RIYLing the Night Away...

What is left when we reduce music to merely how it sounds?  Is it possible to remove the act of listening to music from the algorithm of how it makes us feel?  Would the efficiency provided by such a redaction be worth the resultant sanding down of the edges of life, art, and memory?  Does it matter why we love the things we love?

A friend and I were recently discussing the importance of what he referred to as “experientialism”, as related to music appreciation. (He was mildly unsure at the time if that was a word – the internet confirms that it is, and that the way he was using it wasn’t too far off the original philosophical meaning.) His takeaway was that, and I'm paraphrasing, his experience of music could never be reduced down to a simple formula that equaled a binary 'like' or 'dislike', and that much of the music he had developed affinity for over the years had earned its place because of circumstantial factors that were at once separate from the art, but then inextricably tied to his enjoyment of it in retrospect by virtue of sharing the same timespace.  I was initially unsure of what he meant, but when he juxtaposed it against the practice of "RIYL", a common strain of association-based marketing and rhetoric, it snapped into place.

The theory/practice of RIYLism gets its name from an explanatory shorthand that presupposes a listener will like something if they like things that are similar, ie “Recommended If You Like...”. A Silverchair LP might be foisted upon unsuspecting listeners with a brightly-colored sticker saying “For Fans of NIRVANA!!”, and it wouldn’t be too far off the mark, strictly relative to the sound of the music or the general tone/feel of the songs.

First thing to get out of the way here: RIYL can be quite useful as a way to describe a sound or feeling. I can cut through untold minutes of potentially superfluous description by just telling someone that early Silversun Pickups sounds a lot like mid- to late-period Smashing Pumpkins. They would get the gist of what I was saying and we could move on to details that required more in the way of explanation. As a way to very briefly and succinctly communicate some overall characteristic of a musical act, RIYLing is hard to top. After all, it makes clever use of what’s becoming one of our culture's more prevalent forms of expression:  reference. Using shared reference points to find common ground is as old as communication itself, but in recent years the art of seizing upon our shared communal memories and touchstones has become something of a language within a language, and finding these meaningful dots that connect from one person to the next is not only useful, but can be very rewarding.

But like all timesavers that start out as useful shortcuts, RIYLism can spiral out of control and lose the majority of its meaning when utilized to encompass more than what it was designed to.

Let’s talk about BADBADNOTGOOD. By the time they had released their III album, I still had no idea who they were even though they had been around for a couple of years by that point. I was cruising the "Jazz" vinyl section at my local record store when I happened upon the record for the first time. Something about the art drew me, though now I would struggle to say what that might have been – the cover is a dimly-lit photo against a dark background, it looks vaguely like a picture of the band taken at an upward angle through a hole in the floor. I had decided ahead of time that I needed to bulk up on the jazz in my record collection, and it looked like this was worth taking a chance on. Moments later I presented my chosen records to the store clerk and he immediately did a double-take upon seeing III in my stack. “I love this record,” he said, or something similar. My gamble on this unknown thing had now been validated by someone who I could probably have assumed to have reasonably similar taste to my own – at the very least, I had some positive reinforcement. My excitement to listen to my new treasure at home doubled. Once I dropped the needle on III, it quickly became one of my favorite records of that year. The blend of hip-hop beatmaking and jazz musicianship was a mix I had heard done before, to a degree, but never with BBNG's degree of mastery – in some ways, it played like the best parts of Entroducing..... or Deadringer, but the parts were all original (as opposed to sampled) and performed live by a trio with unbelievable musical chemistry. With each listen, I grew more enamored of the sound and the vibe.

Time went on, and I had the chance to see BBNG play at the Getty Museum. It was an “Off the 405” show, free to the public. My wife and I got there early to make a day out of perusing the beautiful galleries before the concert, which was to be held in the compound's massive courtyard.  By the time the band was setting up, the crowd was amped. BBNG sounded fantastic. They even covered a song by TNGHT, and while their aptitude at covering works by electronic artists and hip-hop producers was both widely-known and highly-touted in the music press, I hadn’t expected I would actually get to hear one of those renditions live. The show still stands as one of my favorites in terms of sheer fun.

Here is where RIYLing fails. I could probably say to someone who likes DJ Shadow that they would likely enjoy BADBADNOTGOOD’s work. I could probably recommend them to a jazz fan looking for something that showed respect to rules of the form but wasn't afraid to play fast and loose with the genre.  I could probably look through someone’s record collection and make the recommendation based on the fact that they owned Kendrick Lamar records, or FlyLo records, or Thundercat records. All these would be examples of RIYLism, and I would probably be 100% correct each time. (Though while I'm using BBNG as the example here, it occurs to me that most music fans with any appreciation for jazz, hip-hop, fusion, art-rock, etc, would legitimately like them and that this wouldn't be a hard sell by any stretch of the imagination.)

But when it comes to the reasons that I enjoy the band so intensely, they can’t be explained by merely talking about what the music sounds like. I like the band because I made what turned out to be a great decision based on little more than some cover art and a thumbs-up from a record store clerk; and because I spent a spring and summer listening to the album 2-3 times a week, falling deeper into its spell a little more each time; and because I saw them at a free show that seemed epic in the moment, where I was surrounded by likeminded fans of all ages and admiring the cascading slopes of a southern California valley as sunset became twilight, and then I walked the quarter-mile down the hill from the museum in the heady July darkness, the effects of a potent dopamine rush only just beginning to fade.

I like them so much because of the experience I had learning about them and the experiences my appreciation for them led me to have. The experientialism of the music proves to be much more important in this case than any set of characteristics inherent in the music itself. And RIYLism, even as a purely rhetorical tool, would never be able to get that across since, at its core, it is meant to be a tool of reduction that makes use of the lowest common denominator.  The conversation with my friend helped me put into words that what we like about music is often so much more than the sounds.  The sounds are of course a large part of it, but the experience of those sounds is indubitably linked to the experience of the purchase, the receipt of a gift, a live show, a season abroad, the sudden clicking of a lyric at the perfect time, months of listening alone on headphones, memories created with loved ones, and connections established with new friends.  You can't fit all that onto a promotional sticker placed on the album's shrink-wrap, and even if you could, it would be essentially meaningless to anyone who hasn't had those same experiences.

What I keep coming back to is that the way we talk about music is important. When describing what we like and why we like it, it behooves us to be aware that often the actual art may not line up with the experience of it, for better or for worse.  As in all subjective things, our experience is the great equalizer and the one right answer.  While RIYLism has its place in conversation, it can too often become one of the ways that we grant ourselves permission to forget what is important about the art that we connect with.

So love the art that you love, whether it's for the aesthetic pleasure, the inherent beauty, or for your experience of how the art communicates to you.  Just don't forget why you love it.

-nich

*** The author wishes to thank Jonathan Y. Haney profusely for his insight into the important things in life, his participation in thousands of hours' worth of invaluable conversation over the years, and his help in revising this piece (the conclusion was truly sloppy before his input, hopefully it's better now).  HKC forever. ***