My favorite entry on Wikipedia is ""List of helicopter prison escapes."" I was first directed to the page by my brother, and it's an interesting topic in its own right (escaping prison via helicopter has to be the most ballin' exit anyone's ever had). The stories in the entry are interesting unto themselves, too. You can read about David McMillan's 1983 botched escape and subsequent trial, or Pascal Payet's somewhat ominous 2001 escape (he's still at-large).
But I'm primarily taken by this entry because, well, it is hardly relevant to anything. Prison escapes make up only a small portion of our lives, and those attempted via helicopter comprise an even smaller compartment within that. It's just one tiny parcel that most of us would never take time to acknowledge, but when we start to unpack it we discover a Pandora's box of information. What is inarguably unimportant makes a compelling case for being very, very important.
And that's exactly how I like to think about music these days, too.
New York Magazine pop music critic Nitsuh Abebe first synthesized this idea in the aftermath of the ""Who is Arcade Fire?"" meme, which is a very apt microcosm for this whole ordeal. Because who would've thunk that Arcade Fire, the band that played Madison Square Garden, headlined Lollapalooza and whose worst album won a Grammy, was completely unknown to thousands, maybe millions of people.
Because while people who listen to Arcade Fire view them as one of the biggest bands in the world and have deep, enlightening conversations about how their music reflects or impacts social norms; people who primarily listen to Taylor Swift have intellectual conversations about her music as well. And not just Swift, but also Bruno Mars, Ke$ha, Eminem, Bright Eyes, Insane Clown Posse—they all invoke similarly deep conversations (alright, maybe not ICP).
So the contemporary geist of music consumption is defined by fanaticism—each of us thinks the world of music revolves around our personal interests. And the really amazing part of this is how it's actually sort of true, because how else would we define the motion of music? It used to be a lot easier to place ourselves in the grander scope of things because we were given the ""mainstream,"" and everything slightly left-of-center was labeled ""alternative.""
But now nothing is alternative—or, everything is alternative. The pockets of alternative music are so plentiful and stretch so deep that sometimes it's hard to actually tell which strands are following the definitive pathways and which are just quirky offshoots.
The biggest effect of this is our conception of historical progress. Radiohead's OK Computer was groundbreaking in every sense of the word, but how important are its advancements at a time when a 13-year-old kid can just as easily unearth Burial's Untrue? Right now people applaud James Blake's self-titled debut for his amalgamation of dub, glitch and R&B. It is a crucial touchstone in digital innovation and serves as an important connector between these three compartments of music; but what happens when—probably sooner than later—someone does it better? We hear a fuller, smoother glitch record that pushes Blake's ideas further and helps to define its compartment? And then we decide that it is, in fact, a better record, because it is more distinctive, even though Blake's would have more connectivity with its fundamental influences. This is not how MTV would react, but isn't that the point of moving beyond these authoritative sources of music exposure?
To frame it another way: That Wikipedia entry on helicopter escapes is really awesome, but you really haven't lived until you've read the entry ""Wolf attacks on humans."" The two could not have less in common, yet we're expected to be able to relate to, and then qualitatively assess each on the same scale. Wouldn't it be more mutually beneficial to just agree that Wikipedia is awesome and share experiences from there? We appreciate them because they are so different from one another.
And so the question posed to any music writer who works for a publication with a general audience is: How do you relate to, let alone satisfy all of these intensive compartments who think the world of music revolves around them? How do contemporary music writers write about one compartmentalized genre in a way that stimulates readers who come from multiple compartments, without sounding esoteric or, at worst, pedantic?
If you have any ideas, I'd love to hear them.
And with that, graduating senior Kyle Sparks rides off into the sunset. Or more accurately, he escapes via helicopter into the sunset. If you would like to hear more thoughts, send him an e-mail at ktsparks@wisc.edu and a long, rambling chat over a pitcher of Blatz can be arranged.
