It's Only Rock and Roll

 What makes unoriginal ideas unoriginal

One in a series that probably ends here 

About a year and a half ago I wrote an article in which I tried to break down some things that I thought made a couple rock music recordings sound particularly good. Inspired by the liner notes from jazz albums of the 1960s, I wrote the article in a way that assumed the audience had more than a rudimentary understanding of music, but I stayed away from diving too deeply into music theory. Instead I looked at the subtle things musicians do to take the chord changes and the melodies that they already have and make them sound more interesting, what musicians refer to as musicality, or, more informally, feel. At the time, I promised that the piece would be one in an occasional series on what makes good music good. That series never materialized.

When I wrote the article, framing it as part of an occasional series was intended to be a reference to a column that would sometimes appear in Harper's about what makes good writing good. In those columns, the author would take a short passage from a well-known work of literature and break down the subtle uses of language that make the writing so enjoyable; I was hoping to take a similar approach to music. It turns out that rather than gently borrowing from Harper's, I was unwittingly ripping off a YouTuber named Rick Beato.

With undergraduate and graduate degrees in music and an impressive list of producing and writing credits, Beato brings his considerable credentials to a YouTube channel that focusses on analyzing pop and rock songs to find what makes them great. Unlike my humble little article, Beato goes heavily into technique and music theory, analyzing how chord changes and mode choices function within a song's tonality. While my approach might be a little different, it felt like I was covering ground that was already well covered. I don't really have any musical credentials apart from two years as a failed music major¹, and besides, there are plenty of other things to write about.

For every Beato, there is an equal and opposite anti-Beato, and his name is Pat Finnerty. Finnerty is a scrappy guy from Philly, and an accomplished guitarist. His YouTube channel includes a series called "What Makes This Song Stink", in which he finds particularly bad rock songs and breaks down in exquisite and hilarious detail just what it is that makes them so awful.

Some of Finnerty's targets are, for the intended audience², as easy as they are obvious. There's the childish toxic masculinity of Kid Rock. There's the too-radio-friendly stylings of Train, whose I-V-vi-IV chord changes³ to "Hey Soul Sister" sound like they could have come from a Vonage commercial. There's even a chance at poking fun at the hype surrounding major US sporting events, as Finnerty holds a mock loser-take-all competition between "Fly Away" and "American Woman" to determine once and for all what is the worst Lenny Kravitz song. But it's when Finnerty turns his attention to bands like Weezer and The Red Hot Chili Peppers, bands that he and much of his viewership probably actually like (or at least liked at one time) that we really begin to understand what this is all about.

His film⁴ about Weezer's "Beverly Hills" takes the viewer on a journey through time, and really, through life itself. Woven throughout the story are references to Boston Market, stories about how a teenage Finnerty would sometimes make runs to Boston Market to grab takeout for the family. The parallels emerge as the story goes on, and you come to see Boston Market as the culinary equivalent of commercial music. It's made—not particularly well—for the masses, but goddammit, their roast chicken and macaroni and cheese taste pretty good and sometimes that's just what you're in the mood for. We realize that the joke isn't just on Weezer, or Train or Kid Rock; the joke is on him, and on anyone who has ever put on airs about their particular choice of music, which really is all of us. In a refreshing contrast to the tediously predictable self-importance of rock critics and record executives and Grammy presenters, Finnerty takes himself and his whole audience down a peg and reminds us that none of this stuff is exactly Mozart.⁵

Near the end of the Weezer film, Finnerty tells us that what really makes "Beverly Hills" stink is its ability today to remind us of the passage of time, how he misses hanging out with his dorky friends, how he misses having Boston Market with his parents. I'm a little old for Weezer, but surely we can all remember a time when we thought we were a little cooler than we really were, and how maybe a particular band or song contributed to that feeling. We find ourselves constantly caught between celebrating the wisdom we've acquired and mourning the innocence we've lost. The film ends poignantly with Finnerty driving with his old high school buddy, blasting out Weezer's "Holiday" on the car's CD player, to have dinner together just one more time at Boston Market. I just might have to put on some Night Ranger and drive to one of the two last remaining Spoon's for some fajitas.

1. These days I prefer to think of myself as a well educated fan.

2. I mean, all of these bands have fans who would dispute Finnerty's analyses, otherwise they'd never have sold so many records in the first place.

3. As with any time Finnerty starts describing music theory in technical terms, his description of the I-V-vi-IV chord changes comes with a sheepishly unfavorable comparison of himself to Beato.

4. At thirty-three minutes, the run time and editing style have more of the feel of a short film than a conventional YouTube video.

5. As Tom Hulce's over-the-top performance in Amadeus is intended to remind us, Mozart wasn't exactly Mozart either.