Vampire Weekend released their first CD at the end of January, and depending on who you are (and how much time you spend on the internet), you either hate them in spite of the hype, or like them despite the backlash. The band hasn’t been around that long and has already zoomed through the cycle of taste—blog buzz, great reviews, trickle into the mainstream, SNL performance, saturation (they play it at MUG!)—at warp speed.
Vampire Weekend makes mild, catchy indie afro-pop, described by the Voice’s Justin Scott as “fun and whimsy” music, played by four kinda-cute geeky prep types from Columbia who wear lots of quirky sweaters. Pleasant and amusing, if not life-changing. But then “enjoyable” became “best new band of the year” (thanks, Spin), and now the New York Times analyzes their sweaters and they’re filming PSAs for MTV, and the blogs have rebelled.
Or take the case of Juno. Aggressively offbeat, a deliberately small movie, it made millions of dollars at the box office, spawned a best-selling soundtrack and a variety of new hot young things (not you, Diablo Cody), thereby earning it the ire of the very tastemakers who liked and recommended it in the first place.
Backlash is a cruel master, getting crueler every day thanks to the sheer speed and vituperation of the internet critic world. Everything has to be amazing or horrendous just to get recognized, and word of mouth isn’t a means of communication but a force in itself. Now it’s entirely possible to move from anticipating something, to loving it, to being unsure and then to hating it before gradually moving back to grudging appreciation, all without having seen or heard the thing in question.
Sometimes these wildly shifting opinions can be justified (a bit)—when you discover something that’s wonderful because it’s private, it loses something when other people find it too. Most of the time, though, there is an inverse correlation between how many people have seen and loved it before me and how much I love it. And it makes sense—the only way you can prove yourself in this world is by having carefully calibrated and well-researched taste, and it’s infuriating when your picks lose their indie cred and become (shudder) mass-market and therefore worthless.
It’s important to cling to your biases fiercely, regardless of their basis in reality.
