Artistic taste, in relation to intellect?

--LOS-- wrote: »

People who listen to metal are more intelligent....FACT!

This is uniformly true, of course I would make the distinction between the some of the emo/commercial crap on scuzz or kerrang with high metal.

<Ollie> wrote: »

Are the folk who watch Pop Idol, X Factor et at. seriously lacking? The garbage they're watching - an 'artist' standing up on stage doing a cover of song, and folk at home voting for them. Art was never about competition.

Whatever about the rest of your post, I just want to dispell this, because realistically, art has always been about competition. I don't necessarily mean to say that all art is created with competition in mind, merely that all art that any kind of 'public' may encounter has succeeded in competition. Today, with Youtube, MySpace etc., people are able to reach large audiences very easily, and thus the internet is a great source for finding art from all over the world that would otherwise be inaccessible, but even the best known composers and musicians in history would not have a surviving reputation had there not been a champion for their work, be it a marketing agent, a manager, a panel of judges; someone with artistic and/or commercial influence.
Singing competitions, not incredibly far removed from the likes of The X Factor - in terms of judgement, homogeneity of composition, and audience participation - have existed since the 14th century, if not earlier. In the 19th century, Wagner wrote a whole opera (music drama) about such an event called Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.

To be honest with you, I understand your point regarding a correlation between intelligence and musical tastes, but anything I could say here would be based on personal experience, and I don't really think this is the right forum for it, but I consider it naive of you to think that at its base, the production and popularisation of art - and perhaps more appropriately in this case, entertainment - is any different now than it has been for centuries.

<Ollie> wrote: »

Not really, no. It just proves he didn't know the guy and his music.

And then you come out with the typical "musical snobbery" (and up your own ass) comment from the radio listeners (Oasis, Cold Play fans) .. Read my opening post again, this is what I'm getting at..

What is your occupation? You can harp on all day about how musical preferences dictate a person's standing.. but I doubt you got a job by handing in your CD collection instead of a CV.

<Ollie> wrote: »

Not really, no. It just proves he didn't know the guy and his music.

What?
I and many others love Elliott Smith's music, and I and many others have misspelled his name on many occassions. Make a stronger argument, come on.

And then you come out with the typical "musical snobbery" (and up your own ass) comment from the radio listeners (Oasis, Cold Play fans) .. Read my opening post again, this is what I'm getting at..

How could you literally make the same mistake in the same post, unless you're trolling. In case you're not, it's 'Coldplay'.

And recommending Figure 8 doesn't prove anything, because contrary to the opinions of many an Elliott Smith fan, Figure 8 doesn't greatly appeal to me, and I can never understand how people put it above XO, Elliott Smith or Roman Candle. Or even Either/Or. In fact, in my opinion it's his second weakest release.
So allow me to point out how vanilla your Elliott Smith tastes must be, seeing as how you recommended the 'obvious' album.

Deleted User wrote: »

Those who can, do.

Those who can't, like - and put others down for not liking what they like.

This is particularly true of music. For some people, music is something to be played. For others, it's something to be enjoyed.I can understand and relate to the views of both of those groups of people. Then there is a third group, which is those who use musical taste as a form of vicarious intellectual capital. They can't actually play, but they use their "taste" in music to define themselves as being somehow smarter than people who don't share that "taste".

In my experience, men do this more than women, and it's something that more often than not starts in their teenage years.

It's a cool thing to do when you're a teenager, if for no other reason than that teenagers by and large don't have any real intellectual capital - so they need all the help they can get, and it makes sense to get that help vicariously through their musical heroes.

But when we grow up and actually earn ourselves some real intellectual capital it's a bit naff to keep carrying on like that, to be honest. Let's face it, we're talking about showbiz here.

So, if you're over 25, and you believe that there is a link between musical taste and intellect, and you reckon that your taste in music somehow sets you apart intellectually from people who don't share it, then you are definitely wrong and probably either immature, insecure, a bit silly, or a combination of all three.

Just saying, like. :cool:

Bravo (sincerely)

When I was studying music, my teacher kind of cryptically mentioned that you know J.S. Bach is the most intellectual of all the composers. This blew my head. 'Why so? Why is he any more intelleciual than say Bob Dylan or Joe Dolan or whatever' No answer. I think he may have removed that little snippet from his 'how to impress the kids' arsenal