Conversations | Talking About Music & Reviewing An Album

I want to tell you about one of my favorite conversations with my friends, where we talk about music in general. Music is really weird for me, yet intimidating. Everyone has their own perspective and subjective opinion about their music. Each person that I met has different preferences for their music, especially genres. I can’t understand why people like certain songs that, for me, are unlistenable. But again, people do have their own perspective and opinion about their music, and I totally respect the defense of their music. Along the way, I’ll try to understand their music and, well, give it a listen.

Let me explain my music history for a bit.

I was exposed to the local songs that were played on the radio when I was a kid (Indonesian songs), and most of the songs are your basic ‘2000 love-rock songs’ which, for my ears and with the state of my 9-year-old mind, I can barely understand the meaning of the songs. I was into the melody of the songs; the sound that was made by the guitar, bass, drums, and vocalist was so distinct to me. Each song has different palettes that will help you get the feeling of every song that you hear — the ones that’ll give you happiness, sadness, excitement, rebellion, and so on. The sound of it helps you feel that certain way, which is why I said it’s weird; how could mere instruments make me feel that way? Well, I was just a kid back then.

Then came my first purchase — my very first album. It was Bruno Mars’ ‘Doo-wops & Hooligans’. A bit mainstream, with some songs that hit the chart in 2010, but still, for me, one of the most colorful albums that I’ve heard.

“What do you mean by colorful, Irsyad?”

Well, just imagine that an album is like a painting. People paint in various ways, but the most basic one should start with sketching the canvas and then move towards the color and stroke of the brush that will determine the various styles of the painting.

Well, let’s take ‘Doo-wops & Hooligans’ as an example. The album starts with the song ‘Grenade’, which can be said to be a sad song in general, but still an early start, which can be said to be when an artist began sketching the canvas. Then, onward towards ‘Just The Way You Are’, the song began to be vibrant, about a hopeful romance. Here, the artist tried to apply its first color onto the canvas. When it goes to ‘Our First Time’ and ‘Runaway Baby’, the artist starts to apply other colors to the canvas to make it more interesting and vibrant. Use monotone color, the artist thought, and then came the song ‘The Lazy Song’. You can feel the vibe by looking at the title of the song already. In the end, it goes to using dark colors with the song ‘Talking To The Moon’.

From this point, I hope you understand what I meant by it.

You see, a good album must have a good-ass concept to start, the kind of tone that the album will bring to us, the consistency between the tracks on the album, and in the end, the song itself on the album. A list of good albums for me can be included, such as ‘OK Computer’ by Radiohead, ‘Ágætis byrjun’ by Sigur Rós, ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ by The Beatles, ‘Antisocialites’ by Alvvays, ‘Hold On Now, Youngster…’ by Los Campesinos, and many more albums that I found to be interesting. It can be different for other people depending on which album hits them the most, which album they can relate to, and which album is nice to hear for them. An album can also change people’s preferred genres to whole new genres; like me, when I listened to ‘OK Computer’, my entire music course changed from then on.

My friends who are music enthusiasts or have the same music taste as me can talk about the topic for hours. Arguing over “What is the best Radiohead album?” or “What is the best Tame Impala album?” and so on. This type of conversation can truly reveal people’s perspectives about music, and sometimes we can agree on their opinions about their music as well. It helped me also understand different angles on different music, specifically albums. It helped to listen to my friend’s favorite album.

Rating an album isn’t an easy task to do. I’m not a certified reviewer, but I can tell what album is good and what’s not. And by saying that the album is bad, it’s entirely in my own opinion. If my friends don’t agree with my opinion, then I respect his opinion on defending it. The first way to review an album is, of course, by listening to the album as a whole until the end of the track. There’s a but: you can’t review the album on your first listen. This is important because some people can say that the album is good or bad on its first try, which is a total mistake. You can’t like or dislike an album on your first listen. Like I said earlier, you need to understand the theme and concept of the album that the artist tried to imply. The melody and the lyrics that the artist did on the album, you also have to listen to it carefully before you made a review about it. All in all, all I’m trying to say is that reviewing an album requires you to understand and know all aspects of the album in it; hence, listening to the album more than once is a good start to reviewing it.

For example, at first, I didn’t like Radiohead’s ‘The King of Limbs’. I heard it once, a bit of a song from the album, and it’s not like the Radiohead that I knew; it’s more electronic than ‘Kid A’ that made me say, “What the fuck is this?”. I put it on my worst Radiohead album, but along the way, when I listened to it again, I understood that just Radiohead took another major step in their album, as usual. It took me 2 years to say that “‘The King of Limbs’ is not that bad.”.

All in all, conversations between me and my friends, talking about music in general, really made me who I am now. I listen to various artists and bands currently, and it has helped me to understand more various music along the way.