The Weeknd and The Curse of The Drum Machine
Photo by Steve Harvey on Unsplash
I have this irrational hatred of standard, preformed drum beats.
Like the ones that became popularized in the Eighties - you know those synthetic, electronic drum beats that go on and on, with no variation, no exciting fills, no changes of intensity. No humanity, basically. They remind me of the emergence of the synthesizer and how, it seemed back then, that they enabled people with no talent to make music.
Are you a real musician? Well, then you can’t be using a drum machine, can you? You need to play the real thing, because that’s what makes you a real musician!
This view has stuck with me for the last 3-4 decades. So much so that when a song comes on with that stock drum beat, my head automatically goes to: I don’t like this song. In other words, as soon as I hear it, I stop listening, form a (negative) judgement and move on. No second chances here.
And then last week, I was watching the Super Bowl Halftime show, in which The Weeknd performed. His last song was his hit, Blinding Lights, a song I’d heard many times in different places, and each time, I heard that drum beat that kicks it off and tuned it out. (Go ahead, judge me…)
But this time, probably because I was there and I was watching, I actually listened.
And I realized something: that this was a pretty good song. In fact, it might even be great.
Despite that drumbeat...or perhaps because of it? I couldn’t decide which, as I sat there in the midst of this existential crisis brought on by a standard, uniform drumbeat that suddenly upended decades of what can only be called personal musical prejudice against it.
Until I realized that it wasn’t about the drumbeat itself. Not at all.
It was really about the ideas I’d associated with it. That not using the tools considered to be “necessary” to make art, meant that its product couldn’t possibly be art. I mean, serious musicians play nice instruments, real ones. They invest their effort in the execution, the doing of the work to make the music. And if you’ve just programmed it into a computer, then, surely it isn’t music, is it?
Turns out, actually, that it still can be music. And really good music, to boot.
Because it’s about the idea, the creativity, the emotion that’s being communicated. It’s about the intent, the honesty and integrity of it. That’s what mattered, because if those attributes are there, the humanity always comes through. That’s what makes great things great. As Bono said when he accepted U2’s Grammy for Album of the Year back in 1987:
“It’s not about the instruments you play, or whether you use a drum machine or not. It’s a decision to reveal or conceal...”
The decision to reveal or conceal is what makes us who we are.
The point is, I needed to look past the surface, past the preconceived notions, the ideas that made me think in a particular way, and judge it with an open mind, giving the benefit of the doubt, the possibility that there could be something there, if I allowed myself to hear it. The problem wasn’t with The Weeknd using that drumbeat, the problem was with me not ‘hearing’ it. Something I ultimately did, as I sat there, during that Halftime Show.
Maybe there’s a bigger lesson in there.
