You can memorize every lyric, riff and flourish of a song, yet it always has the potential to take on new meaning with each listen. It could be the song you traveled Europe to, the song you fell in love to, the song you met your best friend to, the song you danced that sexy dance to, that reliable song you listen to while walking to work everyday. It can be all those things, and then one listen later it can be something completely different.
Music is incredibly reliable, especially for its dynamic nature, its ability to morph into what you need it to be and what you want it to be.
That is the greatest thing about music and why I enjoy writing about it. It is concrete, something an artist carefully crafted to convey whatever emotion or narrative he/she wanted to put into the world. But in a way it is also completely subjective. The listener can turn it into whatever they need at the time, they can make it suit their surroundings and circumstances, the weather, their relationships and any triumph to trial they are experiencing at the time.
"Love is a Laserquest" by Arctic Monkeys hits right at home these days for several reasons. The cold weather and slight holiday blues are just a couple. Whether those reasons are literal or metaphorical interpretations of the lyrics or just something I've invented in my mind, this tune served as the perfect soundtrack for my meditative adventures around the city today, just as it has served me on several quiet nights at home. My favorite version is an acoustic one Alex Turner performed live on KEXP.
For me writing about music is flirting with both sides of it: the concrete and subjective. I enjoy picking apart lyrics just as much as I like to let the music speak for itself. I like to provide my own interpretation of it but leave much of it to the artist. This is exactly why any type of music writing works. Yes, there is the good and the bad (obviously), but there are so many ways one can attack music journalism. A writer could describe the notes in technical terms, if they are well versed in music theory, or they can turn what they absorb from music into a kind of poetry, an art form in itself. Some may laugh at the idea and insist "writing about music is like dancing about architecture," but criticism in any field is essentially one person's understanding of an outside entity, something some other artist created--like the art it focuses on, criticism isn't necessary but people are driven to create it and others are tempted to take it in, which is why literature, film, art and yes music has always had critics, whether those critics have audiences of thousands of readers or, like this blog, just a few.
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