Hard Work, Great Art: The Radiohead Effect

by Corman

Sometime during my freshman year of college, when my musical curiosity was only just blooming, I illegally downloaded a bunch of Radiohead songs. The band had just released Hail to the Thief, and every music publication and grumpy record store clerk (is there any other kind?) that I consulted was preoccupied with the album and the band that released it, so naturally I became preoccupied with them too. If I liked their stuff, I would support them by purchasing their records. If not, I could erase the files and pretend the whole thing never happened.

At this point, I couldn’t have named a single Radiohead song, so when I started downloading their music, I stuck to the albums that most frequently showed up on the “Best-of” lists in those aforementioned publications: The Bends, OK Computer, and Kid A. I don’t remember the exact point when I actually became afraid of what I heard, but I’ll wager it was somewhere during “Idioteque,” a stuttering electronic spasm of a song that sounded nothing like the blues-based rock I ingested by the gallon in those days.

This? I thought. This is the greatest band of their generation? Who did these guys bribe?

But then, I started to worry. What if it’s me? What if they really are great, but I just don’t “get it?” What am I missing? This sort of self-criticism is, I think, pretty natural any time a work of art is praised and awarded high status but doesn’t resonate personally. At the time, though, I was haunted just trying to figure out which of my reactions was closer to the mark. Were the critics and fans just fooling themselves into crying “classic” because they wanted so badly for it to be true, or were my critical faculties not sophisticated enough to understand what I was listening to?

To be safe, I did what any intellectually astute young man faced with such a quandary would do: I ignored it. I shelved the whole Radiohead experiment, intent on proceeding with my Beatles and my Hendrix and my Pink Floyd.

But, oh, how it gnawed at me. I was pulled time and again back to Radiohead’s music no matter how I resisted, even going so far as to buy copies of a couple of their early, much more listener-friendly albums. They repelled me, then drew me back in, pushed me away and beckoned me again until one day, almost five years after I had first listened to their music, everything fell into its right place. I saw Radiohead in concert during the summer of 2008 and was blown away. It was like I had spent those five years wrestling with a complicated equation, and on that night, I finally solved for X. They played the hell out of every song, even the ones I was less familiar with, the ones that had scared me off years earlier. Suddenly, they just made sense. Part of it was the energy behind the performance (it’s easy to forget with all the electronics that the band actually plays all of those songs), but I think mostly it can’t be qualified.

That performance sparked Radiohead’s ascent to their current status as my favorite active musical artists. I eagerly anticipate the release of every new album and single. I salivate over the rumors of a 2012 U.S. tour. I adore this band and their music.

But all of this came very close to never happening. My initial urge to dismiss the band’s status as a byproduct of the hipster hype machine very nearly won out, and if it hadn’t been for that little niggling urge that drew me back to something I hadn’t originally grasped, it would have. And then where would I be? Who would I be? Does the question seem ridiculous? It shouldn’t, not if you believe that, at least in part, our identities are in some way shaped by the art we love. Or, at least, the types of art we love.

Let me explain. My Radiohead example is just one of many from my life. Often I have encountered albums, novels, films, and even television shows that have taxed and perplexed me. My initial reaction is always, no matter how “sophisticated” I think I’ve become, to push the art away, write it off as pretentious. But the good stuff, just like Radiohead, responds in kind. It calls to me, invites me back, slowly reveals a beauty or poignancy or sharpness that was hidden during our first encounter. Eventually, I had to concede that my first impressions could not be trusted, and while some great art does not require this level of, for lack of a better word, work, all great art rewards our persistent efforts at relating to and interacting with it.

I understand that some don’t see it this way. Many believe that art should meet you where you are, and if it doesn’t speak to you immediately, then that probably means it never will. These people look, like I once did, at what they don’t enjoy or understand (though they are often loath to admit the latter) with disdain, unable to grant even the possibility of value. This view is easier, but it is not best practice.

I don’t mean that we might, if simply enough effort were expended, come to enjoy everything. Our tastes will still direct us to that music and writing and film which resonates with us, but we must rely on more than simple taste. We must be willing to wrestle with and even struggle through difficult, challenging works to mine from them the value within.

The reward, though hard won, is inestimable. The reward is Vertigo and There Will Be Blood, The Brothers Karamazov and Infinite Jest, In Utero and The Age of Adz, The Wire and Twin Peaks. The reward is engaging with some of mankind’s greatest achievements and coming out the other side enriched, fulfilled, and maybe even changed.

I don’t know what’s out there waiting for you, but the only way to find out is to get to work.

Normally, I would end there, but I’d like to invite my fellow Verbal Infusers to take a crack at my central question: How hard should we have to work to appreciate great art?