for a while now, I've slowly been coming to the conclusion that a large part of whether someone likes a song/artist/genre or not... has to do with a way the mind instinctively percieves something like a personality or character in the music... channeled through the coordinates of the signifiers (the signifiers within the music - as well as the significance to the way the musical form as a whole is being used) - like a spirit conjured in the exact markings of a sigil, or in the specifics of a ritual - and how the listener then relates to that percieved character-position-geist (I say geist because it's like a spirit in the music... the musical style's vibe/atmosphere is a personality-as-life-position, a way of seeing and moving through its reality).
this may include, but not be limited to, the 'image' attached to the music... image, attributed to a style, may spring - with the style - from the music's content and intent... but this personification goes beyond the original style, and original content/intent.. because a musical form may come to be used in new cultural ways, and attached to new associations - thereby slightly altering the code - and with it the music's form... but more crucially, changing its inner character, its inner orientation, which is really what determines what people percieve in it and whether they connect to it
a good illustration of that is made in Pitchfork's review of Liturgy's Aesthethica from last year...
"As it is with any genre, black metal "authenticity" is basically a smell test: It's black metal if it feels like black metal. It's an unassailable, indefinable, and profoundly inarguable criterion, but there it is. And it must be said that, in the end, Liturgy just don't feel like black metal. Somehow, you can hear the jeans." (italics mine)
now obviously there are more specific/up-close criteria with which a music gets judged by on its own: certain fundamentals of design/craft (which don't have to include technical virtuosity, but certain aesthetic/technical boxes do have to be ticked), how well it realizes its concept/ideal form, or fulfills its function... is it catchy, etc. etc...
but pulling back to a more general perspective, it seems like whenever anyone - including myself - has a strong aversion to a certain artist or style, it's always like they're opposed to - or affronted/repulsed by - the whole life/art-stance/personality - that the music speaks to/for (well, that is, if they're familiar with/aware of its connections - if the signifiers are totally alien to them then it might not translate at all, and only inspire indifference or minor annoyance, or an exoticized interpretation).
when people attack an artist or style, they often seem to be attacking the innate character, or the nature of the gesture being made. if someone hates a style as a whole, the way they criticize it is more in terms of an attack on a cultural stance, demographic, stereotype, lifestyle, etc they associate it with. hardcore Popists, for instance, might criticize an indie sound as if they're attacking a certain snobby/pretentious/privileged/scruffy/etc personality or character type that they differ with. or, if someone does normally relate to the style/signifiers being used, perhaps they don't like the way it's being used in this case, it rings false. debates around Kreayshawn or Lana Del Rey were ultimately debates over the nature of the character wielding the signifiers, whether they were wielding them correctly, and what one's position on it all says about their own orientation to the larger map
indeed, there seems to be two facets to all of this... the map/world... and the personality/persona/character/archetype. the map is the world evoked in the aesthetic... a self-contained picture of reality. the persona, then, would be the position taken within, or in relation to, that map. every map presumes to represent all of reality, but has a limited perspective - it is in fact the reality as seen by the persona, reality through the persona's eyes and ears. on a larger scale there's something of a shifting meta-map containing all of the smaller, self-contained persona-map-complexes (a character and its own small map is indivisable, mututally-constitutive - one sees what's in their heads), and which map one choses as a life/art-position determines where they are on the larger map...
when people attack an artist or style, they often seem to be attacking the innate character, or the nature of the gesture being made. if someone hates a style as a whole, the way they criticize it is more in terms of an attack on a cultural stance, demographic, stereotype, lifestyle, etc they associate it with. hardcore Popists, for instance, might criticize an indie sound as if they're attacking a certain snobby/pretentious/privileged/scruffy/etc personality or character type that they differ with. or, if someone does normally relate to the style/signifiers being used, perhaps they don't like the way it's being used in this case, it rings false. debates around Kreayshawn or Lana Del Rey were ultimately debates over the nature of the character wielding the signifiers, whether they were wielding them correctly, and what one's position on it all says about their own orientation to the larger map
indeed, there seems to be two facets to all of this... the map/world... and the personality/persona/character/archetype. the map is the world evoked in the aesthetic... a self-contained picture of reality. the persona, then, would be the position taken within, or in relation to, that map. every map presumes to represent all of reality, but has a limited perspective - it is in fact the reality as seen by the persona, reality through the persona's eyes and ears. on a larger scale there's something of a shifting meta-map containing all of the smaller, self-contained persona-map-complexes (a character and its own small map is indivisable, mututally-constitutive - one sees what's in their heads), and which map one choses as a life/art-position determines where they are on the larger map...
