Sky and Ground
Chatting with my long-time friend this morning. She recommended some songs to me. I usually don’t listen to those. Not because I don’t want to, but I have a very picky taste in music, and most of the time the songs she recommended to me are not of my type. This morning she sent me some songs from Pink Floyd and Daft Punk, and I thought maybe I should try to listen to them this time, and not surprisingly those are not my type again.
She said I just love Japanese songs, which in fact is true but only to some extent. The songs I love had very solid and full arrangements, and not to mention the lyrics. There are just not so many songs check the boxes for me in this world. That’s also one of the reasons I don’t like Chinese pop songs, because for one thing their lyrics are too cheesy — either superficial, or just very pretentious play on words without real content, and for another, their arrangement is always hollow and empty and cheap. There are certainly exceptions, for example the songs by Tiger Hu, or F.I.R in their early years.
So to show her that I do also listen to other musicians, I sent her Scars On 45’s Heart On Fire. She really likes it. One thing that I found funny is she thinks it’s a happy song. Maybe sort of, but what I got from their songs are very similar to the Japanese songs I listen to. They had that kind of dark and cloudy 80s or 90s ambience. She disagreed, and said all the songs I listened to are very positive and happy songs.
Which got me think… did she think medium to fast tempo songs are just happy, and slow tempo ballads are just sad?
Later when I tried to explain why the music I listened to cannot be described simply as “happy“, I came up with a better explanation. The songs she sent to me are like sky — simpler, empty, monotonic songs, with a feel of being in outer space. What I listen to are more like the ground. It needs to have strong but clear and crisp beats, like a strong tap on the ground we’re standing and walking on. Fuller arrangements are like the entire earth with all its elements and creatures. I guess that’s also why I’m so attracted to Scars On 45 while mostly only listening to Japanese songs — not because the emotion, but the ambiance of beating the ground they present, which is certainly of my type.
