Friend of HT Eliot Glazer has tremendously terrible taste in music. But he’s an adroit wordsmith, and he’s gonna try to convince us that the bad is really good.
I read Stereogum. I read Pitchfork. I even dabble through Spin and Rolling Stone from time to time. But even as a trained musician, I refuse to consider myself any kind of authority on music.
Granted, I’ve always harbored moderately good musical taste, relying on the talents of artists whose work usually finds success among critics and college students (hello, cred!). Naturally, I would mention my surprisingly short DMB phase in high school with an air of exasperation here, although I can’t begin to imagine the amount of hate mail under which I’d find myself buried.
But for every Cat Power, Flaming Lips, and Nick Drake listed under the Artists on my iPod is an Alicia Bridges, Babyface, and at least one American Idol contestant, and not even necessarily a winner. It’s sad but true: I love bad music. I crave it. And I want you to love it with me.
Read on for the rest of Eliot’s first installment of “I Love Bad Music”…