"That sucks!" It does?

[msmcknittington]

Yesterday, Dan came into my room to "serenade" me with his guitar, as he frequently does. In this case, "serenade" means playing the intros to Guns'n'Roses and Led Zep songs, and the intros only. I guess they're mad licks?

I cranked up the Patrick Wolf, because I don't especially like hearing the intro to "Immigrant Song" fifteen times in a row, and Dan says, "No." And I say, "No? What do you mean, 'no'?" And he says, "Just no. This sucks." And I say, "Whatever, Mr. . . . " and then I blank, because part of having eclectic music taste is that I can listen to a lot of the same bands Dan does. He's also been listening to a lot of Cream and Eric Clapton lately, so I can't really rip on him for that. The other thing is that I really have no idea what the bands I don't like that he listens to are called. I just go, "Hey, where's the Clapton, man?" and sort of ignore the Cookie Monster vocals groups.

Also, Dan frequently finds himself playing the Noriega to my General Stiner. I have used music as a weapon, and I do not regret it.

Anyway, this little exchange led me to think about "this sucks" as a criticism of music or writing or any other art. It seems to me that when most people say "this sucks!" they mean, "This is not to my taste." We'll take the Patrick Wolf example. I can completely understand why someone would not like his music, but it's still well done. It's not sloppy or poorly played; he is not the alternative (folk punk? who knows!) version of the Pussycat Dolls.

For a writing example, I can understand why someone would not like In the Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, but the book is not poorly written. But Dan Brown? In Da Vinci Code mode? Oh, yes. Poorly written and poorly plotted. Or Twilight! One long WTF? with vampires.

So, in summation, it pisses me off when people use "this sucks!" to describes works that are just not to their tastes, rather than genuinely filled with suckitude. Please take the time to actually assess a work before labeling it as sucky.

Thank you.

Comments

[tattycat.livejournal.com]

Yep. Conflation of "I don't like this" with "Tis sucks." We hates it, precious.

[beraht.livejournal.com]

Do the Pussycat Dolls suck, though? The little I've heard of them is produced pretty well, and I don't believe they're meant to be anything more than a pop dance group, which they seem to do very well. Judged within that context, they're not very sucky at all even though they would play on autoloop in my own personal hell.

I just listened to Creed, incidentally. And I unironically enjoy Nickelback. \m/

[msmcknittington.livejournal.com]

Here's my take on the Pussycat Dolls: The lead singer is the only one who can really sing, and the rest of them are just there as set dressing. They also lack a certain . . . gravitas, for lack of a better word. There's not much content there, and content trumps pretty much everything for me.

So, as a dance group, maybe. As a musical group? No.