“…by a good record I mean one that carries surprise, pleasure, shock, ambiguity, contingency, or a hundred other things, each with a faraway sense of the absolute: the sense that either for the entire performance, or more often for a stray moment, someone wants what he or she wants, hates what he or she hates, fears what he or she fears, more than anything in the world.”
- Greil Marcus
In reading Marcus’ Corrupting the Absolute, a musical light has dawned from the pages and into my head. Good music can not be described in terms of notes, chords, or music theory. It is the sense that a song or record is honorable, organic, and filled with the artist’s entire soul. This is to say that the beauty, malice, and essence in music is not contrived or phony, but authentic and indisputable. “Bad” records come and go. They fall to the wayside after listeners call the music out on its dishonesty. Greil Marcus is right when he says, “A bad song is absorbed whole, in the moment, unconsciously”, yet over time, a bad song “reveals itself as a corrupt, faked, and dishonest tumor in the psyche.” In the end, you can’t fool those who seek true authenticity.
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