I mean, you have lost credibility in my eyes by claiming he wrote some of the best songs in human history. Have you any idea the sheer scope of music that has existed?
What a ridiculous statement.
Melodies will be in a key, using a set of notes. That’s kinda unavoidable. By his own statement he wasn’t aware of any tonality and didn’t even care to. That folk come along decades afterward and try to fit it into various boxes is good for them, but shows a complete misunderstanding of what he was doing as an artist. I’d imagine he’d shake his head at this entire thread.
When it comes to cultural significance and catchiness the fact that people have been doing it for a long time doesn’t matter.
In fact, the ability to tap into mass media only makes the impact of a song greater. Access to electric instruments and effects only gave them more ability to create interesting music.
I’m a fan of all kinds of music old and new. But anyone saying German leders or old timey civil war ditties are better than Smells Like Teen spirit are high on their own supply.
Most of history humans expressed an extraordinarily limited range of emotion in song, in rigid form. Kurt Cobain wrote more than one song that you could play for a toddler and they’d love it. He wrote more than one song that hundreds of millions of people are listening to 30 years later. I’m sorry but your favorite Gregorian Chant is just not very good in comparison.
This comment is such a weird way to defend the patently absurd claim that he wrote some of the best songs in human history.
Even the first sentence makes no cogent sense, especially when read alongside your original comment:
> When it comes to cultural significance and catchiness the fact that people have been doing it for a long time doesn’t matter.
You've apparently changed your argument. "Best in human history" does not mean "most culturally significant and catchiest."
If "the fact that people have been doing it for a long time doesn't matter," then why did you mention all of human history?
If what you mean instead is that you care only about contemporary, present-day cultural impact, then, again, why did you mention all of human history? You've already decided that no time period other than the present matters.
I think it's important not to overlook Butch Vig though.
Are there Nevermind demos circulating? (Maybe an official release even, I've never looked)...
They were good songs, maybe even great songs. But I think I could name a dozen bands from the same period who had equally-good songs.
Butch Vig turned those good-great songs into anthemic stadium crashers. I'm not a huge fan of Butch Vig, I think he has a very heavy touch! But he met (or predicted) the moment on that record. The industry/audience moment at least, I don't think the band entirely wanted what they got!
Most people would never have heard those songs without Butch Vig. They would not be on any RS Top X lists.
Kurt might still have been a genius, but he'd have been sharing a tour bus with others. I wonder if he'd still be alive.
Both terms are flexible, sure. And I agree that debating definitions is boring.
> The point is that the guy was a genius.
Is that the point? Are we discussing the man himself, or are we discussing his work? Both, I guess, according to the following:
> He’s written some of the best songs ever by many definitions. That makes him a genius.
It doesn't. Genius is a capacity, not an accomplishment. One can be a genius without accomplishing anything, and one who isn't a genius can do high-level, history-making work.
This whole subthread - arguing about "the best songs in human history" without even the slightest attempt to define one of the most subjective things ever - is patently absurd.
It's an odd thing to even compare. Musical styles and genres come in and out of fashion. Instruments and timbres likewise. People clamour both for novelty and also familiarity. There's no "best" music, just music that has more or fewer fans.
Ideally, the measure of timelessness of a tune is how many people will still go to the effort to play it or reference it once all people who were alive at its release (the people who "liked it before it was cool") are dead. By that measure, the one-hit-wonder of Pachelbel's Canon in D is probably top of the list.
> we tend to attempt to hear atonal music in a key
Is it the case that much of this is influenced by individuals having grown up listening in an environment with music already structured around a central key and modulation around that? With the same idea also applying to an understanding (or feeling) of rhythm?
Atonal music / serialism is insufferable pretentious bs that no one has ever listened to with pleasure, ever. It's a purely mathematical study, orthogonal to art.
I don't disagree regarding "listened to with pleasure" and I only remember actively listening to atonal music as part of a required syllabus. I do think it's perhaps a useful lens to use to look at 'traditional' tonal music through however, even if just to re-affirm that _some_ kind of order and structure is an important part in making something palatable to the ears (or the brain).
What a ridiculous statement.
Melodies will be in a key, using a set of notes. That’s kinda unavoidable. By his own statement he wasn’t aware of any tonality and didn’t even care to. That folk come along decades afterward and try to fit it into various boxes is good for them, but shows a complete misunderstanding of what he was doing as an artist. I’d imagine he’d shake his head at this entire thread.