon is decided by a group, you’re learning about what music most people in that group happened to all listen to and regard highly. If the canon is decided by statistics of what was most popular on the radio during a time period, you’re learning about who was in charge of the radio at the time, what types of algorithms the streaming services were using, or maybe what the typical listener was like. You aren’t learning about the music itself. You’re learning about people, via music. As soon as attention is given to x music over y music on behalf of some sort of purported canon, music stops being the actual focus. The focus is instead the purported canon and the community that exists around it. When somebody says, “I just don’t know if I can respect your musical taste if you haven’t listened to David Bowie,” it sounds like they’re making a comment about how important David Bowie is to having respectable taste in music. However, the actual function of that comment is to communicate the preferences and limits within their own musical experience— knowledge of David Bowie is part of their ability to understand music, not part of the nature of respectable knowledge of music.
APPLIED TO ME
There is infinite music. We are not infinite beings. So, we naturally reduce that infinite scope into something finite, something we can manage. I’m calling those finite selections “canons”. They’re very dangerous: they make it all too easy to dismiss and deny music in other musical canons as illegitimate. They’re very useful: they keep things manageable and they help people connect with other subscribers of their canon.
I listen to music, and I try to understand it, but I’m not an infinite being. How do I use canons? What do they do for me, and how do I avoid their pitfalls?
It would be easy to say that I don’t use musical canons, that I avoid them in favor of a “more legitimate” understanding of a more “comprehensive” view of music, but that’s not really true. I do think that in the pursuit of a comprehensive knowledge of music it’s useful to be unattached to any particular canon, to not follow blindly— that much is true. I also acknowledge that any knowledge of music that supposes itself to be comprehensive is impossible. What I’m really saying, then, is that the set of music I’m trying to gain knowledge of is not presupposed— it’s unrestricted by existing canons. Rather, what I’m effectively doing is methodically creating my own musical canon that is hyper-personalized to me. I’m not following a canon, I’m creating one.
It’s not actually so uncommon for individuals to create their own unique personal canons these days. I think that’s why so many people (myself included) will avoid describing their taste in music and instead write it off as “hard to explain”. That’s what services like Spotify Wrapped are— visual, detailed, and digestible explanations of people’s personal musical canons. Notably, I’m creating a canon based off of a broad variety of external sources, rather than just accepting any one main source. Mine isn’t only a personal canon that I build as I like or dislike songs fed to me by Spotify. It’s a personal canon that I build by taking random or notable selections from known canons, by investigating music I encounter that intrigues me, and by drawing from the personal canons of the people I meet. I’m placing value on flexibility and openness in my musical canon, rather than on any one externally validated source, or on any canonbound tribe. This is a natural extension of the motive I laid out in On Ever-Changing Tastes and Preferences. I reject the notion of a static anything and of an authoritative anything, and I instead embrace curiosity and willingness to change and be changed— without necessarily knowing what that change will be.
This does beg the question: what exactly is the intended purpose of the canon I’m building for myself? What is it being generated from, and what effect does that have on its functionality? The most visible intended purpose is probably to develop a decently comprehensive knowledge of a wide range of music. That’s not quite accurate, though, because that purpose refers to a general (read: undefined) “wide range of music”. In order to accurately describe a canon I am building for myself, I need to ultimately refer the parameters of that canon back to me. With that in mind, a revised statement might look like this: the intended purpose of my personal canon is to develop a knowledge of music that would otherwise be unknown and unfamiliar to me, and to increase the command I have over music that I already do have some knowledge of.
That’s broadly true, but it doesn’t include a necessary element: I acknowledge that there is use and power to existing canons, and I intend for my personal canon to be able to tap into some of that power. I want to be able to use my canon as a way to connect with people, and that necessarily means giving attention to offered canons— connecting with people is what existing canons do, that’s what they’re for. If my canon were constructed solely from randomly picked artists off of Spotify, I would likely never gain any understanding of the canons or their people at all. I would almost certainly become some kind of indie-underground guru. That’s fine and good and respectable, except for that fact that I do value using the music as a way to learn about the people.
That’s why taking music recommendations is so important to me. It allows me to satisfy some of that second purpose of the canon I’m building for myself, to create a canon that is personal and specific and that can still be tapped into to connect with other people. There are definitely disadvantages to being committed to a personal canon of this nature. It can’t tap into a group in as pure and powerful a way as a typical canon would. It can’t tap into as big of a group, and it can’t give me the rights and powers of a member of the group I’m tapping into. But, taking recommendations helps me mitigate those disadvantages. I’m still able to connect to others, albeit on the scale of individuals instead of groups. This way of connecting with others is different, but it’s not better or worse.
My personal canon connects with others in a way different from the typical musical canon; it also generates legitimacy in an atypical way. But again, not a worse one. The history and tradition that I am creating now is no less valid for being contemporary, individual, and decentralized. It’s also not really any “more” valid. I’d argue that my way is more broadly functional and more flexible, and thus better suited to my needs, than subscribing to an already organized canon (canonbound tribe member) or eschewing an intentionally organized canon altogether (indie-underground guru). It’s okay that I don’t have a group backing my canon. I don’t need the security and peace of mind bought by the backing of a canonbound tribe; I feel good about the security I create by increasing my own personal strength, so to speak. The part of the traditional pre-existing canon I care about is solely that which allows me to connect to others, to understand them and how they understand music. That’s something I can do with my personal canon, via recommendations, to a degree that is satisfying to me.
To be clear, I do think the canon I’m building is more functional than typical canons in that it is capable of more functions, but the utility of that is dependent on what values are dear and what functions are desired. Even if the values inherent in my canon were universally dear and the functions universally desired, I couldn’t say my canon is more “valid”, because functionality is not the real decider of validity. Validity, or legitimacy, is another way of saying external validation, with the external validator being the community of other adherents to the canon to which you are subscribed. Thus, validity is determined by the degree to which you subscribe to a canon, not to the quality of the canon to which you subscribe. The quality of the canon to which you subscribe determines the scope and applicability of that validity. The more formal nature of my listening, the fact that I document it, I think is a large part of what really makes it legitimate, is what makes it thoroughly valid. The quality is something I’m able to take into my own hands, but it’s also something that will likely never grow beyond just myself, barring some bizarre injection of fame into this blog.
I’m not centralized, stationed within the bounds of a set canon and slowly pushing outward; I’m not untethered, claiming countless tiny fragments of knowledge, too diffuse to be coherent. I’m trying to build a system of spaced out nodes that can grow and eventually connect to each other. Taking music recommendations is how I seed those nodes, it’s how I learn which coordinates on the metaphysical map of music must have my attention. It’s my attempt to tread a balance as I stumble my way through reducing the infinite expanse of music into something I hope to, in some small part, understand.
THE END, PRETTY MUCH
That’s pretty much it, honestly. I dunno if you noticed, but I really tried to instill the last sentence of that last paragraph with some hardcore concluding-sentence-of-the-essay vibes. This is just a little extra bit for me to make sure I’ve explicitly, thoroughly addressed the comment that so aggravates me. So, yeah. Essay done, pack up and go home, flush the toilet, whatever, the next couple paragraphs are bonus.
If you’ll recall, the comment is, “how have you not listened to so-and-so?”. Hopefully at this point it’s already apparent why the comment grates on me so much; I’ve pretty much laid it out already. The comment rejects the idea that music is infinite. It presumes one canon to be “real” and other canons to be lesser. The comment presumes the existence of some kind of universal musical canon that selects for “important” and “legitimate” music, and it presumes that universal musical canon to be understood by the commenter. There is infinite music in the world, and yet people still have the audacity to claim that their canon is the canon. It’s an absurd thing to do, and people do it all the time.
I hate the comment, and I think almost 100% of the time it and every variation of it is immensely frustrating. There is one exception that I think is worth noting, and that’s Taylor Swift.
Much of the time people say the comment, they’re really intending to communicate shock or surprise. In best-case scenarios, it’s a reaction, not a judgement. And in some cases, I’m alright with that. I think that if someone were to be shocked at me for not having listened to a given album or song or whatever from some specified artist after I said I was a fan of the artist, that would be fine. I made a claim about my relationship to something with an established finite boundary, and when pressed failed to demonstrate authority over the stuff within that boundary. But that’s not what’s actually happening with the comment. When I claim to like and listen to a lot of music, generally, I’m making a claim about my relationship to something with no established boundary. There is no conceivable test to demonstrate authority over the stuff within an area with no boundary. What does that even mean, the very notion of “within with no boundary” is absurd! To press someone on that, to imagine that whatever content you’re testing is reasonable, isn’t saying “you aren’t welcome in my space, which is here”. It’s saying, “you aren’t welcome in my space, which is potentially everywhere”. It’s an insidious powercreep in which the subscribers to the “one true musical canon” claim authority over everything.
There are good and effective ways to communicate disbelief of the gap between your and another’s musical experience that don’t trigger the pitfalls of the comment. I think the easiest, most effective adjustment is from “how have you not heard of” to “how have you not listened to”— there’s a huge difference between those two questions. “Heard of” references a general awareness of something. “Listened to” references time spent on something— and remember, time spent on something is always time not spent on everything else. Even then, I’d be careful; the assumption that someone else should be aware of the same things you are is a risky one. No matter how right you are about the thing being well known, if you take it too far you’re still an asshole. That line is when disbelief transitions to disrespect. Surprise and disbelief are, though not always reasonable considering the infinite range of music, easily understandable. Disrespect is unacceptable. “It blows my mind that you haven’t heard this, have you been living under a rock” is fine. “I can’t take your musical tastes seriously unless you’ve listened to this” is absolutely not.
The cleanest (I might call it the only clean) example of this “the comment” adjacent reaction is, I think, “how have you not heard of Taylor Swift?” I would say this is actually reasonable. It’s a display of surprise at a lack of awareness— in this case, of Taylor Swift, a superstar whose mere presence in a city is a legitimate economic consideration. “How have you not heard of Taylor Swift” is one of the only variations of these types of comments that I would easily consider to be a nigh-universally reasonable version of “have you been living under a rock?”. That dialogue between two reasonable people goes something like “You’ve never heard of Taylor Swift? How is that even possible, she was Time’s Person of the Year, she had her tour headlining in movie theaters, she’s broken countless world records, she’s one of the most famous person alive”, to which the response is “wow, that’s crazy, I dunno how I missed all of that. I guess I just don’t really stay very updated on that kind of thing”. And that’s the end of it, because there’s really not anything else to say. That’s fine. If that were an actual situation and I were the unaware person presented with the evidence of how huge Taylor Swift is, I wouldn’t be able to believe I’d never heard of her either. However, that is an exception. In most cases, I think the assumption that someone else should be aware of the things you are is a risky behavior. And no matter how right you are about the thing being well known (like Taylor Swift), if you take it too far you are once again the asshole. In the event that the disbelief transitions to disrespect, it once again is unacceptable. “It blows my mind that you haven’t heard this, have you been living under a rock” is fine. “I can’t take your musical tastes seriously unless you’ve listened to this” is absolutely not.
tunafruitsandwitch 