Thinking New Music is “Noise”

When I was a high school student, I loved Blue Hearts very much. Blue Hearts is a Japanese punk rock band. I often listened to their music on cassette tapes. My mother listened to some of the music, and she said, “Why is such a bad singer singing a song?”

I was shocked. I doubted my mother’s intellect. This was punk rock. The vocalist should not be evaluated as “good” or “bad.”

My mother was a highly intelligent person. Her opinion was not related to her intellect. It was her way of looking at music. When she was young, singers had to be well-trained, which meant they were professional singers. That was common sense in my mother’s time.

I listened to the Beatles when I was a child. Everyone loved them. But when I researched them, I found that the Beatles were controversial in their early years. Some of the harsher critics described their music as “noise”.

When I was a junior high school student, I studied baroque music. I actually listened to records of some of it. I felt this music was boring. But the word “baroque” meant “twisted like a baroque pearl”; that is, “bizarre” and “foolish.” The original meaning had a negative connotation. In the early modern age, baroque music was like punk rock; it didn’t follow the old rules.

I’m not saying that my mother, the critics who criticized the Beatles, and the people who called the new style of music “baroque” are all stupid.

My point is that all of us, someday, will reach an age when we hear new music and think of it as just “noise.” If we have a long life, we can’t avoid that. That is a symptom of aging.

Luckily, I can still enjoy the newest music. I have never reached that age. But I still feel that the music that I loved when I was young is good.

Someday, I will reach that age. In that case, I will never say negative things about new music. I will pretend that I also enjoy it, so younger people won’t make fun of me.

“The newest music! I like it!”

 

Proofreading by Michael W, ProofreadingServices.com

Picture by K.Nakano