Kenny G is the best-selling instrumental artist of all time, but a serious saxophone player would do well not to sound like him. By that metric.
I’m not personally a fan of smooth jazz, but at least Kenny G is well-known. That’s a pretty good metric to aim for when writing, isn’t it?
Smooth jazz and related genres like adult contemporary are easy targets here (maybe we can pick on Phil Collins next). People love to talk about how much they hate these genres. And then there’s all the people who say they listen to “everything but country and rap”, which is at this point a cliché.
It’s all just to show that you’re in the right social group, and less about whether you (personally) took a chance and listened to smooth jazz, then decided what your personal feelings are about it. We’re social creatures and it takes a ton of effort to give music, culture, or people a chance without trying to evaluate our choices through the lens of what is acceptable for our social in-group or the social in-group we aspire to.
Most people who “listen to everything” are just saying that because it’s the kind of sentiment that their social in-group values, and if you dig into the actual listening habits “listens to everything” you won’t find anything surprising or unusual.
Such a good point. There are genres that I tend to dislike (although I can point to specific works in them than I love). But my response is really just to not listen to them rather than advocate against them. These are issues of preference, not right and wrong.
> We’re social creatures and it takes a ton of effort to give music, culture, or people a chance
This is true. With music, I noticed a long time ago that much of the music that I love the most is music that I didn't care for at first listen. It was only after listening (really listening, not just playing in the background) multiple times that I learned they were great.
Could you give us a hint? I honestly have no idea what you’re getting at.
I’d also like to clarify that this is not a discussion about whether Kenny G is underrated, but whether people hate Kenny G simply because it’s fashionable to do so. The whole problem I have here is that it was irrelevant in the first place whether Kenny G is good or not, because “whether Kenny G is actually good” is not a question some people are willing to investigate.
I'm sure some people hate Kenny G because it's fashionable, but a lot of people hate Kenny G because they hate him, and either way: people fucking hate him.
I'm only in this leg of the thread because I think it's super funny that somebody compared Graham to Kenny G and it had the predictable result of a bloom of rhetorical hyphae about how actually Kenny G is probably good.
Late edit
I am obligated, against my own rhetorical interests, to acknowledge that Kenny G is beloved by many in the country of Israel for introducing to them to concept of unlimited free soda refills, which he did through his unsuccessful attempt to open a fried chicken franchise there.
Pardon the allegory, but that’s a shadow on the cave wall.
> …predictable result of a bloom of rhetorical hyphae about how actually Kenny G is probably good…
That isn’t present in the conversation; I think you may have misread one of the comments.
If you’re going to say that it’s good or bad to imitate Paul Graham’s style, then by all means, do so, but it would serve you well to provide some kind of reasoning or rationale for the advice. (To be clear, general “you” here, not you, specifically.) You can equally advise saxophonists to try sounding like Kenny G or avoid sounding like Kenny G, again, without any reasoning or rationale for it, but I think we can do better.
There’s something kind of banal about this taste-making in the first place. It’s much easier to find reasons to say that something is bad. It gives you a much more defensible position, which is why people find it easy to hate Kenny G. Saying you like something would expose you too much to criticism.
For whatever reason, some people decided that it’s cool to hate Kenny G, and nowadays you see people dropping Kenny G’s name into the conversation as an example of something you want to hate, by people who have no particular reason to hate Kenny G. Whether Kenny G is actually good or bad was never relevant, because the only relevant fact is that it’s cool to think that Kenny G is bad.
So one point to make here is: it doesn't matter why people hate Kenny G. They hate Kenny G. That's indisputable. So: unless the reason you're playing music is to make a statement about smooth jazz, it's best to avoid sounding like Kenny G.
If you want to write as effectively as Paul Graham, it helps a lot to have started one of the industry's most important investment firms, based on no previous experience in finance, and then to write a long string of posts about startups, startup financing, and startup engineering. People accept a lot of "it turns out that" from Graham because he's a credible authority on some of the topics he writes about. If that's not you, people are more likely to laugh at your "it turns outs". I'm sure there's an analogy we can draw to Kenny G there somewhere, too.
Most people who dislike Kenny G have opinions which aren't informed by the way that Kenny G plays the saxophone in the first place, that's the whole problem.
"This place rocks!"
Writers should do the same.