When I was in my twenties, I was a sucker for the melancholy pop song or the over dramatic "emo" bands like Saves the Day, MxPx, The Starting Line, and New Found Glory. With all of these bands, there is something to their sound which is very specific to a certain time period. For example, every time I listen to Saves the Day's "Stay What You Are" album, I get this rush of emotion which is similar to what I was feeling at the time when I first heard the album in 2001. There is nothing relevant within the songs on "Stay What You Are". They have become time capsules which catapult me into thinking how much of an emotional person I was when I was 22 years old. This conflict of relevance convinces me that the album's songs have not aged well and have not forced me to think differently from what I thought the initial time I heard it.
To me, this is the hardest aspect of music to understand because it ultimately drills down to the much bigger question of: How does a band/artist write music which has longevity and can affect people from different generations?
How did a band like The Smiths write songs in the 1980s which were overwhelmingly emotional, yet their songs for the most part continue to resonate and inspire to this day? The ability to convey melancholy without sounding whiney, desperate, or petty has got to be one of the toughest things to do when writing a song. It might be easy to write a desperate song about a bad breakup which has its 15 minutes of fame (almost all of mainstream music now a days), but it has to be much more difficult to write a desperate song about a bad breakup which has longevity and reveals itself over time, and is also still relevant 10-20 years from now.
The reason I am going through all of this is because I found a band called Turnover who is playing emotional sounding music without sounding corny or generic. Turnover's "Peripheral Vision" album has hit that sweet spot which The Smiths hit all throughout the 80s. That's not to say I think Turnover sound anything like The Smiths but they are both walking that fine line where its very easy to become a relic of a specific genre or time period. I could see "Peripheral Vision" still being relevant 20 years from now because I think the album is made up of songs which are interesting and not easy to grasp upon the first couple of listens. Turnover has forced me to ask more questions about what it is which makes me appreciate this kind of music. Maybe that is the secret to writing a great long-lasting album? Does that sound corny?
The beauty of all of this is these questions can never be fully answered. We can always attempt to refine our knowledge but these types of questions will only lead to more questions and curiosities. That is why music is such a beautiful art form. The second we think we have an explanation for the songs which shape our lives is the second we are exposed to something else which forces us to ask more questions from different perspectives. The second that we stop searching is the second that we have lost because all art and all life will cease to become interesting. Life will become an endless loop of the songs that we heard when we were in our twenties which are no longer relevant.