Passion in music. Alright, to get serious now: it depends what you mean by passion. You could be referring to the passionate content of a song, or whatever.
But if by passion you are referring to the actual genuine commitment, interest and belief of the artist in what he/she is doing - that is, as opposed to just writing generic formula/work material to fill up an album - then of course you can sense artist's "passion" in most music. What about when we talk about filler tracks on albums? Many albums consist of two or three strong songs and then seven or more songs that essentially are there to fill out a record. This is a well recognized fact of the music industry and many many bands abide by these guidelines. The Beatles are a good example, as they used to write plain formula tracks on early albums and in later interviews McCartney and Lennon would refer to them as such. Check out Little Child on With The Beatles, originally written for Ringo to sing (though he was given the mildly superior I Wanna Be Your Man instead). Or "I'm Happy Just To Dance With You" on Hard Day's Night, written for George to sing. Paul referred to it explicitly as a "formula song" years later. And there are others of this sort up until Rubber Soul, and even on that album songs like Wait and Run For Your Life were really disliked by the songwriters themselves. So I think it is fair to say that, when it comes to album filler, this notion of "passion" clearly ought not to be present.
What about more generally speaking? Can we make a divide between "passionate" artists really dedicated to what they are doing and those who just want to make some money? We probably can, to a point. Writers doing the same thing over and over again, for example, must be plainly just playing the mass market. Those that keep trying to reinvent and diversify are more likely to be genuine artists trying to explore. Or those that were quite audacious and adventurous beforehand but all of a sudden decided to play some highly commercial format for their next however many albums (e.g. The Who) have plainly become uninterested in their actual output. Thse of course are no hard and fast rules and there will be many exceptions but I feel that for the most point it makes sense.
If "passion" is referring to feeling and emotion, then that's anyone's guess.
|