Simon Frith - "Bad Music"

"Bad Music"

Frith (2004, p. 17-9) argued that "'bad music' is a necessary concept for musical pleasure, for musical aesthetics." He distinguishes two common kinds of bad music; the Worst Records Ever Made type, which include:

  • "Tracks which are clearly incompetent musically; made by singers who can't sing, players who can't play, producers who can't produce,"
  • "Tracks involving genre confusion. The most common examples are actors or TV stars recording in the latest style, and "rock critical lists", which include:
    • "Tracks that feature sound gimmicks that have outlived their charm or novelty,"
    • "Tracks that depend on false sentiment (...), that feature an excess of feeling molded into a radio-friendly pop song."

He later gives three common qualities attributed to bad music: inauthentic, bad taste (see also: kitsch), and stupid. He argues that "The marking off of some tracks and genres and artists as 'bad' is a necessary part of popular music pleasure; it is a way we establish our place in various music worlds. And 'bad' is a key word here because it suggests that aesthetic and ethical judgements are tied together here: not to like a record is not just a matter of taste; it is also a matter of argument, and argument that matters." (p. 28)

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