Late this past January, the world of Internet music writing exploded with a back and forth dialogue about Brooklyn-based band Vampire Weekend, starting a line of commentary that culminated in a cover story by Spin, one of the most widely circulated American music magazines.
By way of introduction, the band is a cute little four-piece outfit straight out of Columbia, usually clad in Lacoste and often chided for tameness. Their music is a generally enjoyable and upbeat mix of verbose English-paper lyrics, a watered-down take on African music and a lot of rock. Really, you could play them around your grandmother, and most people that hear the music would hardly have a problem with it.
This brings up the question of why they became the most contentious band in music criticism for a month or so. It is certainly not the music; despite marginalized claims about imperialism ““ apparently kids from Columbia aren’t allowed to listen to African music ““ nothing that they play inspires anything but mild enjoyment.
The answer to the question of how this totally un-noteworthy band ended up receiving the vast exposure of a Spin cover ““ one-upped only by Rolling Stone’s simultaneous feature of the only less-noteworthy person in current discourse, Jack Johnson ““ has to do with problems in the way Internet music commentary works.
As far as I see it, there are two real problems: blogging and bloggers are 1) motivated by hype, not music and 2) given to incestuous topics.
To see the first problem, it helps to look at how things probably used to work, pre-Internet. An artist released an album, which was dispersed to media outlets ““ which, by rules of the economy, were kept to a certain amount.
Each outlet then chimed in with criticism relatively independently, and the opinions were simultaneously formed.
However, we now have a situation where opinions reflect, not only the music at hand, but the other opinions circulating the Web. Now, each opinion has within it two opinions, one obvious and one concealed. The obvious opinion is what is directly stated about the music. But when it comes to blogging, which is largely voluntary, the concealed opinion is that the band discussed is worth talking about.
It is the second opinion, the concealed one, that creates a snowball of Internet nonsense of the sort that propelled Vampire Weekend to fame.
As certain Web sites and writers comment, the implied opinion causes others to also, which inspires magazines eager to be hip to follow suit by putting a should-be-page-35-CD-review-level-band on the front page.
The second problem, that of incestuous writing, takes the snowball effect even further, and Vampire Weekend provides a shining example of how this works.
Not only does the discussion of the music grow to obscene proportions, bloggers begin writing not only about the music itself but about what other bloggers are writing.
This is criticism of criticism, and really, when you think about it, it’s not about Vampire Weekend at all but about what some myopic aspiring critic thinks about the minutae of a rival’s opinions.
In the case of Vampire Weekend there formed some sort of “backlash” against the originally positive hype. And at this point, it should be obvious that someone was going to start blogging about the backlash.
Oh, yes, and if you haven’t guessed it yet, there was a backlash to the backlash.
I am genuinely enthusiastic about the possibilities the Internet provides for music, for so many reasons.
I can listen to more music, with less effort, than I will ever know what to do with. But seriously, the Internet also provides opportunities for needless and truly boring commentary.
Now, this commentary would be fine if it had no effect. There would be nothing to speak out against. My complaints would deserve the same reply that criticisms of Vampire Weekend’s music deserve: the stuff is harmless, so don’t participate if you don’t like it.
But it isn’t harmless.
One of the bigger magazines is all about Vampire Weekend, which means time that should be spent discussing something interesting is being lost. Tastes are being made in a roundabout way that has absolutely nothing to do with music or what a music magazine has the responsibility to care about.
All of this illustrates the old adage that any press is good press. I’m just getting increasingly worried about what, exactly, any press is allowed to be.
““ Alex LaRue
If you think Vampire Weekend was getting hyped for a reason, e-mail LaRue at alarue@media.ucla.edu.