Songs to bridge the divides

Every once in a while I experience a song that completely overwhelms my sensibilities and brings tears to my eyes as I sing it. When this happens, I can't seem to get enough of it, and I listen to it and play it on my guitar over and over until the effect inevitably lessens, which is both good and bad. The song that's currently stuck in my head to that effect is "King's Crossing" by Elliott Smith. It's not a heartwarming song by any means, but hearing him sing it with so much passion and sincerity is a moving experience, especially since it essentially served as his suicide note.

Other songs on that list would include Radiohead's "Letdown" and Bruce Robison's "Traveling Soldier" (also covered by the Dixie Chicks), which I saw performed at the last two Austin City Limits Music Festivals. Different songs affect people in different ways, but for me these songs and several others have been the ones that I think of when I consider popular music an art form. Which I do, on occasion.

It's popular to bag on the songs that make the radio these days as being inferior to those from the '60's and '70's (and sometimes the '80's, depending on who you're talking to). It goes without saying that there has always been good music and bad, and with the rise of teen pop and boy bands in the '90's, a lot of people tuned out with good reason. But if there's one thing fashion teaches us, it's that everything old is new again. The music that was popular in any given period of the last half-century has seen it's fortunes rise and fall, and I don't see that changing anytime soon.

One thing popular music gives us, like other forms of entertainment, is a point of reference for the culture. If many people have heard a given song, whether they like it or not, they have at least that much in common. Multiply that by a dozen songs or a hundred, and there's a conversation waiting to be had. This is just one example of how we are staying connected as a people in an age of increasing isolation. As narrowcasting becomes more prominent, the number of these points of reference is going to decrease, and our feeling of commonality with it.

It's true that when one orients his or her creative impulse towards the "mainstream", the originality and peculiarity inevitably gets reduced in order to appeal to the most consumers. This is what's happened to Hollywood movies over the last 25 years. But this is just one extreme end of the pendulum swing. At the other end, if we're all creating something so specific to our age groups, races, or political persuasions as to exclude everyone else, the likelihood of maintaining our relationships and conversations with the rest of the world around us can only decrease over time, possibly to the point that we no longer recognize each other.