The Importance of Context In Music

Welcome to Jamwise!

I’m listening to and reviewing the best albums of all time and today one at a time, in random order, to expand my music taste and learn the wisdom of the ages. As always, you can follow my progress here. Let’s jump in!

Here’s the list for this week, continuing to work through the Rolling Stone Top 500 Albums of All Time:

The variety this week is pretty good - we’re covering albums from 1959 to today. My personal knowledge of these albums is mixed - I’ve heard half the songs from The Stranger, just like most people, and I’m sure the Bob Dylan + The Band album has some songs I know, as well as Drake and Alicia Keys, who both have so many hits, many of which I’ve grown up with, that I can’t even guess which ones are on which albums. Brian Eno and Ornette Coleman are total strangers to me.

Let us jam.

Another Green World - Brian Eno

I have never heard of this artist in my entire life. Like not even a peep. Never even a mention in passing. That seems so strange - this album is in Rolling Stone’s top 500 albums of all time, and I’ve never even heard of it. And it’s from fricking 1974. I’m continually windblown at how much music is out there, and how much of it that’s very good I’m missing for one reason or another (most of the reasons start with a capital “A” but that’s a discussion for another time… COUGH COUGH SHMALGARITHM COUGH COUGH)

Then again, maybe it’s just because this album is from multiple decades before I was born. Kids these days… Either way, I’ve got no idea what to expect. 

Rolling Stone’s review described the album like so at the time of release:

I think the risks they mention are referring to the strange sounds present on nearly every track, many of them likely new or unusual for the time. Hell, they’re still unusual by today’s standards. It sounds like Brian is just going around the studio banging whatever he can find together to make the backing tracks for his mostly vocal-free pieces.

The first song, Sky Saw, sounds just like its title. It might have been recorded on actual saws, for all I can tell. I might need to research that. It wasn’t until St. Elmo’s Fire that I was really caught up in the music, with the simplistic, drum-free soundscape backing a fairly awesome guitar solo that carries us from verse to verse.

“The Big Ship” is the most streamed song from this album on Spotify by a wide margin, which is usually a sign of a standalone-capable song that people are listening to more than the other tracks. It’s an emotional musical piece with Mario-sountrack-like synths in the background and a droning beat, and it totally gives me feelings. Almost Top Gun Theme-esque in terms of pure vibes. “Sombre Reptiles” was a decent track that would probably sound sick covered with today’s technology. 

But then, “Little Fishes” made me feel like I was just being fucked with. The rest of the album was somewhat less weird, but didn’t get me immersed again. 

I have to say, I don’t think I “get” this album as a whole. It makes me feel like a beer-drinker at a winery, like there’s just something fancy happening but it’s going over my head and all the experts are holding their superior knowledge over me. It was like staring at an abstract painting, wondering if everybody’s bullshitting me or if they really see their buried childhood feelings in the splotches of monochromatic paint. I enjoyed parts of this album, but I found many parts just strange, almost un-musical. It sounded at times like the Audio Notes app of a creative musician’s phone, like a bunch of rough drafts of songs. If anybody out there is among the many Brian Eno fans that seem to exist, please feel free to explain it to me. I want to understand, but right now I just don’t.

I’m chalking this rating up to lack of experience on my part as much as anything. Maybe I’ll revisit this album and listen to it with more highly trained ears, after I’ve listened to all of the other 499 albums on the Rolling Stone list, at least. Then maybe I’ll have the context to understand what the hell is going on here.

Objective Rating: 7 - Relying on the experts here, as I’m not qualified to judge this one

Jamwise Taste Rating: 2 - I just didn’t get it

New Jams:

• “St. Elmo’s Fire”

• “The Big Ship”

The Stranger - Billy Joel

This was Billy’s 5th studio album released in 1977. It spent a lot of time on the charts, and is #169 on Rolling Stone’s list. There seem to be no shortage of household name type hits on this album at this point. I’m gonna try to listen as if I’ve never heard any of them - put myself in the shoes of an excited fan on the day of the album’s release. Otherwise this is just going to sound like a family roadtrip when I was 8 and that might make me nauseous. A bag of Fritos, my dad’s “10mph under the speed limit” policy, and the nice, bouncy suspension of a 1990’s Crown Vic rocking the backseat. Ugh.

“Movin’ Out”, the first track, is certainly relevant today. In fact it might be too relevant - it’s basically about the singer’s discontent with the idea of the daily grind, and I decided to listen to it with my morning cup of coffee right before starting my own day job. Not the most motivating concept to start the day, but what a classic song.

I don’t know how I haven’t heard “The Stranger” more in my life. It’s the title track and seems like it was meant to be the centerpiece - and I dug it with its E minor jam and groove-ish drum part. It also makes whistling sound kinda cool at the end, a rare feat. It’s still among the lowest number of plays by track on the album on Spotify, though. I guess that just shows how massive the other hits from this album really were.

“Just the Way You Are” made the wiggles come over my entire body, but in a slow way. I was kinda moving like a fluid. Like an interpretive dance of milk flowing through hot coffee in a clear glass. Then there are a bunch of classic hits that I don’t need to review, and finally the last couple of songs cementing the idea that Billy feels like a stranger. I loved the ending - revisiting the piano riff and whistling piece from “The Stranger.” I could practically see this guy in a slanted bowler hat walking down the streets of New York in the rain, hands in pockets, whistling by himself. 

This album makes me wonder about our perception today of almost-50-year-old art. The Stranger sounds like it’s intended to be brooding and lamenting, but the feelings it left me with don’t match that - even songs like “Only the Good Die Young” has this ironically upbeat backing track compared to the downcast lyrics. Even the album cover is insanely sad-looking. To me the music just doesn’t fully carry that feeling on its own. But was that Billy’s intention? Or has that just been flavored by all the not-so-happy music I’ve been hearing thanks to our old buddy the Algorithm? 

This review from Slant Magazine seems to disagree with my interpretation (OK, I know “it made me feel happy” isn’t the most brilliant musical analysis by me, but the point was to see how much my perception differs from others, so deal with it):

I can see the pessimism in the lyrics, and at times hear it in the music, but my point is that the feeling this album leaves me with is distinctly less bitter than I think it’s intended to be. Maybe that’s the real point, that life is happy and sad in varying measures, and that sometimes downcast thoughts can be supported by a happy little guitar riff and beat - like someone putting on a smile they don’t really mean. Maybe I’ll revisit that in this week’s Jam Wisdom. That sort of contrast is common in music and it seems like something I should be good at spotting as I listen to all the best albums in the world (eventually).

Objective Rating - 9

Jamwise Taste Rating - 6.5

Jamwise Descriptors - Happy But Not Happy, Mega Voice, Strong Imagery

New Jams (skipping the massive hits for this list even though I love them, since they proved hard to listen to objectively)

• “The Stranger”

• “Just the Way You Are”

The Shape of Jazz To Come - Ornette Coleman

All I could think when I read this album title was “fuck yeah.” I mean come on, that title is objectively sick as hell. Apparently Ornette wanted to call it something else, but when his producers heard it they were like “No, this is way too unique and sick to be called Focus on Sanity, you have to name it something that makes it sound like it’ll basically redefine jazz.” The New York Times obituary of Ornette Coleman after his death in 2015 calls him “one of the most powerful and contentious innovators in the history of jazz”, so it seems that The Shape of Jazz to Come is named appropriately.

This album was released in 1959, and Ornette has the kind of story that sounds so unlikely and so triumphant that I felt compelled to read more into it before jumping into the album. He was self-taught, working as an elevator operator while he studied jazz and music theory, and was pretty much rejected by audiences and musicians, usually because of his inventiveness and “outsider” perspective. That sounds like a recipe for innovative music to me. Time to listen.

Jazz isn’t my most well-traveled kind of music, so this one is likely to be educational. I’ll for sure need to revisit it after I’ve learned more about the genre, since I know it’ll be hard to understand why this jazz is so different without some context around it, both around the time it was recorded and in the 65 years since. Not to mention the many decades of jazz that came before this album, which formed the backdrop for music listeners at the time. Missing all that knowledge, this might be an interesting listen for me.

“Lonely Woman” kicked off the record, and I had a little toe-tap action going on, although I was right in that I need a little context and experience to really vibe with this music. I think I’ve found my subject for this week’s Jam Wisdom section. So there won’t be much in-depth review of the music of this album, since I don’t have the experience to do it justice, but we’ll get into the need for context later.

The trumpet riffs in “Eventually “made my dog think our house was under attack by a fleet of mailmen all honking their horns at the same time. I thought it was pretty fascinating how together the band sounded when the lead players were just going wild on their riffs. Jazz sounds hard.

My first reaction to this album - I think jazz requires more immersive listening than other genres, and more experience than I currently have. I believe immersion is where the rewards of this genre probably lie, getting yourself so into the music that every utterance of the sax moves you right along with the musician. It’s not music designed around a “hook” like millennials (and most listeners of popular music) have been trained to expect. But at the same time I think I need to speak the language to really get the message the artist is trying to send. Right now I simply don’t have that.

I’m glad I listened, and this will be worth a revisit as my jazz chops grow.

Objective Rating - 8 (I have no idea personally, just echoing reviews by experts here)

Jamwise Taste Rating - 3 (Not going in my rotation, but that’s an “it’s not you it’s me” situation)

Jamwise Descriptors - Super Saxy, You Just Have to Get It, Cooking Music

New Jams

• “Peace”

The Diary of Alicia Keys - Alicia Keys

This is Alicia Keys’ second album, and it won Grammys, topped the charts, all the usual stuff we now expect from someone of her massive talents. She wrote the songs primarily herself, as well as performing a lot of the production. 

Everybody’s heard Alicia Keys songs, including myself. But she’s a good example of an artist whose songs have come into my brain by way of the charts and singles, rather than as an album. I’m sure there are many Keys fans out there who have waited anxiously for her next album to come and listened to it all the way through on day 1, but that’s not how I was exposed to her music. So again, in the spirit of thinking about context, I will be hearing these songs (some probably new to me) in the context of the album for the first time.

We start out with “Harlem’s Nocturne”, a piano piece that transitions to a beat-drop intro to the album that frankly knocked my socks off. Holy shit. The context of the rest of the album is now “bet you can’t top that.” 

Unlike many of the ill-fated-sounding relationships Alicia sings about, the marriage of hip-hop, R&B, and classical music is absolutely meant to be. There are so many different kinds of musicianship on display here it’s ridiculous. 

“If I Ain’t Got You” is such a good song. I’m a sucker for 3/4 time, and also for pretty much everything else about this song. Her voice makes my body undulate. The beat makes my soul shiver. I had to stop listening to this album because it was during work hours and I wasn’t getting shit done, and I wanted to focus on the music.

Alicia Keys is such a genius. It’s not just the singles that got me, it’s the whole damn thing. The energy ebbs and flows like a classical piece flowing through its movements. I’m glad I listened to her Diary all the way through, and I will do so again.

Objective Rating - 9.5

Jamwise Taste Rating - 8.8 (only this low because of my current genre habits. I predict this gets adjusted as I get more ratings to compare it to)

Jamwise Descriptors - Mega Voice, Classical Crossover, Songwriting Sensei

New Jams

• “Harlem’s Nocturne”

• “If I Ain’t Got You”

• “Dragon Days”

• “Slow Down”

The Basement Tapes - Bob Dylan and the Band

So I know Bob Dylan, and I know The Band, but I don’t think I know any of the songs on this record. It’s at 335 on the Rolling Stone list, and I’m thinking this must be another album that, for one reason or another, didn’t really produce a single that made the solo journey through the generations for my ears, which means it’s a great move to experience these songs all together.

And there are a lot of songs across 2 volumes - 24 to be exact. Wild that two musical acts as big as these two got together and wrote 24 fricking songs together, when each of them had their own success going on. Songwriting was just in the air back in 1975, man.

We kick off with a couple bluesy tunes, “Odds and Ends” and “Orange Juice Blues”, the latter of which sounds like the name of a song written just after brushing my teeth and having breakfast.” Yahoo Street Scandal” is a good, solid blues jam that sounds like an obscure HBO show backing track. 

There are a lot of songs about going places to visit ladies, a lot of Dylan cryptic pseudo-poetic verses that are just as interesting to read without the music. Although they wrote the songs together, I actually felt there was more of the Band present here than of Dylan, at least musicalloy. 

The lyrics of “Too Much of Nothing” were a trip, I highly recommend listening to that one with the lyrics pulled up.

Overall my impression of this album is that the greatest value is in the poetry, while the music has aged a lot. I’d recommend listening to it like the bongos in a poetry reading - the music is there for adornment only, and the words are the real point.

Objective Rating - 7 (it’s two great acts together, but not the best of either of them in my opinion)

Jamwise Taste Rating - 3

Jamwise Descriptors - What the Color Blue Sounds Like, Tell Me A Story, Slam Poetry With A Guitar

New Jams

• “Yahoo Street Scandal”

• “You Ain’t Goin Nowhere”

Take Care - Drake

Drake is an artist with a million hits, who for some reason has become a kind of caricature in my mind. I think this is a result of many different algorithms showing me content created about Drake that has nothing to do with his music and talent - stuff like pictures of him with a weird haircut, or making a dumb expression on the sideline at a Lakers game. It’s formed this super unfair image of him in my head that has nothing to do with reality. It’s like the meme-ified version of him is all my dumb little brain can grasp after willfully rotting itself on social media.

I’m listening to this album having never listened to an entire Drake album start to finish, probably because of the reasons mentioned above. I hate the fact that I have a perception of an artist that’s shaped by influences that have very little to do with reality, him as a person, or his music. It kind of pisses me off now that Instagram’s algorithm is the entire reason I seem to have bypassed Drake in my music listening. Time to start fresh with Drake and form my opinion about his music, and his music alone.

This album was Drake’s 2nd (not counting mixtapes), released in 2011. His first studio album was a huge hit, and this one was a bit of a musical expansion that has continued throughout his career. I’ve heard several of these songs as singles and college party staples, but most of the album will be new for me. It’s number 95 on the Rolling Stone list, and that didn’t happen by accident.

Also I jumped straight into this album after the Dylan album, so quite the transition. That’s the fun of this project in a nutshell right there.

The first track, “Over My Dead Body”, sounds like something an old and grizzled artist would release - it’s about the world trying to take everything from the singer, and he’s not having it. Maybe that’s how the life of an artist really is these days. The competition with newcomers must be brutal, and the fact he’s singing about that already just underscores that fact. The stupid memes I was talking about early probably make that ten times worse for an artist like Drake.

When “Headlines” (and ‘HYFR’ and “The Motto”) came on I was back in college standing on my couch with a cup of the cheapest whiskey money could buy blasting this song from our busted speakers with my roommates. Hell, the whiskey might even have been Canadian too - shoutout Canadian Mist. Hearing it again was instant transportation. This song is so connected to that part of my life that it’ll be impossible to listen to it any other way. Fuck, it’s awesome though. And it’s another song about other people’s expectations on Drake, just illustrating the pressure a dude like that is under. I’m not at all qualified to say this, but I think (or maybe I just hope) this is the kind of song that’ll be played for generations.

I know a lot of being a massive superstar artist is image, and rappers talk about that aspect of stardom as much as anyone, but this album was surprisingly deep in terms of emotional range. It was introspective, had feelings everywhere, and the party songs I’ve known forever were actually the outliers here, not the norm. And the ending, let us not forget, was the song that launched a million YOLOs. I don’t know if I love or hate Drake for that, but it’s pretty cool that he had that kind of clout.

Take Care is all about Drake handling expectations on him, taking care of his crew, and being taken care of himself. It sounds authentic. I was all in from start to finish and just wanted to play it again when it was over. This was good shit.

Objective Rating - 8

Jamwise Taste Rating - 8.5

Jamwise Descriptors - Sounds to Drink Whiskey To, Iceburg Music, Songwriting Sensei

New or refreshed Jams

• “Headlines”

• “Under Ground Kings”

Jamwise Wisdom - Context As A Music Listener

The common theme this week has been context. Listening to Brian Eno and Ornette Coleman was difficult for me because I lacked context - I read all the accolades each of these artists gained over time, but didn’t personally connect with the music. Even listening to Billy Joel, maker of many household hits, was a bit hard to do objectively since I’ve experienced so many of his songs in my own life, and it was hard to listen as if I was hearing the album for the first time on release. That’s a form of context as well - familiarity - that is unique to each individual, not to mention whatever might have been happening in my life that affected the way I heard a song at the time.

It got me thinking about how important context is as a music listener. The way we receive music is so heavily influenced by a million variables - the time we live in, the artist’s life and persona - even what I’m doing at the time of listening can influence how I relate to a given piece of music. The tracks that are played before and after the current track also influence it. Like I wrote in Week 1, that’s one of the reasons I’m listening to complete albums now rather than collections of individual songs grouped at random. The context within an album is important, and now I’m trying to get my head around how all the other external contexts might influence how I hear things.

There’s a lot of research that shows what we listen to when we’re young sticks with us forever. That seems to me like a function of context. We hear things during our formative years, and therefore let them form us. The context is that we’re in a phase in our lives that makes us more open and seeking new things, and the music we find at this time has a better chance of sticking in our brains. 

There’s also research that suggests the first time we hear a song is different than all the other times. So what happens if I hear a song for the first time when I’ve got a head cold? Or if I’ve just been dumped? Or if I’m having the best day ever, or I’m at a party with friends, and so on? That context, which is mostly specific to my life, is also a part of my relationship with that song.

The article above from Complex puts it this way:

Nailed it. That’s exactly what was missing in my Ornette Coleman listening session. I was missing the expectations required to process it in the right way. Now I worry that since that was the first time I listened to those songs, that I’ll never like them as much as if I’d heard them with the proper expectations. But then again, how can I ever listen to a new genre without encountering that exact situation? 

That makes me think that the order in which I hear the songs in a given genre will also forever affect my perception of that genre and my favorites within it. This is getting too complicated for me.

It’s like drinking orange juice after brushing your teeth. I love orange juice normally, but what if I’d tried it for the first time after a minty tooth brushing session? I’d probably hate it and be afraid to try it again if I didn’t realize the mint taste made the orange taste bad. 

All in all, lack of context obviously affects my music perception, but I also can’t gain context without listening to a bunch of music. I can’t control the circumstances in which I hear the music, so why bother? I’m even more confident that my super-duper album randomizer is a great idea. I don’t want to automate my taste, but I’ll definitely defer the decision about what to listen to next in my journey to a spreadsheet. Because there are too many factors that affect the way I encounter new music to worry about. 

If I tried to optimize every single factor so I hear the best music for the first time when I’m healthy, in a good mood, knowledgeable about the genre, aware of the culture surrounding it, etc. etc., then you know what I’d need? An Algorithm. 

I think the best thing I can do is not to worry whether I have the proper experience or expectations or context to appreciate a given album. That’s an impossible task. Instead I just have to embrace that I have my own set of experiences and contexts that will always influence how I hear something. Hence the Taste Rating being separate from the Objective Rating - this is my attempt to reconcile my own influences with the fact that there’s a lot of objectively great music that I just don’t vibe with. I think this will satisfy my need to appreciate good music, while also addressing my totally separate need to find music I want to listen to over and over. There’s nothing wrong with those categories being two separate things.

Educating myself about music scratches a different itch than listening for fun. There’s plenty of room in my life for both. Similarly, saying I don’t plan to frequently listen to Ornette Coleman and saying I know his music is great are two totally different statements, which can and should coexist. 

My job here isn’t to like everything just because it’s good, nor is it to correct every lack of context I have. That would drive me insane. My job is to be aware that I have a different context than any other human, to understand that my opinion is not an immutable fact, and to remember that there’s no such thing as objectively bad music.

And above all, remember to be willing to learn.