Music Can't Be Objective

How Jagged Little Pill and a Rolling Stone list taught me to trust my critical ear

Earlier this fall, Rolling Stone reworked their famous “500 Greatest Albums of All Time” list (a list they had originally compiled in 2003 and updated in 2012) from scratch with a new group of voters and writers. As a result of this rework, Alanis Morissette’s 1995 album Jagged Little Pill came in at 69 on the list, making it the greatest album of 1995 according to Rolling Stone. However, it didn’t even reach the top 500 in their 2003 or 2012 lists. Isn’t it ironic? Don’t you think?

Now, I love lists. I love definitive, objective data, especially when it comes to ranking things. The problem is: not everything in life can be measured definitely or objectively. There are no such things as “the greatest song of all-time" or “best season of the year” or “the greatest pizza joint in Nashville”…except there are:

“God Only Knows” - The Beach Boys.

Fall.

Desano Pizza Bakery.

Despite knowing how arbitrary claims like these are and understanding that they are opinions stated as facts, I (like most people) love to make them. But this has had an adverse effect on my music listening experience as well. I’ve had a difficult time as a young writer and music critic learning to be OK with my opinions when they differ from writers and publications I respect.

For example, when Pitchfork gives Harry Styles’ 2019 album Fine Line—an album I quite enjoyed and would probably rank at least in my top 50 of the year—a low score of 6.0 (making it their 869th rated album of the year), I feel like I’m wrong. “Pitchfork’s writers certainly have more refined taste than I do,” I tell myself, and I continue to lose trust in my own sense of artistic taste, preference, and understanding.

At first, this insecurity may have been warranted, having only started to cast a wide net into the world of music in the last five years. But now that I have a relatively firm grasp on the scope of popular music, I’ve been trying to break this insecurity and learn to trust my own critical ear in 2020. Despite having the head knowledge that these insecurities are irrational, it took an objectively unobjective Rolling Stone list to finally make the lesson sink in. Of the 500 albums listed in their new music canon, 154 didn’t appear on their original lists at all. In just eight years, the canon of the greatest albums of all time—something that seems so set in stone and monumental—had changed by 31%.

We could spend quite a bit of time trying to dissect why this happened. Most obvious is the fact that a decade has passed, giving us years of new albums and time to reconsider the long-term importance of those that were still new a decade ago. Second is the fact that new writers were brought on board who offer new, diverse perspectives instead of the nearly-all white male perspective that dominated music journalism in years past.

A third point is that popular music journalism philosophy has shifted in recent years from rockism—a school of criticism that exalts the authentic, avant-garde, and artistic over all else—to poptimism—a school of criticism that offers equal credence to culture-defining popular music and the more inventive, experimental musical pursuits.

Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill is a beneficiary of this shift toward poptimism. Despite being certified 16x platinum in the US alone, the record wasn’t well-liked in critical spaces upon release. Dean of Rock Criticism Robert Christgau called Morissette a “privileged phony” with identity and man problems. Entertainment Weekly called the record “hard to swallow” with “clunky mixtures of alternative mood music and hammy arena rock.” Finally, the Chicago Tribune wrote, “The Canadian writes like one would expect a 20-year-old to write; that is, she leads with her emotions.”

Whether any of those claims are true or not, the reality is a lot of people loved that record. A lot of people still love that record. And that’s great. To be honest, had I been around for the release of Jagged Little Pill, I probably would have written it off and sided with the skeptics. Now, however, I have a firmer grasp on my own critical ear and greater disillusionment with the fluidity of expert or popular opinion. Now, I’m OK with my opinions even when they’re different, though I’m still seeking the opinions of others because learning how to listen to music well is an ongoing venture.

I wish I had understood this lesson earlier in my music appreciation journey. Perhaps I’ve written off other records I’ll come to love later on when I’ve seen the impact they make on the world. Who knows? As Alanis says though, “You live, you learn.”

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