expression of actual taste
Slate.com has a rather weird story that attempts to make claims about Hillary Clinton’s psychological makeup through textual analysis of a list of favorite songs she gave to The New York Post. The list, which includes The Beatle’s “Hey Jude” and U2’s “Beautiful Day,” the articles argues “suggests premeditation, if not actual poll-testing.” In contrast, the author Jacob Weisberg says George Bush’s iPod, which includes cuts from John Fogerty and George Jones, represents authenic musical taste, rather than any kind of red-state pandering.
The article takes an interesting methodological step, plugging Senator Clinton’s tracks into the music recommendation system Pandora.com in order to identify the salient characteristics of her ear. The article concludes the senator “likes ‘basic rock song structures,’ ‘repetitive melodic phrasing,’ and ‘extensive vamping.’” I’d have to say that Pandora is a pretty useless tool for understanding someone’s musical taste. I recently kept notes on what Pandora had to say about a few of my favorite artists:
- Neu! “Negativland”
electric rock instrumentation, electronica influences, mild rhythmic syncopation, mixed acoustic and electronic instrumentation, and extensive vamping - Dälek “Distorted Prose”
east coast rap roots, hard rock influences, clean lyrics, use of modal harmonies and acoustic drum samples - Ultramagnetic MCs “Nervous”
east coast rap roots, electronica influencess, a deep voice, a poetic rap delivery, and clean lyrics. - Caribou “Hammerhead”
electronica influences, folk influences, a subtle use of voal harmony, mild rhythmic syncopation and acoustic sonority - (Smog) “When You Walk”
vocal-centric aesthetic, a clear focus on recording studio production, extensive vamping, major key tonallity
Perhaps my taste in music is more diffuse than Mrs. Clinton’s or I lack the hermeneutic skills of Mr. Weisberg, but I can’t really conclude anything from Pandora’s results, except that it might be a good way to meet your word count.
I do wonder if textual analysis of rock may be a new tool of the right. A recent NRO feature listed the top 50 conservative rock songs. While they find a nice nugget here and there, most of the songs are taken out of context. Are we really to believe that U2 or The Sex Pistols shared the politics of The National Review at any time or on any issue? It seems doubtful.
2 Comments
I found this article annoying, too. I’ll admit that I find HC’s taste rather boring, but to suggest that her reported musical taste is “poll-tested” is just silly.
The National Review’s top 50 rock songs also pretty much require them to ignore the lyrics of many of the songs they privilege.
I guess you gotta manufacture street cred any which way you can.
Hmm..I goofed the HTML on that last comment, but just want to add that they totally miss the humor in the Georgia Satellites song, at least in my reading of it.