Do ya think I'm any good?
Let's give the old nature/nurture debate a musical twist.
I had an argument the other day with someone who maintained that, no matter how cosmopolitan and genre-busting our musical tastes, buried deep somewhere in our DNA there's an atavistic default setting that makes us react in a particular way to certain nuts-and-bolts specifics.
So yes, we might appreciate, enjoy and even love everyone from Air to ZZ Top (love a bit of Top, me) but the bottom line is that a handful of old, familiar noises will almost always pick off your defences one by one, over and over again.
This, I was told, is not the warm glow of nostalgia. This is hard wiring. I admitted that, for me, the voice has always been key. I can forgive a great singer most things - yes, even Atlantic Crossing - while the most gifted songwriter will struggle to engage me if the voice doesn't cut it. By 'cut it' I mean....what? Not technically accomplished, no, but totally distinctive, packed with personality, somehow believable and throwing out a bit of emotional heft.
My conversational combatant nodded, as if the field had been surrendered, and I went away to think some more about it. As I get a little older, do I really have to accept that it's simply a genetic FACT that I love tinny electronic beats, dub, hi-hat splashes, Hammond organs and acoustic guitars miked so closely you can hear the strings squeak? And is it inevitable that I have no place for guitar solos lasting more than 4 seconds, the Blues, 99.9% of punk and rave, female American singer-songwriters and (whisper it) Joy Division and The Clash?
I'd like to think that music is still capable of waging a stealth attack on my essential nature now and again - and I can easily convince myself that that is definitely true - but maybe I'm just fooling myself.
What's your opinion? Does the relentless pursuit of "new" music merely indicate a doomed attempt to shake ourselves free of our basic prejudices? And if you're being really ruthlessly honest with your subconscious self, what's the one thing you can't resist - the unbreakable seam that runs through the majority of your favourite music?
