On February 21, 2001, Eminem and Elton John performed "Stan" at the Grammy Awards. The performance came after nine months of controversy concerning the homophobic lyrics on Eminem's second album, The Marshall Mathers LP, and before the show gay activist groups had protested outside the Staples Center. "Believe it or not, it was my idea to perform with Elton," writes Eminem (with ghostwriting by Sacha Jenkins) in his recent autobiography, The Way I Am. "Elton and me—we're friends … He's gay! And we're friends! And who cares?" To the protesters' relief, Eminem failed to win Best Album that night. He lost to Steely Dan, a band named after a dildo. One song on Two Against Nature is delivered from the perspective of a pedophile.

Genres of music ought to be classified by the emotions they inspire in their listeners. Joy, comfort, arousal, self-satisfaction—for rock music, those are emotions it's easy to talk about.

Punk rock began for me with fear. The music arrived for me historically late, at the end of the 1980s, and personally early, when I was fourteen years old. I was a child. Rock is for children. You have to be that young to feel it with full intensity, to hear the drumbeat strike and think it is the world reaching out to punch you. With experience the nerves become sclerotic, and you learn that the promises of the lyrics are lies and posturing. By twenty-eight you're left with the knowledge that you're the fan of a deficient art form. Your emotions have evolved to deny you rock music's best benefits, and it's become much too late to develop any comparably deep feeling from any other music. As a grown-up, still listening to the same stuff, you're genuinely ruined.

Read More

Alex Ross. The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century. FSG. October 2007.

Alex Ross is the most important arts critic writing for the New Yorker. I do not mean he is the best writer (though he may be) or the most intelligent (also possible). Rather, more than his contemporaries, he draws an attention of rare sensitivity to modern classical music—a sphere of cultural activity that shows few signs of recovering in any respect from its mid-20th century decline. Read More