What does it mean to like music like Joanna Newsom or Patrick Wolf?
They’re both very classically influenced obviously, Patrick has the whole noise/glitch sound going on throughout the backgrounds of his songs… I can see Patrick’s music being a little easier to get accustomed to because it is often pretty beat-driven and his songs tend to have a more classic pop structure but his use of strings kind of cancels it out almost. Joanna has an even more classical music approach, though I have yet to listen to her latest album.
My question though is what does it mean to enjoy this type of music? What kind of person does it take, what does it say about them? I feel like both Joanna and Patrick are pretty far on the fringes of the indie spectrum in their own ways (though it appears they at both maybe moving away from certain sounds toward the center of the spectrum)… Even the indie fans who listen to music like Passion Pit and even stuff like Arcade Fire and Animal Collective and stuff like that would probably be pretty reluctant or hesitant when it comes to either of these artists (speaking from personal experience).
I’m not really sure what made me start thinking about this aside from walkin down the halls of the dorms listening to “Emily” by Joanna and thinking how strange it would be to hear this song emanating from another room. It almost seems completely unfathomable to me, not in this dorm at Virginia Tech.
I wonder if you have to have a natural inclination towards more classical music to acquire a taste for these types of artists? Or does it have more to do with your socialization growing up, maybe? Your world views? I could see how some people might find it hard to listen to a woman with a childlike voice strumming a harp singing about a monkey and children throwing coins when they’re used to listening to rappers “sing” about drinking champagne and owning expensive cars.
And by socialization / world views, I am maybe talking about stuff like gender differences? Like, maybe it’s more okay for a woman to listen to music like Patrick Wolf and Joanna Newsom and Owen Pallett than it is for a man? Is that possible? There might be some sort of social norm that I’m not aware of that says it’s not okay for college-aged males to listen to music that involves a lot of harp and ukelele with lyrics about gypsy kings and thickets and ghosts.
Who are the exceptions to this social mandate? What are they like? What other music do they listen to? What allows them to listen to this music?
To quote Danielle Staub, it’s just a question.
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