My Five Rules of Music

And now, the glorious return of Top 5 Records Presents!!!

Hooraaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!

First, I'd like you to notice something. I used the word "my" for a reason. This is how I judge the merits of music. You can have entirely different criteria for how you enjoy music.

Rule 1: Lyrics should always be less important than or equally important as the music.

Or, to put it another way, greatness is not found in the lyrics. It's almost a cliche: "I listen to everything but Country and Rap." Why do these two genres constantly get derided by casual music listeners? Because most of the time, they rely primarily on what's being said instead of how it's delivered. For example, from what I've heard, mainstream Country has devolved into songs about pickup trucks. This doesn't mean that Country music fails as a genre. I've heard some great Country songs, and most of them are thematically similar. But the reason why I enjoyed those songs (e.g. Garth Brooks) rather than this is the difference in musicality. Alan Jackson's song may be dripping with nostalgia that appeals to a large proportion of the population, but that's all it will ever amount to: nostalgia.

Rule 2. Great technical skill can make any instrument worthy of music.

I've heard it so many times. I listen to a lot of music from the 80s, and when people hear that, most people think bad synthesizers. Synthesizers aren't bad instruments. They've just been given a bad rap by fly-by-night artists with little skill. A synthesizer isn't just a piano that makes funny noises. It's this, not this.

The same argument applies for sampling. There's a difference between a good sample and a bad sample, and I can prove it using the same artist: Kanye West.
Good Sample: Touch the Sky
Kanye sampled this song for "Touch the Sky" by taking the main hook and slowing it down noticeably. He took it and made it his own, unlike...
Bad Sample: Diamonds from Sierra Leone
Kanye heavily samples "Diamonds are Forever" without really distinguishing it from the source material.

To paraphrase Kanye himself, now, I ain't sayin' he's a master sampler, but I think the juxtaposition helps prove my point.

Rule 3. Too much showmanship turns music into performance art.

This is more of a personal thing for me. During the summer, Lee and I saw Peter Murphy with Ali Eskandrian as an opening act. Ali was an interesting fellow. He had a great stage presence. Emotional but natural. However, what would have been a captivating performance fell flat because it was hardly music. At one point, he basically broke into the Muslim call to prayer. He tried to make it a sexy call to prayer, but it was a call to prayer, nonetheless. It was performance art. He was acting. Not that that's bad. It's just not music.

Rule 4. All music "steals" from previous forms of music.

Led Zeppelin's debut contains very little original music. Riffs and lyrics were "influenced" by previous blues records. But you know what? I'm OK with that because they're not the first to do it and they certainly won't be the last. No music is made in a vacuum. Everything comes from somewhere else. As long as you understand this and make a point to seek out your music's influences, whether a song was stolen from somewhere else should be of little consequence.

Rule 5. Don't listen to anyone else about how to enjoy your music.

I'm no expert. Your friends are not experts. MTV, your local Clear Channel station, and Rolling Stone magazine are not experts. We're just very opinionated. You are your own expert. Love what you love. Be proud of it. And don't shy away from what you listen to. Even if it's Wham!.