Everyone's Right

I’ve discovered a YouTube page called Yesterday’s Papers in which someone reads from British newspapers from the mid and late sixties. Apparently, at that time pop stars of the day would be asked to comment on newest singles as they listened to them for the first time. Musicians like Jimmi Hendrix and John Lennon and Mick Jagger and Eric Burden may have had different tastes, but their responses were almost always the same.

First, they’d talk about who produced it and whether they liked the arrangements. They were songwriters, after all, and so clearly listened with songwriters’ ears. Second, they’d comment on whether they thought it would be a hit or not. Then, almost inevitably, they’d say they didn’t care for the song. They might say they know and like the artist, but not the song. Sometimes they’d ask the interviewer to turn the record off immediately, it so bothered them.

The Kinks’ Ray Davies, for instance, was asked to listen to the entirety of The Beatles Rubber Soul. He did not care for it at all. It was “mostly rubbish.” Jealousy? Maybe. I’m sure The Beatles’ global popularity was annoying. Was he wrong to call it rubbish? Only slightly. If he had said, “I think it’s rubbish,” he’d have been speaking the absolute truth. He made the usual mistake most of us do when assessing a song or story, mistaking his unique, personal experience for something universally true.

It can be a little maddening for artists. You hear something and think, “This is no good!” and then a million people buy it and you hear the song blaring from car windows all day and in clubs all night. How to get comfortable with the reality that the people who love a song are right and the people who hate that same song are also right? However you do it, get comfortable you must. After all, I simply can’t be wrong when I like something. If I can be wrong about what I like, then what can I be right about? It would be like thinking up was down and north was south. I’d be forever lost, looking for others to show me the way to a home they’ve never visited.

If you like the ideas and perspectives expressed here, feel free to contact me about individual coaching and group workshops.

William KenowerWilliam Kenower, Stories, Writing, Taste, Music1 Comment