What Makes Music Pretentious?

What exactly makes music “pretentious”? It’s “something full of pretense; an attempt to make something that is not the case appear true”. It’s an insult that’s levied against any number of bands often with little back-up or explanation. Is it the lyrics? The music? Just the very attitude of the band? Or is it a word we use when music rubs us up the wrong way? Time to delve deeper into the terrifying world of pretentious music (come at me, Manic Street Preachers).

Because music can be pretentious and still be good. Take Muse, for example: purveyors of music which is almost universally accepted as pretentious but remains hugely popular. Similar to many metal bands, the lyrics of this kind of music tend to deal with ridiculously and often pointlessly intellectual or portentous subjects (after all, Muse’s Resistance album was essentially the result of someone handing Matt Bellamy a copy 1984 and saying “once more, with feeling”), but this doesn’t put off the scores of fans who buy their albums and queue up like rabid dogs for their concerts. So it’s clearly not just centered on  the lyrics. One thing that’s constantly used to defend people like Muse is their sense of fun, their ability to laugh at themselves even as they perform at the Olympics with a vast choir, sparkly trousers, and fire shooting out of the stage. So that would imply there’s something more in the people who create the music rather than the actual music itself.

Let’s start with Radiohead in general, and Thom Yorke in particular. Radiohead are a band who are often perceived as pretentious even when they’re just sort of churning out the same level of sorta-angsty lyrics as everyone else (In case you were wondering, I never really got the appeal of Radiohead). Thom Yorke is a figure of great division in the music industry, and many people consider him and, by extension, his work, pretentious. Consider this quote:

“Street Spirit is our purest song, but I didn’t write it…It wrote itself. We were just its messengers…its biological catalysts. It’s core is a complete mystery to me…and you know, I wouldn’t ever try to write something that hopeless…All of our saddest songs have somewhere in them at least a glimmer of resolve…Street Spirit has no resolve. It is the dark tunnel without the light at the end.”

Now, I’m not saying that it’s quotes like this that make people think Thom Yorke is pretentious, but, in another sense, that’s exactly what I’m saying. Radiohead write music that is basically inoffensive at worst, yet, with the mighty Yorke attached, it winds up getting dismissed as pretentious. Also see the father of maudlin himself, Morrissey, who seems to spend all his time these days releasing autobiographies or making eye-clenchingly irritating squawks about the current political climate. In turn, consider the number of people you’ve heard say “I love The Smiths, but I could do without that Morrissey” (or something more strongly worded). Pretension here seems to come more from the perception of the artist that is then extended to his music. When you live up to your own pretentious hype, this is just known as confidence. When you don’t, people just keep rolling their eyes whenever they see you moaning on about how everyone has been trying to rip your music off. This certainly fits the definition at the top of the page — these people are attempting to make their music, which is more or less just slightly clever pop-rock, seem like it gives them the right to pontificate on a variety of subjects with great authority when it perhaps does not.

Of course, there is the fans to contend with in that respect as well. Certain bands seem to attract fans that naturally exploit any kind of pretension that might be found within the music to such a degree than this attitude becomes permanently etched into the way we look at that music (Pink Floyd fans, I’m looking at you). When you have to fight through thousands of pretentious bastards before you can get to the front of the merch queue at a concert, the entire band seems less appealing, even if they’ve just had the misfortune to attract people who just so happen to be unbelievably pretentious.

Sometimes, bands taking on heavy subject matter can be seen as pretentious as well. In between the adulated heralding of the second coming of Christ that was American Idiot, I seem to remember a lot of muttering in 2004 about how pretentious it was for a band previously known for churning out slightly anti-establishment stoner post-punk to suddenly go “LOOK! LOOK! WE CAN GO DO POLITICS TOO!”.

So, what do you think makes pretentious music? And who’s the most pretentious artist you can think of?