If you ever wanted any more proof that there’s no accounting for taste, here’s a new fun game that will both pass the time and cause palms to be vigorously slapped against foreheads the world over.
Visit a website that streams music, and then go to the page of your favourite band – or your least favourite band. I picked Primal Scream, because of their maddening ability to occupy both those polar opposites simultaneously.
Then cast a lazy eye over the list of their most popular songs, as played by the general public, and prepare to commence the afore-mentioned forehead slapping.
Primal Scream‘s top three most-played songs on Spotify are Rocks, Country Girl and Jailbird. Not the brilliantly acid-flecked Loaded. Not the amphetamine-crazed ACCELERATOR. Oh no.
Not even the frantically asinine Swastika Eyes – the ones that people prefer are the most generically Stones-lite, most barrel-scraping moments in their career. Durrrr.
For the artist, performing this test might have an extra element of surprise – that track they always hated is the one the record buying* public like the most. So _+_ might simply hate his song Laser Beam, but I love it, so there.
If Laser Beam was a machine, it would be cut from a single pristine piece of mirror-shine aluminium. It’s that kind of song, reducing description to mindless hyperbole – such is the white-heat shimmer of the mechanical beats and the fuzzy keyboard washes.
_+_‘s website looks like it has been designed by a hyperactive, sentient robot. The music is made by someone all-too human, trapped in love with computerisation and rigidity. A calm, precise, trickle of crimson blood.
*OK, ‘mp3-illegal-downloading’