Aesthetics of music

The aesthetics of music or musical aesthetics is the quality and study of the beauty and enjoyment, the aesthetics, of music.

Music has the ability to affect our emotions, intellect, and our psychology; lyrics can assuage our loneliness or incite our passions. As such, music is a powerful art form whose aesthetic appeal is highly dependent upon the culture in which it is practiced.

Some of the aesthetic elements expressed in music include lyricism, harmony, hypnotism, emotiveness, temporal dynamics, resonance, playfulness, and colour (see Musical development).

Bad music

Simon Frith (2004, p.17-8) distinguishes two common kinds of bad music; the Worst Records Ever Made type, which include:

• "Tracks which are clearly incompetent musically; made by singers who can't sing, players who can't play, producers who can't produce,"
• "Tracks involving genre confusion. The most common examples are actors or TV stars recording in the latest style,"

and "rock critical lists," which include:

• "Tracks that feature sound gimmicks that have outlived their charm or novelty,"
• "Tracks that depend on false sentiment (...), that feature an excess of feeling modled into a radio-friendly pop song."

Source

• Washburne, Christopher J. and Derno, Maiken (eds.) (2004). Bad Music: The Music We Love to Hate. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0415943663.
  • Frith, Simon. "What is Bad Music".