Readers will often send me questions — over email or social media — about super nerdy music topics. And these questions are often pretty amazing, so amazing that it seems like a shame not to share them with a wider audience. So, on a semi-regular basis, I’m going to answer these questions in a new column called “Ask A Music Critic.”
Do you have a question for me? Hit me up at steve.hyden@uproxx.com!
In my debut “Ask A Music Critic” column, the topics include the usefulness of concert encores, the importance of Fiona Apple, the “social listening” greatness of Tom Petty relative to other classic rockers, and the ’90s one-hit wonder band Spacehog. But first, a question about whether 2017 was a good or bad year for music.
I personally thought 2017 was a great year in music, so I was surprised to hear so many year-end recaps pan the year as a whole. In thinking about this, it seems to me that the lack of great traditional indie records is potentially driving this narrative. It was a really good year for rap (Kendrick, Vince Staples, Run The Jewels, Cousin Stizz), female-driven R&B (SZA and Kelela) and female-led indie rock (Waxahatchee, Japanese Breakfast, Vagabon). I wonder if the year just missed the mark on what people look for in traditionally great music years. What did you make of 2017?— David from Portland, Ore.
SH: I thought 2017 was totally fine! As I wrote in my own year-end recap, there were at least six albums (by The War On Drugs, Father John Misty, Lorde, Julien Baker, Gang Of Youths, and Jason Isbell) that I feel really passionate about, and a couple dozen after that I’m really quite fond of. And I’m sure there will be dozens more albums from 2017 that I discover in subsequent years that I might end up loving more than what I already heard.
That’s the thing about judging the output of a given year right as that year is ending: You might not discover the really good stuff until much later on. In fact, you probably won’t. Great albums often reveal themselves over time, while music that seems immediately great can wear out after the early acclaim.
Recently on Twitter, I modestly proposed that culture writers wait at least three years before imposing their grand narratives about What It All Meant. Stuff that seems to matter now will, in all likelihood, be forgotten by 2020. And things we ignored in 2017 could really wind up being significant. If I wrote about 2014 now, I would marvel at how people like Taylor Swift and Mark Kozelek had just hit their respective career peaks, right before they both went kind of insane. And I’d also discuss the debut EP by SZA, which did okay on the charts but garnered minimal coverage from music critics at the time.
My point is that the relative goodness or badness of 2017 won’t be made clear for another few years. There will inevitably be records that seem overrated in retrospect and artists that didn’t get their due who will go on to great success. At that point, it might indeed look like a down year … or the beginning of a golden age we were too dumb to notice as it was happening under our noses.
Are encores necessary?
—Steve from Chicago
No.
(Here’s my slightly longer answer: Yes, because it enables those of us who rightly believe that less is often more at a show to sneak out early and beat traffic.)
Why is Fiona Apple important? What are your personal favorite songs?
— Nick from Bethesda
Back in October, not long after Tom Petty died, I picked my version of the modern-day Traveling Wilburys, and slotted Fiona in the Bob Dylan role. Here was my explanation: “Bob Dylan was famous by the time he was 22, and then made a lot of people angry, and then disappeared for a while, and then came back several years later with some of the best songs of his career. This is also the career arc for Fiona Apple. (For the purposes of this comparison, the “This world is bullsh*t” speech at the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards will be counted as Fiona’s “goes electric at Newport” moment.) Both Dylan and Apple were polarizing iconoclasts in their respective eras whose “serious” personas often kept them from indulging the silly sides of their personalities.”
I’ve already made an in-depth case elsewhere for Apple’s importance, but in a nutshell, I think her ability to essentially transcend the normal limitations of pop or indie stardom, and become the kind of artist who can do whatever she wants and put out new music at her own irregular pace without fear that her audience will abandon her, is what makes her one of the more important singer-songwriters of the last 20 years. It’s hard to think of another artist of her generation who occupies a similar space.
As to why she’s also one of the most original modern singer-songwriters, I would point you to one of my favorite Fiona Apple songs, “Paper Bag,” from 1999’s (deep breath) When The Pawn Hits The Conflicts He Thinks Like A King What He Knows Throws The Blows When He Goes To The Fight And He’ll Win The Whole Thing ‘fore He Enters The Ring There’s No Body To Batter When Your Mind Is Your Might So When You Go Solo, You Hold Your Own Hand And Remember That Depth Is the Greatest of Heights and If You Know Where You Stand, Then You Know Where To Land And If You Fall It Won’t Matter, Cuz You’ll Know That You’re Right.
While that album title might be tedious, “Paper Bag” is not, with its jazzy, prog-classical accents applied to a rock-solid melody that’s reminiscent of prime Carole King. And then there’s the lyrics, which in typical Apple fashion are sung with a mix of sorrow, wry humor, and disquieting (and vaguely threatening) venom: “Hunger hurts, but starving works, when it costs too much to love,” for me, is maybe the ultimate Fiona Apple line. Great video, too, directed by ex-boyfriend Paul Thomas Anderson.
If you put on a Tom Petty playlist at a party, almost everyone sings along to four or five songs. He probably has 35+ great tunes and eclipses every rock musician in terms of his volume of “social listening” jams. I define social listening as music you play when you’re hanging out, drinking with friends, on a boat, or pre-gaming a sporting event.
It doesn’t seem like people consider Petty one of the upper echelon rockers in history. I think most critics would put him a step below Dylan and Young. However, I’m fairly certain that Young (“Ohio,” “Heart of Gold,” “Cinnamon Girl”) and Dylan (“Like A Rolling Stone,” “The Man In Me,” maybe a few others) have maybe five sure-thing social listening tunes. Obviously, they both have huge and diverse careers with tons of great music, but “Blowin’ In The Wind” or “Old Man” aren’t exactly party jams.
Why do you think Dylan and Young are largely considered more important than Petty? My theory is that Petty’s songs were personal and about relationships, while Dylan and Young wrote about society and politics.
— Eric from Milwaukee
I have to say, I’m less interested in your actual question than the concept of “social listening,” which is something I think everyone understands and yet I’ve never seen articulated as an actual rubric for judging artists. But I think you’re totally right: Dylan, Young, and Springsteen are generally thought to be more “important” than Petty, because they write big songs about America and the world that are generally thought to be more innovative or thematically ambitious than Petty’s work. But in terms of writing good-time, Red Solo cup-drinking jams, Petty towers over his classic-rock brethren. While I would pick Springsteen over Petty overall, I’m much more likely to put on Full Moon Fever or Wildflowers if I’m camping or tailgating than, say, The River or Tunnel Of Love.
If we take this “social listening” idea one step further, must we concede that in this one area, Jimmy Buffett is one of the greatest classic-rockers of all-time? That might be where the rubric breaks down, my friend.
I’m a few chapters into Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me, and was reminiscing about the music I was listening to during the big Blur/Oasis rivalry. It brought to mind a ridiculous-in-retrospect argument my carpool mates and I would routinely have on our long commute to university: Who was better, Radiohead or … Spacehog?? At the time, “In The Meantime” was all over the radio and MuchMusic (Canadian MTV), alongside “Just” and “Fake Plastic Trees.” Obviously, history has shown that this comparison wasn’t really worthy of discussion, but it didn’t seem so crazy back then.
My question — which one-hit wonder bands would you say had the most squandered potential?
— Aaron from Halifax, Nova Scotia
First of all, thank you for plugging my book. Plugging my book is a good way to ensure inclusion in this column.
Second, you’re right about Spacehog! I’ve brought this up to Radiohead fans who are too young to remember. But there was definitely a time in the mid-’90s when Radiohead seemed like it might not escape the long shadow of “Creep,” while “In The Meantime” appeared to signal the arrival of a great, new swaggering British rock band. I just punched up “In The Meantime” on Spotify and I still think it slaps! Also: Is Spacehog really any dumber of a band name than Radiohead? If we had another 20-plus years to get used to Spacehog, we might be speaking that name with reverence now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDkhl-CgETg
My favorite ’90s one-hit wonder band with the most squandered potential would have to be Blind Melon, forever known for the 1992 hit “No Rain” and its accompanying “Bee Girl” video. I still stump for the album Blind Melon made after that, 1995’s Soup, which came out about two months before frontman Shannon Hoon died of a drug overdose. In the manner of all “polarizing” followups to commercial breakthroughs that were rigueur for alt-rock bands, Soup is a meandering effort with no obvious singles. But it’s also a near-masterpiece of psychedelic southern rock, taking the jam-band flourishes of “No Rain” in darker, more nightmarish directions. It helped to earn Blind Melon a cult following beyond its one-hit wonder status, but Soup remains an album ripe for rediscovery.
