How’s the Pressure?

Ben Gibbard is eloquent, this we know from the apt turns of phrase and allegorical lyricism. However, I think that his recent essay (somewhat ominously titled “The Meaning of Life”) for Paste Magazine not only revels much about his personality and his attitude towards himself and his work, but also for us, as fans, and as a general audience to the music industry.

This article shows the enormous pressure that we as an audience place on the artist and their work. Our child-like immaturity and nonsensical tantrums of indie-bashing et al almost force artists into a world where they are constrained, they are straight jacketed into categories, tags and labels. Ben Gibbard’s essay establishes what he thinks of the ridiculousness of how people use his band as some sort of meter or yard stick through which to judge people. Internet culture and its inherent attitude of judgment and opinion masked as stated fact has destroyed any life in the joy of simply enjoying music. As Gibbard notes, it almost seems like people sometimes have to confess that they like DCFC.

Like any market place, the music industry and the perceived likes and dislikes of the audience have never operated solely on the quality or innovative aspect of the music. It reacts to market forces, to fashion, to cultural paradigms and on the most basic level, a type of social bullying. People listen to certain types of music perhaps because they align themselves to a lifestyle,and perhaps it is this that dictates what they should listen to. Adorno says as much. It’s what sounds most familiar to what you are – and in a consumer society we are market forces ourselves, mostly unconscious of how we are perpetuating the largest fraud in the history of mankind – the fraud of ourselves.

Grow up. Listen to it because it moves you. It’s how Ben wants you to react to his music and he is right.

By Konrad Overdrive