I sometimes wonder if context is relevant to liking or disliking music. I don't mean context like "I did this fun thing when I heard X" but more like context in relation to the rest of an artist's work. For example, when I heard Beck's "Loser" I thought "oh great, another 'loser' song; I haven't heard enough of THESE lately!" It wasn't until I heard other tracks from the album that I realized the guy had a distinctive style and real songwriting ability and "Loser" was just one facet of a much deeper artist than I'd originally believed. Now I can listen to it and enjoy it when I thought Beck was going to be just another annoying fake alternative artist. IT'S THE SAME SONG though! Why is context relevant or should it not be??
More recently I heard a song evidently called "Wake Me Up Inside" which fits thematically in with the post-Seattle rut music's been in for the past ten years...the whole "I'm so miserable though I'm a rock star" thing. I'm not putting down Pearl Jam or Nirvana here or suggesting that Eddie or Kurt don't write from the heart. I'm thinking of the umpteenth copycat bands whose music seems totally forced and fake and who'd be in hair metal bands singing about parties if it were 1988. You know who these bands are. At least Buck Cherry wear their emptiness on their sleeves (they'd have hair metal hair if it were 1988 I would bet...).
Anyway, as I'm kind of out of the loop as of late it took me a while to even hear who performed this song. I guess the song's kind of different in a way as it has what could almost pass for latin freestyle vocals tinged with an almost Projekt gothy mood melded to that omnipresent post-Korn ugly metal guitar sound. It's the horrible oh-so-angst-filled "WAKE ME UHHP" background shouts that really ruined the song for me altogether. When I finally heard them announce the performers I was shocked to hear "Cabinessence." How could a band named after an obscure Brian Wilson Beach Boys song have that crappy faux angst screaming and that awful metal-lic production? Does that change anything? Should I like the song better because of the reference...concentrating on the interesting genre blurring (that may all be in my mind) taking place before the shouts and ugly guitars kick in? I don't know the answer to this but it's hard NOT to take such things into account when evaluating how one feels about a track or an artist. Isn't it?
Of course, eventually I realized that I heard the name wrong. The band is Evanescence not Cabinessence! I find the former kind of pretentious and would much prefer the latter, but any rose-colored glasses effect the name would have had was gone. Maybe all the ugly touches the song possesses wouldn't have been possible from a Wilsonian named band in the first place...
10:43:14 PM 
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