by TISH MELTON
I was listening to Joni Mitchell’s A Case of You a couple weeks ago and thought to myself, “This is good art.”
What I meant was that the slow, dulcimer-driven melody paired with Mitchell’s steady voice took my breath away; the lyrics were vulnerable and honest, which is how I believe the most effective songwriting presents itself.
In all fairness, I didn’t feel this way when I first heard Dua Lipa’s new pop single Houdini. Many would argue that the artfulness of the hook of Houdini: “I’m not here for long / Catch me or I go Houdini” cannot even compare to that of the legendary A Case of You: “I could drink a case of you, darling / Still, I’d be on my feet.” But who is to say that the feeling Mitchell’s lyrics evokes in me is not evoked in another by Lipa? Who is to say that music is supposed to evoke this feeling in the first place?
It’s elitist for me to assume that my perception of “good” music translates to all people consuming this kind of art. If art is subjective, who am I–or anyone, for that matter–to claim its worth or its existence? In this sense, I believe that the death of art is when we decide what it is, and when it is “good.”
There is little metric for measuring art in the first place. For music specifically, the closest we get is album ratings on big music sites such as Rolling Stone or Pitchfork. Experts listen to newly released albums and rate them on a scale of 1-10. These metrics often favor Joni Mitchell-type songwriting, as she was awarded a 10 out of 10 on Pitchfork for her album Blue.
On the contrary, Dua Lipa was given a 7.5 out of 10 for her album Future Nostalgia, in which the writer claimed that the “ . . . closest it comes to feeling vulnerable or revealing is Pretty Please.” The lack of said vulnerability docked Lipa some points on her rating.
While Pitchfork decided that Blue was an objectively “good” piece of art, they were back and forth on Future Nostalgia because of its lack of emotional songs. However, does making a song emotional make it “good?” If Lipa wrote more like Mitchell, would her rating rise?
Similarly, when considering the effectiveness of art, one must consider the artists’ predicted or aspired outcome. While Joni Mitchell’s album Blue may inspire my creativity and make me better understand my own emotions, Dua Lipa’s album Future Nostalgia makes me dance.
Is there a sole purpose of music? Is evoking emotion more important than evoking movement? In the end, while Mitchell’s music and songwriting may be taken more “seriously” within the music industry, both Mitchell and Lipa fulfill the roles that they set out to achieve: Mitchell is brutally honest, making you want to lay in a fetal position in your bed for hours, and Lipa gets you out on the dance floor.
In this sense, Mitchell’s music cannot be deemed “better” or more effective than Lipa’s; they are different styles of music with different purposes.
Perhaps the issue I have with calling art “good” or “bad” comes from these attempts to rate it. All these ratings do is diminish the inventiveness that makes art so special.
If everyone wrote like Joni Mitchell, her unique writing style would not have informed and inspired generations of young storytellers. If no one wrote like Dua Lipa, who would give us the joy of dancing? The subjectivity of art–the fact that it’s impossible to define it or rate it–gives it this room for creativity and innovation, and without embracing this subjectivity, it’s led nowhere. This lack of direction and movement will just, in the end, lead art closer to its death.
There’s no clear direction on right or wrong in the art world; that is what makes it so beautiful in the first place and why I could keep going in circles about this issue for another nine paragraphs.
All one can do when approaching art is to keep an open mind. Try to consider the artfulness of a radio pop song just as much as you are considering the artfulness of a folk song. This is the only way that we can keep art living and breathing and keep our creativity thriving and moving forward.
The Mainsheet 