Hm. I do think this is probably overly harsh. And yet, I don’t super care.
The music is fine, it’s pleasant enough. There are songs I like. It’s just, it’s country, it’s Nashville. A pretty core part of my listening process is that I’m not just getting to know music, I’m getting to know artists, and I’m getting to know the artists behind the music. There’s a relationship there that is important to me. I believe it is important to the music itself on some generalizable level, and I also understand that it’s particularly important to me and my own process.
There is already more than enough obfuscation of artists in other kinds of pop music—off the top of my head, I’m thinking of the common deemphasis of recording musicians, of producers, of mixers, of sound engineers—but at least there is frequently some direct and highly visible connection between the named artist(s) and the songwriter(s). That’s something.
Faith Hill doesn’t write her own music. It’s a pain in the ass to go through all the songwriters who do write it, to compile information for myself so that I can learn about the Nashville songwriters and how I understand them as artists in their own right. It’s a pain, and it’s not really the intended thing for the audience to do because the intention is not to display the relationship between the creators and the performers, between the artists and the faces. I begrudge that, I resent it. If that resentment makes me less willing to try and genuinely like and engage with the music, with music that has these problems (which, again, I think the biggest offender of this is probably country), then so be it.
I’ll focus my efforts where they’ll be rewarded, where they’ll help me learn more about music through its creation and its creators. I’ll focus my attention in places that value the creative process and not just the consumptive or performative process. I enjoy that more, I think it’s better for the art, and I think it’s better for the world.
It is, pretty consistently, pretty solid pop-country. Largely enjoyable, with a fair handful of songs that are pretty plainly good pop songs, and I do like good pop songs. There were also big chunks that were boring, and that kills. If you are part of a creative process that divorces creation from product, that’s one terrible—if you do that to get a product that’s not even particularly enjoyable? Ain’t nobody got time for that.
My rating for this, my D-, ended up becoming less about the music and more about my level of patience with the genre, my mood and willingness to tolerate on a given day, but oh well. So it goes. I can’t say I’m too hung up about it. Faith Hill is fine. She’s a good singer. There’s some good songs in her catalogue. There’s also a bunch of meh songs in her catalogue, and I have little patience with the country star who doesn’t write her own songs.
Faith Hill complete, now listening to: JVKE
tunafruitsandwitch 