I’ll tell you what’s wrong with the way we listen to music today.
Sometime last century I bought a CD by Tom Waits. I bought it unheard on the basis of the genius that was Swordfishtrombones, the solid sound of his early oeuvre and his performance in the film Rumblefish.
The CD was Rain Dogs
I was disappointed. There was little of the tuneful melancholy of Swordfishtrombones and nothing of the wise-ass early Tom Waits. It was a cacaphony of obscure instruments and self-indulgent experimental mumbling.
I carried on putting in my CD player because there were a couple of tracks I liked, sentimental throwbacks to an earlier period like Time. The point is: I played the CD. In its entirety. What else could you do?
Over time, I changed what I liked about the CD. Being sort of forced to listen to the whole thing exposed me to the new stuff, the slightly more difficult stuff. Nowadays I recognise that the title track, Rain Dogs, is probably the greatest song ever recorded. A work of such transparent superlative achievement I can’t understand why it isn’t top of everybody’s all-time top 20.
When I first heard it I didn’t like it much. Too discordant. Too challenging.
If I had been listening to it using a media player I would have awarded it one star, if that. The track would have been consigned to the netherworld of one-star material that I never listened to again. I would have carried on playing my 4- and 5-star playlist of lowest-common-denominator accessible material.
I would have missed a massive opportunity for a long-term love relationship with a piece of music. All because the software leads me to make snap judgements about a track the first time I hear it.
The moral of the story is: play your one- and two-star tracks more often. Don’t be so selective. I hope artists keep releasing music in a package like an album or CD. If the model we are moving to is for tracks to be made available individually then we will lose the slow burners.
I would never have listened to Rain Dogs again if I had first heard it today.