I was at a party last weekend, and I was approached (cornered) by a young woman, who had apparently been told by one of my friends that if she wanted to talk about music, I was the person to talk to.
I would probably dispute that notion, by the way, because while it's true that I do love talking about music, and I know more about pop music than most people (because that's what I busied myself with in high school and college while the rest of you had friends and such), I tend to be very opinionated and sometimes dismissive. This can end up hurting people's feelings if all they wanted to do was talk about, say, Band of Horses, and I dismiss them as "Death Cab for Journey" and immediately switch back to ranting about why John Cale is the greatest musician of all time, or whatever people like me like to talk about. And I don't really hate Band of Horses, or care about them one way or the other, and it doesn't bother me one bit if anybody else likes them or even thinks they're the future of rock music. I'm just an asshole sometimes, that's all.
Anyway, this girl asked me who my favorite band is. I don't like that question, because it's not really an interesting question, it's reductive of anybody's musical taste, and mostly because that changes from hour to hour with me, and probably most other people.
I deflected the question back to her, in hopes that she would say something that could spur the conversation on, and get me out of reciting my boilerplate list of favorite bands.
"I would have to say the Beatles," she said.
My response, because I'd had a few drinks and didn't really care if she thought I was an asshole, was, "Well Christ, of course your favorite band is the Beatles, but you can't say that. There's no discussion to be had about that. Everybody's favorite band is the Beatles, there's nothing interesting about that."
It got me thinking later on: first of all, I don't actually think for a minute that everybody's favorite band is the Beatles. I know a lot of people who somehow made it to adulthood without spending their entire childhood digesting every single Beatles song and album, for hours and hours (again, this is what I did as a kid instead of socializing). But still, they were a phenomenon unique in the history of music, a result of improbable circumstances and talent that resulted in unbelievable popularity of an unprecedented scale, that left behind a catalog that is essentially perfect, from the first song on their first album to the last song on their last album. They were insanely prolific, provided countless innovations that still bear effect on pop music, were surprisingly eclectic within the course of any of their albums, let alone their whole career, and had nary a single misstep from start to finish.
But are they my favorite band? Purely from the standpoint of which single band or artist has provided me with the most rewarding listens, who stand up to hundreds of listens without diminishing, who've provided me with more entertainment than anybody else, the Beatles are the obvious answer, but there are artists whose work I cherish more, who provide a more personal connection. The Beatles, in part because of their massive global and cross-generational popularity, and in part because they're so perfect and unassailable, are hard to pick as a favorite.
We like to root for underdogs, we like our heroes flawed, and we like to feel unique. Picking the Beatles in that situation is just too obvious, too safe, like listing Beethoven as your favorite classical composer, Citizen Kane as your favorite movie, and Shakespeare as your favorite poet. Sure they're good, brilliant really, and I would never doubt the truthfulness of anybody who did list all of those, because they're so good, but that's the point. Everybody knows they're good. It's damn near impossible to dispute their greatness without looking like the world's most obnoxious contrarian, and with good reason. But holding those up as your personal favorite doesn't say anything about your personality.
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