Art isn’t a competition, but one arises nevertheless when two fans on opposite sides of the aisle let loose with the world’s evergreen battle cry: My shit is better than your shit. Music, especially, is filled with warring fanbases trying to assert supremacy. Did anyone really love the Beatles if they didn’t insist, at one point, that they were definitely better than the Rolling Stones? The same goes for Tupac and Biggie, Oasis and Blur, Pavement and the Smashing Pumpkins, and so forth.
It’s always a little silly, this competition: No one can scientifically prove that “Gold Soundz” goes harder than “1979,” and any reasonable person would admit the difference comes down to our individual biases. If you’re the type to sit around and shoot the shit about pop culture, thinking about the those biases is where the fun starts. That's the subject of Steven Hyden's new book, Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me, which traces those biases through 16 music rivalries. When Hyden (formerly of Grantland, The A.V. Club, and yes, Pitchfork) first thought about writing about music rivalries, he knew he didn’t just want to write about music. Starting with the Beatles vs. Stones or Kanye West vs. Taylor Swift was a way to discuss everything, not just whose shit is better.
“Artists often take on characteristics of larger ideas, like how the Cold War was a way for the U.S. and USSR to have a war without actually shooting each other,” he says, over the phone. “Rivalries are a way for people to have arguments about bigger ideas in a fairly harmless form.” Hyden is an effortless writer, and he draws clever connections between artists and cultural phenomena spanning decades. Nirvana and Pearl Jam isn’t just about Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder, for example; it’s about Chris Christie. Neil Young and Lynyrd Skynyrd started a North vs. South conversation that can be read in 2014’s #CancelColbert movement, the White Stripes and Black Keys have just as much to do with male friendship as they do revivalist two-piece blues-rock, and Billy Corgan acted a lot more like Richard Nixon than any Siamese Dream fan would think at first listen.
There’s a lot going on, but the read is illuminating and often hilarious. (Nor does he lapse into the modern, web 3.0 trap of glibly suggesting that this is like that—the web is organically woven, and the bar-room tone is just right.) The book’s breezy style pairs well with the intrinsically low stakes: Hyden is wise enough to know that declaring a winner is pointless (and so the book never does), but smart enough to discuss everything that might come with “winning.” In that regard, it doesn’t matter if he never definitively comes down for one side, because exploring the hypothetical is fun enough.
Pitchfork: What was the first rivalry that you had to include?
Steven Hyden: The first thing I wrote was the White Stripes/Black Keys chapter. You know, it's just sort of funny that the two most famous two-person blues-rock bands ended up in this pissing match in the media. It's inevitable that that happened, in a way. But as I started thinking about it, it really became a way for me to talk about friendship. To me, the dynamic between Jack White and Dan Auerbach just reminded me of the dynamic between a lot of men—when they are trying to relate to each other, and they should be able to relate to each other, and they can't, it turns into this competition. Even if you don't care about the White Stripes and the Black Keys, you can still read this and relate to this thing that a lot of men can relate to, which is the weirdness of talking to other men. That was the first one I had to write about, but certainly there are other rivalries that I had to put in the book, like the Beatles and Stones, and Tupac and Biggie. With those, I was a little reluctant to write about them, because they had been so discussed in so many different places that I wasn't sure if I could come up with anything. But at the same time, when you're writing a rivalries book, if you don't talk about those two rivalries in particular, people are going to throw their book in the garbage immediately.
The Tupac/Biggie chapter is interesting, because you avoid drawing some greater cultural lesson from it. It concludes on a more human note of, “This is a tragic death that didn’t need to happen.”
With those guys, it's the same thing that's happened with Kurt Cobain, where everything that they do in their careers now is viewed as a prelude to their death. When we talk about Kurt Cobain, it's like all the music is just as a precursor to his suicide. It's especially true of that "Unplugged" special; you can't hear that now without thinking about how he died. With Biggie and Tupac, I think the same thing is true. With their music, it seems like it's framed through the prism of how they died, which is unfortunate. I think that probably happens with every iconic musician who died young. But if you can remove that filter and just imagine how Biggie and Tupac’s records would sound like now if they hadn't died, I think the messianic aspects that people project wouldn't necessarily be there. That's always hard to figure out: Does that make the music more resonant because of the backstory? Or does it take something away?
I always wished I could listen to Nirvana without the baggage of Kurt Cobain's death. Nevermind is a really fun record. But there's this sort of gloomy thing that's attached to it now that you can't really shake off, which is too bad. When Montage of Heck came out, I just remember thinking, "I wish I could listen to Nevermind as the record that some people didn't think was as good as Teenage Fanclub's Bandwagonesque," you know what I mean? [Ed. note: Bandwagonesque memorably beat out Nevermind on Spin’s 1991 year-end list.]
But, you know, the narrative of records—that becomes overwhelming even for new records. The reaction to Beyoncé's Lemonade—do people really listen to that as a record? Or is the ginormousness of what Beyoncé is—does that just overwhelm everything that she puts out now? The narrative that gets patched in records—I don't know if that's stronger now than it was before the internet. That's always hard to judge. But with the sheer quantity of media that exists, it really is overwhelming. With the cult of personality that exists around huge pop stars right now, it just creates this centripetal force of discussion that just sucks people in. I just don't know if it's even possible to hear what that record sounds like now. Maybe that record should be reviewed ten years from now by a person who wasn't reading any media at this moment. Maybe they can more accurately assess it than we're capable of in the present time.
It’s always a little silly, this competition: No one can scientifically prove that “Gold Soundz” goes harder than “1979,” and any reasonable person would admit the difference comes down to our individual biases. If you’re the type to sit around and shoot the shit about pop culture, thinking about the those biases is where the fun starts. That's the subject of Steven Hyden's new book, Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me, which traces those biases through 16 music rivalries. When Hyden (formerly of Grantland, The A.V. Club, and yes, Pitchfork) first thought about writing about music rivalries, he knew he didn’t just want to write about music. Starting with the Beatles vs. Stones or Kanye West vs. Taylor Swift was a way to discuss everything, not just whose shit is better.
“Artists often take on characteristics of larger ideas, like how the Cold War was a way for the U.S. and USSR to have a war without actually shooting each other,” he says, over the phone. “Rivalries are a way for people to have arguments about bigger ideas in a fairly harmless form.” Hyden is an effortless writer, and he draws clever connections between artists and cultural phenomena spanning decades. Nirvana and Pearl Jam isn’t just about Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder, for example; it’s about Chris Christie. Neil Young and Lynyrd Skynyrd started a North vs. South conversation that can be read in 2014’s #CancelColbert movement, the White Stripes and Black Keys have just as much to do with male friendship as they do revivalist two-piece blues-rock, and Billy Corgan acted a lot more like Richard Nixon than any Siamese Dream fan would think at first listen.There’s a lot going on, but the read is illuminating and often hilarious. (Nor does he lapse into the modern, web 3.0 trap of glibly suggesting that this is like that—the web is organically woven, and the bar-room tone is just right.) The book’s breezy style pairs well with the intrinsically low stakes: Hyden is wise enough to know that declaring a winner is pointless (and so the book never does), but smart enough to discuss everything that might come with “winning.” In that regard, it doesn’t matter if he never definitively comes down for one side, because exploring the hypothetical is fun enough.
Pitchfork: What was the first rivalry that you had to include?
Steven Hyden: The first thing I wrote was the White Stripes/Black Keys chapter. You know, it's just sort of funny that the two most famous two-person blues-rock bands ended up in this pissing match in the media. It's inevitable that that happened, in a way. But as I started thinking about it, it really became a way for me to talk about friendship. To me, the dynamic between Jack White and Dan Auerbach just reminded me of the dynamic between a lot of men—when they are trying to relate to each other, and they should be able to relate to each other, and they can't, it turns into this competition. Even if you don't care about the White Stripes and the Black Keys, you can still read this and relate to this thing that a lot of men can relate to, which is the weirdness of talking to other men. That was the first one I had to write about, but certainly there are other rivalries that I had to put in the book, like the Beatles and Stones, and Tupac and Biggie. With those, I was a little reluctant to write about them, because they had been so discussed in so many different places that I wasn't sure if I could come up with anything. But at the same time, when you're writing a rivalries book, if you don't talk about those two rivalries in particular, people are going to throw their book in the garbage immediately.
The Tupac/Biggie chapter is interesting, because you avoid drawing some greater cultural lesson from it. It concludes on a more human note of, “This is a tragic death that didn’t need to happen.”
With those guys, it's the same thing that's happened with Kurt Cobain, where everything that they do in their careers now is viewed as a prelude to their death. When we talk about Kurt Cobain, it's like all the music is just as a precursor to his suicide. It's especially true of that "Unplugged" special; you can't hear that now without thinking about how he died. With Biggie and Tupac, I think the same thing is true. With their music, it seems like it's framed through the prism of how they died, which is unfortunate. I think that probably happens with every iconic musician who died young. But if you can remove that filter and just imagine how Biggie and Tupac’s records would sound like now if they hadn't died, I think the messianic aspects that people project wouldn't necessarily be there. That's always hard to figure out: Does that make the music more resonant because of the backstory? Or does it take something away?
I always wished I could listen to Nirvana without the baggage of Kurt Cobain's death. Nevermind is a really fun record. But there's this sort of gloomy thing that's attached to it now that you can't really shake off, which is too bad. When Montage of Heck came out, I just remember thinking, "I wish I could listen to Nevermind as the record that some people didn't think was as good as Teenage Fanclub's Bandwagonesque," you know what I mean? [Ed. note: Bandwagonesque memorably beat out Nevermind on Spin’s 1991 year-end list.]
But, you know, the narrative of records—that becomes overwhelming even for new records. The reaction to Beyoncé's Lemonade—do people really listen to that as a record? Or is the ginormousness of what Beyoncé is—does that just overwhelm everything that she puts out now? The narrative that gets patched in records—I don't know if that's stronger now than it was before the internet. That's always hard to judge. But with the sheer quantity of media that exists, it really is overwhelming. With the cult of personality that exists around huge pop stars right now, it just creates this centripetal force of discussion that just sucks people in. I just don't know if it's even possible to hear what that record sounds like now. Maybe that record should be reviewed ten years from now by a person who wasn't reading any media at this moment. Maybe they can more accurately assess it than we're capable of in the present time.
by Jeremy Gordon, Pitchfork | Read more:
Image: uncredited
