We're sitting in my back garden on a hot summer night, eating barbecued chicken and listening to Todd Rundgren, when a friend suddenly explodes into a rant about pop music. His argument, as far as i could follow it, went as follows: it's crap because the words are crap, pathetic adolescent poetry rather than lyrics, and so if it's all crap then you might as well listen to music that performs a function and has no pretensions whatsoever...Which is why he only bothers with house music. House music doesn't bother with words very much, and has an express goal, namely making you dance when you're off your face. That, it seems to me, is like saying that because most restaurants are very bad, one should play the percentage game, forget about trying to find the good ones and eat at McDonald's every meal."
-Nick Hornby from his critical essay on Ben Folds Five's "Smoke" found in the Penguin publication 31 Songs
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