There's the saying a bad days fishing beats a good day at the office. The point is fishing is something one generally enjoys and being in the office is something one generally doesn't.
Applying that logic to music you could say a bad record by an artist you like beats a good record by an artist you don't like. Or does it?
I'm a huge advocate for letting the music do the talking but no matter how much I try to adopt this philosophy I feel there's always going to be a degree of bias.
Take for example "Firestarter" by The Prodigy. Prior to this the "Music For The Jilted Generation" album changed my life and the "Experience" album doesn't have a bad track on it. Still to this very day though I've not been able to take to "Firestarter" and I'll never forget the disappointment when I heard it the first time.
Had The Prodigy not released any music prior to "Firestarter" would I be thinking the same thing or would I like it? I'll never know, all I know is that when I hear it I don't enjoy it.
"Firestarter" knocked what was supposed to be the final Take That hit off number one. I couldn't stand Take That at the time and to this very day I find most of their music irritating. However when they made their comeback in 2006 with "Patience" I thought it was easily the best thing they've ever done.
The same month "Patience" came out Jamiroquai released "Runaway". Jamiroquai are a band I've always rated but I've seen I previously rated this song as OK but thought they were past their best by this point. I've just had to play the song to remind myself how it goes and my thoughts are still the same.
More importantly though given the choice of listening to "Runaway", a not so good song by a band I like or "Patience" a great song by a band I don't like, which would I choose? I would say "Patience".
Another question is had Jamiroquai not released better music in the 90s would I even give this song half marks? Or would I give it full marks for being better than most of the rubbish coming out at that time? I suspect more likely the former given I had to remind myself how it went, but it's not bad.
Sometimes something sounds much better on paper than it does in reality. Staying in 2006 there was a collaboration between Pharrell and Kanye West. Both were producers I rated highly a couple of years prior and it seemed like a dream collaboration. The record itself though was a huge disappointment and if I'm honest I was rating both artists because of music they'd made in the past rather than music they were making at that point in time.
It would be another 4 years until Pharrell would return to the charts and it would be in quite a different capacity.
During those 4 years I'd properly got back into dance music. One of my favourite dance records to chart in this period was "I Found U" by Axwell. I also discovered Sebastian Ingrosso as a DJ and had one of his mix CDs. Together with Steve Angello they formed the Swedish House Mafia.
It was in collaboration with the Swedish House Mafia that Pharrell returned to the charts with "One (Your Name)". This was not only a collaboration between DJs I liked, but also a producer in the rap and R&B world who I was a fan of a few years prior. I really wanted to like this tune until I finally conceded it was crap.
Fast forward another 3 years until we saw Pharrell in the charts again. This time he was collaborating with Daft Punk and Nile Rodgers on "Get Lucky". This time though it's a record I still like, but is it because I'm biased?
There's a real difference between my perceptions of Swedish House Mafia and Daft Punk. I may have liked Sebastian Ingrosso the DJ before he went commercial, but Swedish House Mafia as a collective were commercial rubbish. Daft Punk on the other hand were already commercial and credible when I first heard them.
At the end of 2013 was when Pharrell had his biggest success of all, "Happy". Again I paid attention because it was Pharrell but what a terrible song.
To give a bit more background, Pharrell was part of NERD and I love their "In Search Of" album. One particular track I like is "Bobby James", a dark record that really hits you. Whilst you can tell "Happy" is sung by the same person, musically it couldn't be any more different.
As for Daft Punk, whilst some say they sold out with the "Random Access Memories" album I do like it and it certainly stands out as better than all the EDM nonsense coming out at the time.
Their last venture into the charts came via a couple of collaborations with The Weeknd. One of these was in the Christmas charts in 2016 and I rated it as OK. Who am I trying to kid though, it's rubbish and I've always thought that if I'm honest with myself. I was just biased because it was Daft Punk.
