Why Computer Music is Boring

Music is all about context. Just like anything else, you can’t separate people from their social and cultural context. For example, the 1970’s were about people discovering the world, protesting, and standing up for beliefs. John Denver was a musical artist who produced music incredibly relevant to the world around him. His music is powerful because of the world he lived in. He produced peaceful and revolutionary music from what was being produced before him. If his same music were produced today, it would not resonate with people because the social context has changed completely from what it was in 1970.

The point about music being contextual is important when judging the quality of a song because some decades have contexts that do apply to our lives today. John Denver’s song “Looking for Space” is about discovering yourself and who you are as well as where you belong in the world. Although this song was relevant in general in the 1970’s, it strikes a chord specifically with college students today who are discovering themselves and their place in the world as if it were the 70’s all over again.

John Denver’s music in general is timeless because it is mostly about feeling and human emotion, which tend to remain the same. Even though his music applied to his world at the time, it can still be considered a good song because it is well done in evoking the emotions of a lost college student and all the struggles they endure. Some more examples of culturally contextual and timeless artists are Cyndi Lauper, The Beatles, and Aretha Franklin.

Considering this, it is reasonable to think there is a formula for bad or forgotten music, specifically “one hit wonders”. When thinking about music contextually we realize why so many very popular songs were hated and forgotten quickly. Weird Al’s “What I Bought On eBay” is a great example of how some songs will almost never make sense again and were pretty terrible to begin with. The only redeemable quality this type of music has is its cultural context. Music can be solely rooted in context, so when it is removed from that context, it falls flat. This is why I think a lot of the music produced by computers falls flat. Computer programs only know how to compose by what they have the most immediate access to, so sifting through useless and flat out boring material is nearly impossible unless it is done by hand.