So, I've been bogged down in a discussion over 'authenticity' in music these last few days. That weird, rockistic term, which no one really knows what means, and yet people still sort of feel it is useful. I kinda don't. I simply don't get what it means. My problem with the two words 'authenticity' and 'honesty' is, that they don't just relate to the music. That a record is 'authentic' or 'honest', seamingly means that the link between artist and art is in a certain way. Therefore, you have to include the artist in the discussion, if you use those words. So instead, I've begun to think that the word 'believability' is better. I mean, every piece of art is an attempt to express something in a certain way, judging it on how it relates to the artist seems wrong somehow. I'd rather judge it on how much I believe in the construction presented to me. Even though most songs are somewhat dishonest (Extreme examples: David Bowie wasn't really from Mars, Jeff Mangum hasn't had sex with Anne Frank, Stephen Merritt is not 69 People. Less extreme examples: Many songwriters keep writing that they have just fallen in love, even though they have been married for a long time.), many of them still seem believable, even though what they say is hardly possible... I still find it hard to explain what I mean, so I've found four examples. Four songs, where the vocalists does almost the same thing, two of which I find believable, and two of which I don't.
The first example is a song I've written about before, actually just last month. I thought about contrasting it with the next example back then as well, but I decided it would be out of place. It's the same moment, that high-pitched 'Oh my God' at 1:20-1:30. I simply don't believe in it. The problems are, that it's presented as if the singers are meant to sound surprised. The song talks about the victims, and then all of a sudden goes 'Oh my God', as if the singers couldn't stand it any more. Here, it clashes completely with the fact, that there are two singers singing in harmony. So the two of them was shocked in exactly the same way, at exactly the same time... I don't find it believable.
I'd wanted to contrast it with the song above, Right Side of My Brain by The-Dream from his album Love vs Money. The thing he does, he does twice, from 2:00-3:00 and from 3:30-3:45. He tries to do the same thing as Sufjan, use two voices explosively to show how he is overwhelmed by emotion, and even though I know it is just as constructed as the Sufjan-song, it works for me. The key is how he introduces the second voice as doing it's own thing. When it enters the song, it just answers the first voice a bit, but then it all of a sudden becomes a higher version of the melody. It sounds like two different parts of his psyche, all of a sudden united in anguish, not the same part doubled. And I know it's impossible, it's the same voice overdubbed, it's not 'honest' or 'authentic', yet it still works. For me, at least.
The third example is by The Shins. The moment in question occurs at 0:54 (if you knew the song, you'd probably already figured that out...). This actually doesn't have much to do with the song in question, the 'scream' is nicely foreshadowed in the instrumentation, which a moment before becomes a bit noisier. Yet this moment still annoys me, and it has to do with the way the song is posited on the album it's from. See, this is the opening song of the album Chutes Too Narrow from 2003. So this is how The Shins introduces themselves and their world to the listener, with a weird scream coming out and surprising anyone. On it's own, the song kinda works, but as an introduction, I find it annoyingly quirky. It crosses the line I spoke of in the Sufjan-piece and becomes clever because it doesn't know how to be honest. And that cleverness makes it seem too constructed, too calculated, and again, I stop believing in it.
This song above, This Is Not What You Have Planned by the Wrens is on it's own probably more quirky and annoying than the Shins-one, what with the weird way it's recorded and the way the singer clears his throat at the start. The key point is that this song is located at the end of the album in question, The Meadowlands, also 2003. So because of the way it's located on the album, it's positioned as meaning Go Away! instead of Welcome. And all of a sudden, I believe in it. It doesn't sound as calculated, it sounds frustrated and depressed. Both of these songs are off-putting, but the one by The Wrens is believably off-putting.
So what I've been trying to do, is to discuss why some tracks are believable and some are not, focusing only on the way the music is constructed, on the level of a single song or a whole album. I've done this to keep it on the level of discussing craft and composition. Some people use the words 'honesty' and 'authenticity' to give value to entire genres - i.e. music recorded live with acoustic guitars is more 'authentic' than music with samplers and autotuned vocals - and while it is undoubtedly statistically true, that the percentage of numbers that seem believable is high in some genres and not as high in others, there are no tools that can't be used to create believable music. It's all a question of talent and craft.
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