The term “hipster” has been thrown around with alarming ease for the past decade now, taking on any definition that we want it to for the purpose of making a given point. Still, one of the definitions that stuck the idea of the pop culture connoisseur who takes pride in liking something “before it was cool,” and shunning the mainstream simply because it is mainstream. If a song is the kind of thing in ordinary-person-who-knows-nothing-about-music might like, this sort of hipster hates it on principle. But when looking at this phenomenon, I have to wonder just how voluntary this feeling is. Do we shun the popular simply because of a deliberate desire to shun the popular things, or is it wired into our genetic code without us knowing it?
Not being a scientist, I’m not exactly qualified to answer that question, but I can offer a few thoughts into why I think hating things that everyone likes may be an involuntary reaction. Consider the plight of several One-Hit-Wonders: having their one-hit become egregiously overplayed. If one song by a band gets too huge, and saturates into too many radio markets, we tend to not want to hear anything by that band again. Semisonic were a talented band that wrote multiple catchy songs, but we grew so tired of “Closing Time” that we grew weary of listening to anything by them ever again. Now, keep in mind that these days, “Closing Time” is widely considered to be one of the better songs of the late 90s alt-pop era, and it gets played at countless graduation parties, not to mention actual closing time. So, the problem was never that “Closing Time” was bad song, but rather that it’s omnipresence in multiple forms of radio was so toxic that the idea of listening to anything else this band might put out became toxic.
This is a fine example of how familiarity breeds contempt. Hearing a band - or a song - over and over again, especially at times when you might not want to hear them, their flaws become exacerbated. In the past six months, I’ve seen multiple tweets and statuses claiming that Mumford & Sons and fun. are the “worst band ever.” Now, I’m not a huge fan of either band, and I’ve poked fun at both in pieces I’ve written for this site. But calling either one the worst ever seems a bit harsh. Each group has a solid sense of pop songwriting which has made for a few well-deserved radio hits. The problem is, we’ve heard their work so many times, often against our will, that every possible flaw we could find in their music becomes amplified to an extreme amount. Whereas I might have found Mumford’s music joyful on the first ten or so listens, I’ve now grown so sick of that generic, uninspired bluegrass “rave-up” that occurs in all of their songs (no seriously, it’s in all of them), that I could likely go the rest of my life without hearing “I Will Wait” or “The Cave” again without feeling the slightest bit sad. If both of these songs hadn't been so thoroughly shoved down my throat by every form of radio, it might not have bothered me so much. Hearing songs over and over again makes their flaws far more apparent, and eventually, it makes everything wrong with those songs painfully obvious.
Sometimes, though, a song doesn't have to have any individual glaring flaws for us to Never Want To Hear It Again. In 2010, while working as an arts editor for my college newspaper, I was trying find a site with a list of good protest songs, when I clicked on all link that immediately began playing Green Day’s “American Idiot.” Having no desire to hear that song for the 156,723,918th time, I frantically closed the link. Apparently, this was the correct decision to make, because within three seconds of this one of my fellow editors stared at me and said, in a completely deadpan tone, “I was going to hit you.” He was kidding. I think. But he was no less tired of this song than I was, and just hearing the first second of the opening riff filled both of us with dread. The thing, this particular editor was huge a pop-punk fan. I don’t know if he was especially fond of Green Day, but he was far disposed to like their work then I was, but he didn't want to hear “American Idiot” again any more than I did. Why? Because we had both already heard it more than enough times for one lifetime.
When we hate popular music, it’s not always because we’re trying to be cool, but simply because we’re exhausted. The radio might not have the same power over us that it did say two decades ago, but it can still make us hear songs far more than we would like to, making the perceived flaws with those bands all-too-evident. I’m not saying you should start liking Mumford & Sons or Green Day, or any particular mainstream act. I’m just saying that when you call a band the Worst Ever, a more apt title might be Most Overplayed Band Of The Last Six Months Or So.
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