Originally posted by vanquish:[..]
Err, no that's just a naive, Kindegarten "everybody's a winner" mentality, get real.
Some bands ARE objectively better than others, sure an individual's views might differ but there are a lot of other criteria to rank bands by.
There has never been a God of music who identifies a great band from a terrible band. If someone finds enjoyment in music that nobody else likes, then they deserve to be named a good band by that person. I don't let these Lil Wayne lovers push their love for the idiot on me, but I can at least be respectful of the fact that they find true enjoyment in listening to his "music" (How, I do not know, but that's beside the point). It's taken me a long while to get to this point, but if someone tells me they hear something that I don't in Lil Wayne's work, and they're finding enjoyment in it, who am I to tell them they're wrong and that he's actually terrible? Because he's terrible to me? Doesn't it piss you off when people tell you they hate U2 because of some inane reason that you could just as easily convince them that there's more to their music than that? It's because we're devoted U2 fans, and we can see that. Other bands have devoted fans that feel the exact same way about their favorite band, and we have no place telling them that U2 is any better simply because we like them more. It's our opinion.
If those sub-par bands that you're suggesting are just clearly not as good as others had no reason to be heard, we might not even have U2 today. They were heavily influenced by some of the more important bands of their time, but they also directed their early sound towards the angry, rebellious, underground scene that had been developing. I would by no means call "Street Mission" genius, though some material off of even their debut album I am in awe of. My point is that bands today who are putting out their equivalent of "Street Mission" may just need time to develop, and who are we to brush them off as not being as good as others because they haven't written their "Where the Streets Have No Name" yet? And don't tell me bands today couldn't write a song that brilliant- because I've seen the pictures and heard the audio of U2 in 1978 or so, and I wouldn't have believed those kids could produce something like that either. But they went on to do so.
In my personal opinion, the only criteria to rank a band by is how much enjoyment you get out of hearing the music. If you're intelligent enough to pick up on the intricacies of a song, and realize that a band may be smarter than another band, then more power to you. But if you're not, and you simply like a song because it's catchy, or it has a melody in it that hits you a certain way that you can't define, then why should it not be defined as good music by a good band? I thought music was about enjoyment. It's a humanity, not a science.
