The Sweet Spot
The house rules state: no shoes in the bed, no telling another family member they aren’t allowed to sing, and no shaming another family member for their musical choices. Volume changes can be requested.
Once upon a time, I was in a relationship with a music snob. You know, the kind of person who likes a specific genre or sometimes genres of music, and all else is shit. They were quick to let me know, through overt and covert ways, that liking what they considered shit was wrong. I closeted or even abandoned music I liked. And the shame received for loving music that brought me joy is now why I have a house rule. If my kid wants to floss to video game music, great. Get it, boy.
In the last few weeks, I’ve been in a new music rabbit hole, determined not to be the stereotypical geezer who has no clue what the young kids are enjoying these days. I’ve been exploring. I’m a faithful Pandora user. No shade toward Spotify; I’m sure it’s awesome, but I’ve been collecting stations and thumbed-up songs since Pandora was brand new, revolutionizing how music is heard and streamed. It would be silly to jump ship for a year-end Spotify Wrapped.
The song “Madalena” by Goose kept popping up on one of my 87 stations. I’m unsure which one. I toggle some on and off, hit shuffle, and let the music go in all directions, from Ella Fitzgerald to Tupac and Stan Getz to the Tesky Brothers. By the fourth or fifth listen of “Madalena,” enjoying it every time, I told myself it was time to further invest in Goose. For those unfamiliar, Goose is a Millennial jam band from Connecticut, known for their live improvisations and often compared to Phish. Their melodic and well-crafted songs have a summer festival vibe. Many of their songs could stand to be a minute or two shorter, but I guess they jam because they can. Value-add be damned.
While down that rabbit hole, familiarizing myself with a few of their albums, including their new releases Chain Yer Dragon and Everything Must Go, I learned about a Gen Z Indie rock band from New York called Geese. For those unfamiliar, Geese are being touted as the next great American rock band. Their new release, Getting Killed, is messy, unpolished, lyrically unsophisticated, with much yelling and screaming between deadpan drawls and incoherent gobble-dee-gook. Their vibe is very much ‘90s grunge without any of the newness that genre spawned 30+ years ago. And they’re exactly the kind of band the music snob from my past would have loved.
The Music Shamer would have hated Taylor Swift’s new release, The Life of a Showgirl, purely because Taylor is a pop artist. In their opinion, pop music is soulless and lacks grit. But I’ve gotta tell you, The Life of a Showgirl is an incredible collection of songs with clever phrasing, lyrical gems, and killer wordplay that will become part of people’s vocabulary, birthing internet memes and TikTok dances. The album is getting mixed reviews on social media. I suspect Taylor’s happiness with Travis Kelce is bleeding too far into the lyrics, and folks prefer her miserable. Back in the day, The Life of a Showgirl would have been the sort of album I would have secretly enjoyed in my headphones, or not at all, when I was coupled with the music snob.
So, while loving the new Taylor Swift, very much disliking the new Geese, and falling in between on the new Goose, I’ve drawn some conclusions about my musical taste and what I think plops a song smack dab in the center of the Venn diagram sweet spot. It’s the trifecta—vocals, lyrics, and music coming together to create auditory awesomeness.
At the heart are the vocals, literally giving voice to a sentiment. A good vocal can mask dumb phrases, cheugy lines, or rhyming masses with masses. I’m looking at you, Black Sabbath. On the flip side, mediocre vocals can be minimized with great language. But not in all cases. The song’s soul is its lyrics—the message that makes you laugh, love, cry, cringe, or change your mind with hair-on-end goose bumps. Some souls are haunting. Some beautiful. Others maddening. Or charming.
A song can survive without a soul or a heart. But not without its backbone—the music. If you take that away, what’s left may be a pile of mush, slam poetry, or a voicemail trying to reach you about your car's extended warranty. If it’s bad, you bury its bones in a shallow grave, never to hear the telltale heart beating under the floorboards or experience the sizzle of a Soul Train dance stroll. The backbone is the most subjective part.
Aside: I believe instrumental songs can be stellar but fall into their own category. “Feels So Good” comes to mind. Rest in peace, Chuck Mangione. Or “Green Onions” by Booker T. and the M.G.’s. (Shout out some others in the comments. Bonus points if they’re good enough to cause an earworm.) Instrumentals are 100% backbone.
What led me to write this article was some conversations, if you can call them that, I embroiled myself in with the Bots and Bros of X concerning the merits of Geese, Goose, and Taylor Swift. I’m unsure if one person could love all three. (Comment if you do. Or don’t.) Due to the platform’s limited character count, succinctly articulating the importance of the trifecta proved difficult. What I learned is that minds can’t be swayed when it comes to music, and those Bots and Bros hear music differently than I do. And that’s OK because, again, the backbone is subjective. The heart and soul are less so. A dumb lyric is a dumb lyric, and Simon Cowell will absolutely tell a sister she can’t sing.
I contend that the majority of Geese’s new album misses the Venn diagram sweet spot completely, like a teenage boy fumbling with his sweetheart’s undies in the back of his dad’s shaggin’ wagon. I will say, on a previous release, a couple of Geese tracks employ some background vocalists with nods to the "Philly Sound", à la Bowie’s “Young Americans,” Todd Rundgren’s “I Saw the Light,” The Killers’ “All These Things that I Have Done,” or Robert Palmer’s “Sneaking Sally Through the Alley,” which save the songs from fiery ruin. This is my opinion; tastes may vary. The Bots and Bros made that clear.
Please, don’t shame others for their musical tastes. Talk up the merits or clearly state a case for why a song is a big fat goose egg. You can like Geese. I can like Goose. What’s good about Taylor Swift isn’t always what’s good for the gander. Our flocks may not migrate to the same home. But for every bird, there is a nest. House rules apply.
Explore Goose: https://www.goosetheband.com/albums
Explore Geese: https://geeseband.com/music/
Explore Taylor Swift: https://www.taylorswift.com
