The Beauty of Musical Opinion

This should be everyone's attitude towards music.

Today I’m gonna talk about something that has been bothering me for years…and that is the issue of insulting people for their musical opinion.  Too many times on internet message boards have I been told my opinion was wrong, and that I was stupid and needed to listen to more music.  Well, not only is it ridiculous to say these kind of things, I think people need to learn to celebrate the fact that people have differing opinions, not get angry at others for feeling a different way.

One of the best things about music, in my opinion, is that there are so many different kinds: rock, rap, and everything in between.  No two people are going to have the exact same musical tastes, so everyone is unique where music is involved.  And thus, no one can have a “right” or “wrong” opinion.  However ridiculous it sounds to say this, everyone is special.  People should be celebrating this fact, not getting angry just because they’re a fan of Pavement and someone else likes Nickelback.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think people should stop arguing about music – what I think needs to happen more often is that people with differing musical opinions need to talk about it in less of a “fuck you” manner.  They could argue about what exactly makes Pavement better than Nickelback, or vice versa.  You’re never going to convince a Nickelback fan to listen to Pavement if you insult them (although I don’t know why a person who likes Pavement would be talking to a Nickelback fan, haha).

This leads me to another important point – occasionally people even insult others for liking a band or musician that is in a genre that the insulter doesn’t usually listen to.  This is the height of musical ignorance to me – all types of music are good.  What I mostly see this referred to is people saying “all rap music sucks” when they just need to open their mind.  People like this also similarly seem to think that people who like rap music don’t have very credible opinions, which isn’t true.  The best music fan is one who sees music as well…music, and not a bunch of genres.  They’re not sports teams you need to root for, there’s no competition.

In conclusion…be nice, people!  Be more considerate of other people’s musical tastes and respect them, so you recieve respect in return, and the musical world will be a better place.  Or some corny thing like that.

By the way, updates coming to the blog within the next month or so: interview with Tubby Boots, Karl Koch of weezer.com, and The Lunatic, along with other posts like this and random reviews.  Check back often!