Musicians' opinions influencing listeners' opinions
 

Just curious what you think about this.

For example, and band puts out an album in 2001.

People express opinions about it with no unusual dislike of a particular song on othat album.

A band member does an interview in 2009.

The interviewer asks, "Are there any songs from the past that you particularly regret doing?"

The band member says, "Yeah, song x on that album from 2001."

Suddenly, lots of people start saying that the 2001 album is good except for song x.

(And if you note that people only started saying that en masse after the 2009 interview, everyone says something like, "It's just not a very good song; I've always said that.")

Anyway, you'll see the influence of musicians' opinions all over the place--people will echo their favorite/least favorite songs, albums, etc.

And sometimes they'll even act as if it's a problem to like something because the band/the musician doesn't like it. "Such and such is your favorite album of theirs? But they don't even like it!"

Do you have any examples of this?

A few examples of the top of my head:

People disliking "Tai Shan" or picking it as the worst Rush song after Geddy said that he didn't care for it in a couple different interviews.

People praising Radiohead's The Bends except for "High and Dry" after Thom Yorke said that he didn't care for that tune.

People seeing it as unconscionable that someone could love KISS' Music from the Elder after Gene (and to a lesser extent Paul) basically disowned it at one point because it didn't sell well and they were trying to rebrand.

Why would this be relevant? I rarely ever taken musicians opinions seriously.

Right on, couldn't think of any off of the top of my head.

Ideally, nobody's opinion but your own should drive what you think of something. It's probably easy for people to be swayed by an artist's negative opinion of a track because most people think that the artist has the deepest understanding of their music; compare this to how they would react to anybody else criticizing the artist's music where it would likely trigger a defensive response in favour of the music.

I also think that the artist's opinions are not infallible, even if their music is brilliant. Charles Mingus has some very ignorant opinions of electronic music (though granted this was said during the 80s when that insufferable snare sound was all the rage), and he's still one of my favourites.

Frownland, yeah, I definitely agree with you. I just think it's an interesting phenomenon, because it seems like many people are more likely to take the artists' opinions as gospel--as you say, people think they have the deepest understanding of their own work.

Yes, thank you.

I love High and Dry.

I like Radiohead, but I hate the song "Creep." I heard that the band hated the song as well. Their opinion reinforced my opinion. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Yes, but I think he's talking more in terms of if you previously enjoyed the song but then changed your opinion based on the bands.