Why Your Music Taste is Trash

hi

my name is gal bezek and i’m the 17 year

old kid who’s going to try to convince

you to listen to new music

now i know saying this doesn’t really

sound so hard i mean it’s just like

everything else in life

sometimes you need to step out of your

comfort zone right but

why out of all the things that people

experience and do did i choose music

well the answer is pretty easy to

understand but pretty hard to explain

so i’ll try to the best of my ability oh

wait next slide yes okay so

how music shaped me music changed my

life

it gave me confidence and opened my mind

up to so many different new experiences

from idols and parque courts giving me

all the tools i need to become a

rebellious teen and one step closer to

becoming a narco communist

with lines like the best way to scare a

tory is to read and get rich

to collectivism and autonomy are not

mutually exclusive

to also death grips and clipping giving

me an out to be cathartic

yet genuine in times when all you need

to do is scream

tack you oh i’m feeling it tachyon

at the top of my lungs

to forget whatever the heck i was

worrying about to

dorian elektra and jpeg mafia teaching

me how to be myself

and not let anybody tell me that i can’t

be flamboyant or choosing the perfect

song before going to a party

even after all these examples you still

might be thinking to yourself

why music well simply answered

music is the best thank you no i’m just

kidding

but music is the best because

of these three a these three main

attributes of it

accessibility diversity and personality

i’ll start with accessibility

accessibility in music is amazing

because today each and every one of you

can open your phones up

and look up a song doesn’t matter if it

came out in the 60s or yesterday

if you told someone in the 80s that you

had a device that could play

box orchestral suite number three and

right after you could play

a song about a guy with rainbow hair

screaming over poorly mixed 808s

are you dumb stupid or dumb they’re

probably going to call you crazy

and then probably call the cops because

of your obsession with guys with rainbow

hair

if you want to find music other ways

there’s so many passionate music

reviewers online

such as the needlelog better known as

anthony fantano on youtube

who would love to tell you that that

very niche album is a 10 out of 10

and little uzi vert’s eternal take is

trash

want to just press a button and find

your music that way perfect

most music streaming services whether

free or paid offer a radio type of

experience

in which you can just choose a genre

sound

song whatever and the algorithm will

just find songs related to it

that you would probably like want to

tell people that your music taste is way

better than theirs because it’s

underground and they just wouldn’t get

it perfect

instagram twitter and reddit are full of

those people ready to die on a hill for

their favorite artist

don’t believe me just say something bad

about kanye west or taylor swift on

twitter and prefer your men

prepare for your mentions to be filled

of kanye stands

telling you that your artist sucks and

the kanye is the goat

what is a stan well basically it’s just

a super intense fan

that will stop at nothing to defend

their artist and will cancel yours just

because they wanted to

but even even after all that

all i wanted to say is basically you can

find whatever music you like

there is no limit but what kind of music

do you like

well that leads me on to my next point

diversity

diversity music is amazing because you

can go from drake’s hotline bling

a mellow feel-good song about loss of

feeling and heartbreak

to death grips is you might think he

loves you for your money but i know what

he really loves you for it’s your brand

new leopard skin pillbox

hat an industrial electro punk song

about

loss of feeling and heartbreak you might

be wondering why i chose these two songs

well it’s the correlation between them

not only are the topics that they’re

talking about kind of similar

but also they resign the same genre this

is amazing

two completely different songs different

sound structure different

instrumentation

different basically everything resign

the same genre hip-hop

now you might be thinking to yourself

wait doesn’t this go against the whole

diversity thing well no because

actually this just shows the range music

can have i mean if two songs so

different can resign the same genre

what limit are there in music

makes it so awesome because people

have people experiences and then those

people

probably make music and probably the

people that make music

don’t make the same type of music so you

get many examples of similar topics

all over music such as a country love

song and a punk rock love song

and one of those you’re going to connect

to way deeper than the other

not just because it slaps or it hits you

right in the fields

but because you connect to it on a

personal level this leads me

to the next point personality

to me music is the most personal of the

arts

you yes it’s where bands artists

and all types of musicians can express

exactly what they’re feeling through

lyrics instrumentation soundscape and

atmosphere

this is why personality is so important

because

everyone can find a song in which they

personally relate to

if you’ve ever been at a party and

listened to billy joel’s piano man and

not sung it at the top of your lungs

with your friends

were you really at that party if you’ve

ever been broken hearted and listened to

tyler the creator is igor

and not cried during the 40 minutes of

the album

were you really brokenhearted

look this is all to say that music has a

personal connection to each person

and uh this leads me to my next to

finally start my talk i know quite a

long introduction

but i want to start this with a

rhetorical question

why didn’t you want to listen to you

might think he loves you for your money

but i know what he really loves you for

it’s your brand new leopard skin pillbox

hat

is it because the title is intimidating

or because death grips just sounds like

an edgy band name created by some kid to

sound cool

or is it just because industrial

electropunk sounds weird to you

well it might just be a combo of the

three

because i like to call these three

judgments you make

musical stigma musical stigmas basically

when somebody

has a prejudice or a judgment against an

artist song or album

without even listening to it this was

exceptionally visible in the 80s

the peak of heavy metal and rock music

you couldn’t go anywhere without

listening to

hearing the names ac dc or guns and

roses

and these bands well they did crazy

stunts

they had crazy outfits and they had a

lot and i mean

a lot of groupies the christian part of

america hated this

and they made movies and sermons saying

that

rock music is from the devil and that it

corrupts your mind

this eventually led to a congressional

hearing in which

basically the pmrc said that rock music

is bad

uh they had a lot of artists and a lot

of people on both sides debating it and

some politicians even called rock music

outrageous filth

and that is they could do with if they

could do away with it uh

constitutionally

they would do it asap luckily that

didn’t happen

but we did receive this sticker the

parental advisory

sticker probably most of you have seen

the sticker

now this doesn’t seem like such a harsh

punishment but

having this sticker on your album meant

it would sell less it wouldn’t be on the

radio

and basically people would have a stigma

against that certain album

judging a book by its cover at the exact

same level

so a lot of artists protested this my

favorite

is frank zappa who’s frank zappa um

basically just imagine like your funny

uncle who you’ve always thought deep

down was a hippie

and then he never stopped being a hippie

and he started to make amazing music

yeah that guy okay so frank zappa’s

personal friend zappos protist was

creating this album called frank zappa

meets the mothers of prevention

i know title is amazing already but my

favorite part of this

is the sticker that he put in the album

this is a direct parody to the parental

advisory sticker

in which the first line reads this album

contains material which a truly free

society would neither fear nor suppress

but what does this all have to do with

musical stigma

well basically the pmrc the parents

association that started all this

trouble

didn’t really hate the music itself or

the way that it sounded

they just hated everything around it

they judged it on the acts

the concerts the everything else except

on the music

now this stigma comes from somewhere

that somewhere is different for everyone

but i’m willing to bet my bottom dollar

that

some of it just comes from not knowing

what the music is about

i’m going to assume that most of you

haven’t heard

of industrial electropunk yet you still

refuse to give it a chance

why well

it’s probably because you think you know

what you like

and chances are you think that nothing

close to industrial electropunk is

something that you would like

now it goes also both ways i mean if you

tell a

indie boy you know a tyler the creator

stan oh

wait not that guy hit this guy yes that

um

you like cardi b they’ll probably scoff

at you the same way you did at

industrial electropunk

but that doesn’t mean it’s bad that just

means

that you could just expand your music

taste i mean

if you start listening to different

types of music you’ll just expand your

way of

your view of uh your world view

i’m not saying to that i have to be a

gatekeeper or that you have to

understand the intricacies of

radiohead’s okay computer

to say that you even like indie music

but i’m saying that it’d be cool if you

tried

expanding your music tastes expands your

world view it expands your way of

thinking

and it expands you personally because as

i said before music is the most personal

of the arts

i mean it’s way easier to judge someone

by their favorite kanye song

by their favorite picasso painting thus

leading us to the end of this very

very long rant what i want everyone to

take away from this

is why music is so cool

i want people to think about the way

that they listen to music and why they

listen to music

i want them to think about what albums

they like what albums they don’t like

and if they even like music at all

so what i want everybody to do is go on

their favorite search engine

put best blank album fill that blank

with whatever you like

click on the first link open it listen

to it and dive in

head first because you never know if you

don’t try thank you