For some of us (*cough* WKNC DJs), music is heavily intertwined with our identities. But how did we develop our taste in music? Where did it come from, and what does it mean? Of course, there’s no perfect way to measure personality, but we’ve come pretty close to pinning down what exactly our unique music tastes say about us as individuals.
In 2003, researchers Peter Rentfrow and Samuel Gosling were curious as to how our personalities correlate with our music taste. After conducting a test with over 3,500 people, they were able to identify four major personality categories based on music preferences: reflective and complex, intense and rebellious, upbeat and conventional, and energetic and rhythmic. Since this study, other researchers have refined these categories even further:
1. Refined Observer
Favorite Genres: jazz, blues, folk, classical
Personality Traits: Refined Observers are introspective, analytical and creative. They appreciate music for its complexity, structure and “genius factor.” They also prefer abstract, emotionally rich topics.
2. Heated Defiant
Favorite Genres: heavy rock, metal, grunge, punk
Personality Traits: As you could probably deduce from their title, Heated Defiants tend to be rebellious and explosive, though they may not show those traits outwardly. They also value the spontaneity of new experiences and unconventionality.
3. Easy-Going Conventional
Favorite Genres: pop, country, religious music
Personality Traits: This is for all those G105 listeners out there (no shade). Easy-Going Conventionals tend to be light, warm and optimistic. Rather than looking for the complexity in music, they prefer simplicity and catchy tunes.
4. Outgoing Mingler
Favorite Genres: hip-hop, rap, funk
Personality Traits: Energetic, sociable and friendly, Outgoing Minglers appreciate music with a strong rhythmic and lyrical feel. They’re natural extroverts, enjoying the company of others in all types of gatherings.
5. Serene Enjoyer
Favorite Genres: world music, electronica, soft indie
Personality Traits: Last but not least, the Serene Enjoyer loves music that is unconventional yet chill. They tend to be laid back and unafraid to venture into unknown musical territory. Though they’re very creative, they prefer music that airs on the lighter side of things.
Of course, this is not an extensive measure of personality by any means. Many of us like tons of different genres! Either way, it’s fun to see how your taste might correlate to certain personality traits. What’s your personality type? Do you have more than one? Let us know!
When you bring up the topic of beach music, most people immediately think of The Beach Boys and perhaps lesser known bands such as Dick Dale, The Ventures, The Lively Ones, and The Tornadoes. However, there is a distinct difference between these styles. The Beach Boys had a much more profound “doo-wop” sound to their music. In fact, lead singer Brian Wilson even said that he disliked when people described the Beach Boys as “surfin’ music” just because they were from California. Is his mind, they were their own subset of beach rock.
The “surf music” that Brian Wilson was so ready to be detached from was pioneered by Dick Dale in the early 1960s. Around this time, Fender had just incorporated the reverb sound into their amps, allowing electric guitars to mimic the sound of a wave. This can be heard in almost every surf rock song. Dick Dale popularized this effect, while adding Mexican and Middle-Eastern influences to give us the surf rock sound we know today.
While this was all happening on the west coast, a much lesser-known style of beach music was taking hold on the east coast, particularly in North and South Carolina. This style of beach music found its influences through blues and rock R&B. While surf rock exhibits the use of electric guitar, Carolina beach music incorporated more brass instruments, such as the trumpet and the French horn. All of this music was closely associated with “the shag,” which was a popular dance at the time.
I was first introduced to this music by my parents, so some of my favorites that they used to play include “I Love Beach Music” by The Embers, “Give Me Just a Little More Time” by The Chairmen of the Board, “Ocean Boulevard” by Band of Oz, “Mrs. Grace” by Tymes, “Myrtle Beach Days” by The Fantastic Shakers, and “Summertime’s Calling Me” by the Catalinas.
Hope you guys enjoy the tunes, -The DJ Formerly Known As Chippypants
Many of our first introductions to the varied religious traditions of East Asia do not come from books or school, let alone Asian people themselves. While there are a variety of ways that people first meet Buddhism, Hinduism, or any of the number of religions thrown into the grab bag of ‘Eastern Religion,’ many of our cultural ideas about Asian and Indian spirituality come from the rock and roll. This association seems set in stone, but if you give it more than a passing thought it’s actually… really weird? Psychedelic rock was not always associated with Eastern spiritual movements and considering that the philosophical backing of the New Left was largely atheist, it’s fairly confusing that mainstream artists leaned so hard into other culture’s religious traditions.
The counterculture of the sixties has largely defined rock music in the traditional telling, and it co-opted many real religious traditions that actual people have practiced since the dawn of time, religions which Western people usually treated with at best indifference and more often with outright derision. Now the basic woke impulse for this is to simply write this phenomenon off as some indeterminate form of cultural appropriation, which I guess is what I did prior to hearing the song “Galileo,” but more on that later.
Research into New Age spirituality and Eastern religion in America is plentiful, and you must forgive me for barely even scratching the surface of scholarly literature on the topic (I am but a humble blog writer with other essays to write), but what research I could find for free with an NC State login on Jstor usually identifies the rise of new-age religion with the decline in doctrinal Christianity, which makes sense. Winston King has attributed this to a search for a more flexible undefined vocabulary for expressing spiritual concepts, a vocabulary supposedly worn down by years of biblical literalism, which is probably fair enough. This was an interesting idea on its own that I wanted to share with you, but if we take a textual reading to the music that introduced Americans to Eastern religious concepts, we can see evidence for King’s claim.
The first person most of us think of when it comes to Eastern spirituality in rock is probably George Harrison. He was one of the most prominent advocates for Buddhist and Hindu philosophies, and he was the only one of the Beatles for which, as one writer so tactfully put it, “The Hare Krishna stuff wasn’t a phase.” His music probably makes the best case for King’s analysis of Western people wanting to energize belief with new vocabulary. Harrison did not follow any discreet religion and often mixed Eastern and Western religious language to create an emotional through-line for his presumably Western listeners, most notably in the song My Sweet Lord. Additionally, if you wanted to make an argument for Harrison appropriating Eastern religion, there is a lot to work with. While Harrison had the money to visit India multiple times, he never really entered the religious tradition or converted so much as he took language and ideas to suit his purposes. I will leave further discussion of the permissibility of that practice to Twitter.
If we end our discussion in the 60s, we might make the mistake of assuming Americans either abandoned interest in Eastern religion or hold that interest in the same unevolved sense of romanticization that Harrison used. Even though counterculture spiritualism unambiguously exited the mainstream, and new age religion makes the news most often for anti-vax scandals, there has been at least some maturation in American’s approach to other culture’s religion. This is where the song Galileo by the Indigo Girls comes in. Unlike 60’s religious experimentation that equated Eastern religions with recreational drug use and did a poor job distinguishing between different religions, Galileo is unambiguously about the philosophical implications of Buddhism. The song takes the same level of spiritual uncertainty and angst people apply to Christian theology and applies it to Buddhism, asking questions like “How long till my soul gets it right, does any human being ever reach those kinds of heights except for Galileo?” The song is also distinctly positioned from an American perspective, referencing milestones in Western intellectual history to frame its spiritual questions instead of presuming knowledge about the East. The song isn’t predicated on the novelty of other belief systems, instead, it assumes the audience has at least a passing familiarity with concepts like reincarnation, and then uses that knowledge to ask other questions.
Your mileage may vary as to how much you can enjoy Europeans and Americans using Eastern vocabulary to frame distinctly Western arguments. However, regardless of how you come down on that issue, I think it is worth considering the progress made since the sixties. While George Harrison was generally respectful, I’m not sure you could say the same about Donovan or the number of better-off forgotten faux hippies of the era. And listen to the Indigo Girls if you get a chance.
Al Jourgensen, a prominent Industrial musician, incorporated Hip-Hop elements into his music
“Al Jourgensen of Ministry,” by Al Case is licensed with CC BY-NC-SA 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/
Traditionally, there is a fairly wide no-touching zone between rap and any vaguely “Heavy” genre of music. Today, terms industrial hip-hop and rap metal are associated with recent groups such as Clipping or Death Grips, or with early 2000s Nu-Metal like Limp Bizkit and Corn. There isn’t really any acknowledgment that industrial, metal, and hip-hop used to share both a musical ethos and a physical space. This ignores the complex history of musical influences, and the rather distressing reasons the genres split apart.
Industrial music was, in its very earliest conception, a European genre. All the “Old Gods” of industrial are European with nearly no exceptions. The genre was tethered to British modern art galleries and tended to be shocking for shocking’s sake. This isn’t to say the genre was bad, many first-wave industrial groups made excellent music, just that the genre can feel somewhat remote. This would change when Industrial was imported to America. European Noise and Industrial music came to America through the gay subculture in Chicago, centering around the now infamous Wax Track records, who imprinted Throbbing Gristle and signed new American artists who adapted those ideas into dance music. This style is still dominant in Goth clubs, from the New York to the Wicked Witch here in Raleigh.
What gets lost in this telling is the parallel history of the other style emerging from dance music in Chicago in the mid-80s: Hip-hop. While the hearths of Rap would eventually relocate to Los Angeles and New York City, there was a vibrant scene in Chicago, in nearly the same neighborhoods as early Industrial music was thriving. The extent of influence is contested by the few sources I can find that acknowledge any relationship between the two genres, and I don’t want to overstate the similarity, but early Industrial and Hip-hop music tell an interesting story of cross-collaboration in and of themselves.
The easiest point of attack for tracing the relations between the two genres is explicit collaboration. Multiple Industrial bands sought featuring credits from rappers in the 80s, including Ministry, The Damage Manual, and The Pop Group. The latter two worked with the in-house bands of the Sugar Hill Gang, while Ministry worked with the obscure Chicago Rapper Grand Wizard K. Lite. Going the other direction, multiple Rap groups pulled from industrial and metal aesthetics. Ice-T led the heavy metal band Body Count, most known for the song “Copkiller” which stoked controversy for obvious reasons. Beyond genre-hopping, groups like the Young Black Teenagers and Public Enemy fused elements of Industrial into their more hip-hop oriented style.
On a more granular level, Industrial and Hip-hop music share hardware and techniques. Sampling was pioneered in the late 80s and is a central technique to both genres. Industrial musicians like Tackhead focused on layering samples from unlikely sources, often political speeches, morality reformers, and the like, in ways that created abrasion and a level of irony. Hip-hop sampling generally has a more musical effect, focusing on creating a sense of rhythm or melody from a patchwork of samples, but the underlying technique is the same. The relatively marginalized positions of the black and queer communities also meant the literal machinery used to create electronic music was the same. Cheap 808’s were common among both genres, despite extreme technological limitations, and this gives the genres a common sound palate throughout the 80s before electronic technology became more accessible.
However, perhaps the most overlooked point of similarity comes in the form of political subtext. Industrial music in the 80s was explicitly revolutionary in a way that mirrored early Hip-hop. While British artists focused on more class-related issues, American groups took on issues of police brutality in solidarity with early Hip-hop. The album “Rabies,” a collaboration between the two biggest industrial stars of the 80s, Ministry and Skinny Puppy, is effectively a concept album about the oppressive impact of policing. Hip-hop and Industrial were also the two primary targets of Tipper Gore’s censorship campaign and were some of the first genres to be dogmatically saddled with parental advisory stickers
These are all obvious connections, however, there is a near-total dearth of coverage, either from academic sources or journalists, about the relation between these two genres. While I can’t claim to have nearly enough firsthand information to say for certain, I think I have a pretty good guess as to why. In the early 90s, Noise music developed a sizable white supremacist problem, and in parallel Hip-hop developed a homophobia problem.
While I feel woefully unequipped to truly tackle the issue of queerphobia in Rap music, the Nazi problem in Noise music is something that must be addressed. Early Noise musicians used fascist and Holocaust imagery in a tasteless attempt to shock audiences. While musicians like Whitehouse or Throbbing Gristle don’t hide their left-wing and anti-fascist beliefs, they used incredibly poor judgment in attempts to aestheticize what they thought to be a dead ideology. This created a space in Industrial, Power Electronics, and Metal communities for actual neo-Nazis and racists more generally to organize. Bands like Mayhem, Sol Invictus, and Death in June run the gamut from neo-pagan white “identitarians” to actual convicted hate criminals. Their continued influence in the community is unacceptable not only because their beliefs and actions are reprehensible, but because their supposed domination of the genre erases the contributions of black artists like Public Enemy to heavy genres. These groups did not invent extreme music, they merely appropriated it for their own ends, and it is time they are treated as such, regardless of their real or perceived musical contributions to the genre.
Any casual listener can tell that music can help improve your mood. Listening to songs can help you process what you’re going through, give you new perspectives, or distract you from the difficulties you face. Music allows us to relate to one another, whether we are creating our own music or enjoying others’ performances. Most music lovers know the helpful effects of music on mood, stress, and mental health, but what does science say about this relationship?
Researchers from New York studied stress levels of surgical patients. They compared the stress levels of patients who listened to (self-selected) music during and after their surgical operations and measured the differences. On average, their research showed lower blood pressure and reported stress levels for the patients who were listening to music. Other related studies gave similar results.
According to NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, music therapy is beneficial for multiple mental health conditions such as depression and PTSD. Music therapy is the process of using “musical interventions” to accomplish therapeutic goals and is performed by a credentialed professional. According to NAMI and the American Music Therapy Association, Inc., music therapy can help explore mental illness issues and meet the needs of many different people. This therapy involves exploring expression of thought and feeling, focusing on positive moods and emotions, and developing coping and relaxation skills; among other opportunities.
It’s clear that not only is music beneficial to the casual listener, there is evidence-based research showing that music is helpful to improve stress levels and mood and through musical therapy can improve one’s mental health.
I will always be so grateful for the artists who created music that helped me through difficult times; I also have increased appreciation for musical therapists and those participating in the music and musical education industries. Sources: I, II, III
Warning: listening to this music may cause a significant increase in heat. Your body may feel hot and you will feel an overwhelming sensation of “fire.” The Sugar Candy Album “666” is a unique style of music that was perfected by the cross-section of the passing of early 2010’s Psychedelic Rock and the popularization of more mellow Indie Pop. All pretentiousness aside, 666 is a really good album. It is probably Sugar Candy Mountain’s best music that they’ve put out since they emerged back in 2014 with their first full album “Mystic Hits.”
While “Mystic Hits” was undoubtedly a hit, “666” showcased the band coming into their own unique sound. Most of their songs tend to follow a similar pattern. The beginning starts out with a lackadaisical, relaxed beat that goes on throughout the entirety of the song while multiple layers slowly get added on as the song goes on. Moreover, the songs steadily flow into each other, making it easy to listen to all the way through.
However, if you’re in a rush and don’t have time to listen to the whole album, I would suggest starting with the first three songs and ending with the eighth and ninth. “Windows” and “Change” make a good impression of the album and “666” is definitely going to be one of my most played songs of the year. With it’s echoed guitar and dreamy lyrics, the song can change around my mood on even the most stressful of days.
Well that’s about all I have to say for this album, would definitely recommend with a score of 9/10. Hope you guys enjoy the music, -The DJ Formerly Known as Chippypants
If you’ve seen “Almost Famous,” the name Lester Bangs might ring a bell. Philip Seymore Hoffman, who plays Bangs in the 2000 film, inspires William, the main character, to pursue his interest as a rock critic. I had no idea he was a real person until I found his book, “Mainlines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste,” at Reader’s Corner a couple of weeks ago!
I’ve loved reading his work. Lester Bangs was perhaps one of the most influential music journalists to walk this earth. Though he was best known for his work with Creem magazine, Bangs got his start at Rolling Stone. In 1969, The prolific magazine put an ad out for reader reviews and Bangs quickly responded. Entering a scalding review on MC5’s “Kick Out the Jams,” he was published immediately. He went on to write for Rolling Stone until 1973 when he was fired for “disrespecting musicians.” There’s no secret as to why. His reviews could be scalding, and this is often what he got the most press for.
However, when he started working for Creem magazine in 1971, his love for underground garage music grew. Before he became editor of Creem, he helped define the term “punk rock,” speaking highly of musicians like The Stooges, Lou Reed, and Blondie in pages upon pages of writing.
What makes Bangs especially interesting to me was his unapologetic lack of reverence for rock stars. Though he obviously had a deep love for music, he never hero-worshipped the musicians in interviews. His goal was to get right down to it, right to the music.
He could even be quite radical in this viewpoint at times, going as far as sitting on stage at a J. Geils Band concert with his typewriter on his lap, furiously tapping away a review right in front of the audience. His writing, as well as his humor, were irreverent and even ridiculous at times. Despite this, his words spoke such truth that you just can’t help trusting him.
It’s rare to see someone walking down the street with a Discman, boombox, or even an iPod nowadays. Subscription services like Apple Music, Spotify, and Amazon Music have taken over the music streaming industry. Their convenience and affordability make any other music-listening method seem archaic. Remember when getting a $10 iTunes gift card was one of the best Christmas presents ever? I have a distinct memory of opening up The Black Eyed Peas’ “The E.N.D.” CD on my 9th birthday and feeling like I struck gold. I can’t even imagine being excited about either of these products now, since today we have access to every song ever made at the tips of our fingers.
Royalties & Inequality
Unfortunately, this convenience comes with a price. Recently, there’s been talk surrounding the inequality involved in the music streaming industry. As artists were forced to cancel their gigs and concerts amidst the pandemic, many realized that the royalties they made off streams were abysmal. While issues with the royalty system have been apparent for years, staying inside has made artists take a long, hard look at where exactly the money from their listeners is going.
On average, streaming services take 30% of profits from subscription fees, while the other 70% goes to record labels, who then decide how much goes to the artists themselves. Included in this “artist” category are the producers, lyricists, composers, and performers. Once this process is all said and done, the actual percentage the artists receive is incredibly low, usually around 10%-15%. Considering that Spotify and Apple Music pay creators less than $0.006 per stream, independent and mid-level artists are failing to receive virtually any profits.
How Artists Are Adapting
Besides the economical issues, there is strong evidence that streaming is also changing the way music is written and appreciated. Before Spotify, Apple Music, or even iTunes existed, the act of listening to music was generally done by sitting through entire albums. Almost all traditional forms of media, like CDs and vinyl, followed this system. This made buying music something to be cherished and deeply acknowledged, as it increased the importance of newly released albums. I’m not saying that new albums from our favorite artists are not appreciated today, but the rise of playlist-based listening has changed the way we consume music.
Now, we listen by mood, era, feeling, genre. Just last week I wrote a blog about my favorite Spotify playlists. Playlists are fantastic and easy, but they take away the element of sitting through a single artist’s LP, as we used to do with CDs and records. Consequentially, artists are making less money and streaming platforms are making more. Songs are getting shorter and choruses are coming in earlier. In other words, pop is slowly becoming the formula for producing music, as there’s less risk involved and a greater likelihood of widespread streaming.
Though it’s unlikely that Spotify is going to go away anytime soon (or that we’re going to stop using it) it’s important to be aware of how musicians are being affected by these platforms. The good news is that therestill are lots of alternatives to support your favorite artists. Vinyl is making a huge comeback, and there are websites like Bandcamp and Patreon that allow you to contribute directly to independent musicians.
– DJ Butter
All sources for this blog were found in these articles from NPR and Forbes.
Well, it finally happened. After years of anticipation, memes, and leaks, the long-awaited album “Whole Lotta Red” finally dropped on Christmas morning. Playboi Carti had declared himself as Santa and donned a red appearance to match the theme of the album. However, and I say this as a true Playboi Carti fan, it turned out to be a whole lotta hype for a whole lotta garbage. Don’t get me wrong, there were definitely some good songs in there. “Place” was a classic throwback to the synth-style of Carti’s music and “Go2DaMoon” sent me to Pluto. But for the most part, the album was an evolution to a new style of rap that hasn’t entirely taken hold yet. Instead of sticking to his beloved dream-like style of music found in his first album, Carti is slowly transitioning to a more grunge, pop style of rap found in songs like “Poke It Out” in Die Lit.
One of the most asked questions from fans concerning “Whole Lotta Red” is why none of the dozens of leaked songs were found on the album. To be honest, I feel like if Carti made an album entirely out of leaks it would have blown up. However, leaks such as “Kid Cudi” and “No Lie,” for as good as they may be, hinder Carti’s ability to actually release the songs. When a song is leaked by a fan it goes against how a rapper’s label may have intended to release the song. If it doesn’t gain enough popularity fast enough or in the right way, it may never release. So while it may be possible that some leaks could have been on WLR, since they were leaked they never made it on the album.
Although the album wasn’t for everybody, it still had some pretty good songs on there and the new direction of Carti’s music warms up to you after a few listens. Hopefully fans are still willing to stick with him in the future and hopefully we can see less leaks and more legitimate songs.
Let me paint you a picture. A group of respected men walk into a New York Corner Store. They have a little chatter with the owner, otherwise known as “Papi,” and ask for a chopped cheese, a staple New York delicacy. It differs from it’s cousin, the Philly Cheese Steak, in the distinction that the steak is chopped up along with the cheese. After a short discourse on the goods of their exchange, the conversation between the men shifts to new and upcoming rappers “acting like they’re cozy.” This facade seems to antagonize the group of men, because the new rappers are not cozy. The group of men have been in the game, working hard for years, and quite frankly it’s offensive to see these new rappers come in, “sweat-suited up,” with their cheap, off brand clothes while concurrently trying to look like the homies. They are not cozy.
Another unnamed member of the group, who had until now kept quiet, interjects and concurs that he has also taken notice of the recent mockery. However, he goes on to describe how exorbitantly cozy he is. While these new rappers may seem cozy, the man speaking is coming through with the Playboy boxers, with the Playboy fitting, wearing old man socks with the things that hold them up (the sock holsters). He reassures the group that he is cozy and the other men seem to approve.
While this outfit is undoubtedly cozy, a third speaker, who I can only assume to be Rocky, brings light to the situation. He shows a confidence that leaves the group thinking if they even know the true meaning of “cozy.” He uses his outfit from yesterday as an example. While a seemingly meaningless phrase, the use of the word “yesterday” implies that for Rocky to dress this cozy is nothing to him. It’s something he casually does on a daily basis. As to the outfit he wore, it consisted of the Valentino shorts with white and red pinstripes. Rocky sported a real goose down feather bubble jacket. He described it as “very cozy, warm.” Then he had the durag hanging down with the bow string slinging in the wind. It was a two toned durag, with red on one side and white on the other. Some say he was so cozy that he fell asleep before he left the house. When asked what his inspiration was he told them “global warming.” In short, he was “too cozy.”
This is an intro to a song called “Yamborghini High,” a tribute to the late A$AP Yams. It’s one of my favorites and I think the intro was just too good not to share.
Hope you guys enjoy, -The DJ formerly known as “Chippypants”
