(no subject)

[skygiants]

Okay, I swear this is total coincidence and just what happens to be up next on my booklogging list, but the book I'm going to talk about today is called Let's Talk About Love . . .? NOTHING TO DO however with my locked post of yesterday. (Which I am actually thinking about unlocking, but enough people have commented with what may be feelings that they don't feel comfortable sharing with the internet that I'm sort of hesitant to change the game - does anyone have strong feelings about it?)

The full title of this book is actually Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste, part of the 33 1/3 series of music criticism focusing on single albums, in this case Celine Dion's Titanic-era bestseller. agonistes recommended this book to me EVEN THOUGH I know nothing about music criticism (except what I've picked up from her) and EVEN THOUGH I have no feelings about Celine Dion one way or the other, and she was totally right to do so; I found it completely engaging.

The thing is, the author of this book starts out - as many music critics and self-proclaimed people of taste do - hating Celine Dion music with a disproportionate passion. Which is a phenomenon we're all familiar with; I don't think there's any of us who has not either ranted about "My Heart Will Go On" ourselves, or listen to our friends rant about it. (Okay I guess maybe some of you were too young to really remember Titanic, but that's a depressing thought and I'm going to leave it alone now.) Carl Wilson's project for himself, though, is to go against his instinctive reaction to Celine-bash and try to find out why our cultural Arbiters of Taste have so vehemently dismissed Celine, and why so many people passionately love her anyway - and, if possible, come around to being a Celine fan himself.

The resulting book is a really fascinating look at class, globalization, and cultural capital, not to mention the nature of personal taste, all of it in ways I did not expect. I did not come out of it with a particular urge to download Let's Talk About Love . . . but I did come out of it with a certain degree of respect for both Celine Dion as a musician and Carl Wilson as a critic, and also, an urge to listen to more music.

Therefore, semi-relatedly: guys! Rec me music! It's finally starting to be spring, the season for putting on your iPod and walking places instead of taking the subway everywhere like a slug, and I would love to have some new stuff to listen to. I like songs that are lyrically interesting, but I also like a level of - I guess I would say tunefulness; I do not, for example, appreciate Bob Dylan as I ought. (Or rather, I appreciate him as a lyricist, but I don't particularly enjoy listening to him when I'm walking around town.) I tend to gravitate towards slightly offbeat lady singer-songwriters (Jesca Hoop, Vienna Teng, Thea Gilmore, Neko Case), stuff that has a bit of a creepy folksong vibe, and conversely I also enjoy entertainingly over-the-top alt rock. That said, I also have liked a lot of other things, not excluding pop and country and rap (especially French rap! OH MANAU, so amazingly ridiculous), so please feel free to try and broaden my musical horizons.

Comments

[catslash.livejournal.com]

AHAHA. My teenage self also listened primarily to soundtracks (this has not changed much, although my ability to find the good stuff has improved immeasurably - I think I spent my entire fourteenth year listening to the soundtrack for the movie of Evita, which - yeah). I made an exception when "My Heart Will Go On" was all over the place, because this was before I had a job and could afford to buy CDs, so radio/music video shows were the only places I could hear it. And it was playing a LOT. When it faded from the airwaves and my own attention wandered, I returned to my usual fare, because I have never actively enjoyed Top Forty type music. The longterm results of this is that my impression of late nineties music is very specific and tied to the songs that were also getting a lot of play at the time.

I also liked Celine because my mom liked Celine, and what my mom liked got a lot of play in our house. (I am probably the only person my age I know who attended an Elton John concert as a teenager.) I have a couple of her songs on my iPod, mainly for the nostalgia factor, and I have to say that "It's All Coming Back to Me Now," one of her really big hits, is surprisingly subversive in ways that I did not notice at that age. It's not a romantic ballad at all - it basically says, "Our relationship sucked and we were horrible to each other to the point of mutual abuse, but the sex was amazing! Wanna fuck again?" And nobody seems to have noticed, because it's Celine and everyone knows she sticks with romantic ballads! (And because I believe the radio edit was toned down a bit, as the album version is like seven minutes long. But mostly because it's Celine.)