Ridiculously incorrect beliefs you had about music and musicians while growing up

Had a stand-up argument with a mate because I refused to believe that this wasn't a Japan track.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRk9nwvVH20

in my Fundamentalist days I still listened to secular music cos I hated the Christian music I heard in church but I feared each rock band was secretly mega-Satanic and evil, like there was this secret cabal of bands like Metallica who would drink goat's blood ,but that they were deliberately trying to trick people into thinking they weren't, so that they weren't exposed. this is why I thought Sabbath had Christian lyrics on Master of Reality.

i also took lyrics hyper-literally so I thought Metallica's "Leper Messiah" was about Jesus being a leper.

I thought "Maneater" by Hall and Oates was about a cannibal. Scary stuff, thought my mom was weird for happily humming along to it

First time I heard Star Me Kitten by REM, on holiday in France, I thought the devil had possessed the cassette.

My parents listened exclusively to classical music when I was a child.

Mine too, and I had a related misunderstanding when I was maybe seven years old and an older cousin played me a miami bass comp. "I don't get it, where's the bass?"

My parents listened exclusively to classical music when I was a child. (Still the case, actually.) I was familiar only with the instruments of the orchestra and to me, a "bass player" was someone who wore a tuxedo and bowed sedately at what looked like a giant cello. I would have been five or so when the news broke of the death of "Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious". I remember looking in incomprehension at his photo, wondering how this guy, with his sinister leer and bicycle lock necklace, had been allowed to join an orchestra.

This is a good one.

Being around classical music 90% of the time as a kid, I tended to call songs "pieces" like they were classical music. Nobody corrected me so it just continued. When I was 10 I was called out on it, "why do you keep calling them 'pieces'? They're songs!" It was a struggle to correct this.

Like it was actually a "oh, "Straight Up" by Paula Abdul? I love that piece!" moment that prompted somebody to tell me how ridiculous it sounded

This is why, at most rock concerts, people don't clap between songs. They wait until the band has played everything from one of its albums, and THEN they clap.

I just call everything a song. “That’s my favorite Xenakis song!” “I love Jimmy Lyons’ solo on that Cecil Taylor song.” It’s easier that way.

Ugh

It's dumb that it bothers me that people call something a song even though nobody is singing, but it always seems wrong to me

I may have commented elsewhere on the Taboo-like elegant variation bandstand avoidance of the word “song”: That was a Charlie Parker tune called “Relaxin’ at Camarillo.” This next number blah blah blah…

It's dumb that it bothers me that people call something a song even though nobody is singing, but it always seems wrong to me

It's not dumb!

One of the definitions given for "song" is: a musical composition suggestive of a song.
I don't really know what to make of that. Is it saying compositions that have similar structure to songs can be called a song even if there's no lyrics or singing?

I think that's what they mean, yes, e.g. Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words.

I sort of feel that, but "Sleep Walk" "Rumble" and "Green Onions" etc. are songs in my book.

I used to want to not call every piece of music a song but felt pretentious using any other word. Perhaps if I was speaking to someone who was musically trained I would.

Yeah, iirc those examples basically have strophic song-like structure.xp

I do sometimes give in and refer to instrumental pieces as "songs" when talking to children. Usually not, though.

Maybe the definition of the word has drifted over time, but almost everyone alive today would consider Green Onions a song.

This next one is a new composition of mine entitled “Green Orions.”

So is this thing mistitled?
https://www.sfjazz.org/onthecorner/a-century-of-song-monk-at-100/

How about these?
https://www.shermusic.com/jazz-songbook-series.php

Like it was actually a "oh, "Straight Up" by Paula Abdul? I love that piece!" moment that prompted somebody to tell me how ridiculous it sounded

Lol.

Op. cit. 2: Allegro Bugalú

I think that's what they mean, yes, e.g. Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words.

In my Apple Music library, every audio file is labelled as a song, including recordings of spoken conference presentations, interviews, test recordings of white noise, etc. Clearly the term does get used loosely. I still think there's a non-trivial distinction to be made between instrumental compositions and settings of text to music. Ethan Hein doesn't. The term does seem to get used more loosely wrt jazz lead sheets, perhaps because there is so much of a grounding of the material in blues and Tin Pan Alley songs in that tradition. I usually don't hear that many jazz players refer to "Lester Leaps In" as a "song" per se (vs e.g. "tune") but maybe some do.xps

RIght. Lots of jazz guys are sticklers as well, but once in a while you might here "song." I guess there is definitely a distinction especially within those examples you mention in your first sentence.

Don't know from Ethan Hein but I see that his new book has a foreward by Adam Neely.

Ahem, foreword.

Which led me to this interesting set of discussions, especially the first post: http://www.ethanhein.com/wp/tag/adam-neely/

RIght. Lots of jazz guys are sticklers as well, but once in a while you might here "song."

Mostly you'd just sidestep the question and call it a "chart."

It's only a chart if it's written down, though, surely? More generally, it's a "tune" ime.

For sure "chart" comes from the tradition of learning repertoire from Real Books etc, but I've definitely heard it used in the absence of written music. I guess "chart" more or less means a piece of music defined in terms of some melodic material and some chord changes, with the expectation that both are malleable to whatever extent the players agree upon.

I sort of feel that, but "Sleep Walk" "Rumble" and "Green Onions" etc. are songs in my book.

Instrumentals imb

I cried when I wrote this jawn
Sue me if I play too long

"Its your brother, Marvin Berry! You know that new sound you've been looking for? Well listen to this composition!!!"

Marvin didn't even use the word "song" in the original movie, when he put the phone up to Marty's guitar solo!

Anyway, No one is questioning that Steely Dan and Chuck Berry songs are songs but I'm going to turn off the exhaust fan bc its song is too loud.

Neubauten went from being anti music to writing some really nice songs. Possibly at the same time, like.

When I was a kid my local classic rock station would play "rock blocks" of five songs back to back no commercials, and you could win a prize if you caught them playing less than five songs in a row. I called in once trying to catch them on a technicality by saying Edgar Winter's Frankenstein doesn't have any singing and therefore isn't really a song. "Fuck off, you little shit" was the gist of the response.

Lol

Think we have an answer.

when I was in middle school, our choir teacher decided to rant for some reason against the studio trickery that was unnaturally making vocalists sound better than they were. nevermind that our choir director couldn't really even sing herself.

so what she meant was the typical studio trickery, the occasional pitch correction, the smoothing of the vocals, the mixing of many takes, I mean, shit that had been happening since the 50s, and pointing out "if you see these singers like En Vogue live, they don't sound anywhere near as good".

but she didn't elaborate at all. and I understood it to mean that literally all great singing was created in a lab (the studio), that vibrato and melisma were digitally added, and that if you took the average Whitney Houston styled singer out of the studio, they'd actually have a Yoko Ono type voice.

then I got into high school choir and heard one of the seniors do some crazy-assed amazing gospel singing and immediately took the bus back to middle school to yell at my teacher.

Classic rock was a widely recognized, canonized music-historical period, and not just whatever was popular 20 years prior.

By the 80s, though, it had definitely become codified by radio, magazines, books etc?

Not to mention bands and fans as well.

I definitely avoid using the word 'song' when talking about instrumental music (or even groove-based music that may have vocals and words, but where that isn't the focus). It just sounds kinda dumb and wrong. Track, tune, piece (also pretentious if not in the classical or jazz-related world), composition, thing, etc.

But I didn't expect that classic rock stations would eventually stop playing Cream and start playing "Cherry Pie" by Warrant (which our classic rock station did just over an hour ago).xp

Ok, yes, although when you thought that was true it WAS, at that time. Like I thought "oldies" stations would play Vera Lynn forever.

Yes, these were not ridiculous misconceptions! How could we have known…

I mean, as a kid you can't be faulted for thinking the same things that many music business professionals did at the time.