IF YOU LOOK up the most commonly used adjective to describe Air Supply’s “All Out of Love,” I believe you would get cheesy. Maybe over the top. Maybe melodramatic. Hard to argue with those. But there’s a secret to Air Supply. Depending on the emotional state in which you find yourself, this fuzzy-haired overly sensitive band can be…the greatest band of all time. It can be everything you’ve ever needed. You just have to know when to seek out Air Supply and when to stay away.

For instance, some days you are at the top of your game. You’re feeling confident. Your brain is vital, inspired, and alert. Your energy is up. You are firing on all cylinders. These are the days when you want to musically challenge yourself with one of the obtuse string quartets from Bartók. Or the twelve-tone compositions of Shostakovich. Go on. Get in there. Get artsy-fartsy. See what you can swallow. Try to make your way through that dense, extremely challenging art into the space of the feels. It’s hard work, but worth it if you can break through. You’ll be proud of yourself.

But what if you’re having a different day? What if you are feeling particularly vulnerable on an early winter morning, snuggled under a blanket? Or even better…you have the flu and are somewhat dizzy with fever. Do you really want to dig through the B sides of early Brian Eno? I don’t think so. This is the time for Air Supply. Open your arms to their high-pitched falsettos. Embrace their on-the-nose lyrics and lushly overdramatic three-part harmonies. And when the final repeated chorus adds the string section and swells toward that glorious climax, it will make you feel more deeply and profoundly than any restrained, intelligent piece of music will ever have the chance to make you feel.

We bring this up because it keeps occurring to us how arbitrary our reception of art is these days. We keep saying things like “That’s a good film” or “What a terrible painting,” when in reality our own subjective experience of that thing is really what we’re talking about. And we’re not just talking about the differences in people’s empirical tastes. We’re saying that our very own taste is actually completely subjective and can change on a given day. A good example of this is when one of us went to the movie theater to see a Hollywood film by the name of Titanic. Let’s just call this person Jark to avoid any specific embarrassment. At the time Jark Duplass was already a refined film student and fan of Tarkovsky, Godard, and Cassavetes. He could discern and write cogent essays on the nuances and subtleties of the various eras of cinematic history. But today, Jark was having some relationship troubles and was about to go on a big trip by himself. And Jark was feeling a bit…vulnerable. When Jark saw a bit of himself in a young Leo DiCaprio, he proceeded to cry his balls off for three hours straight in that movie theater.

Jark knew then and knows now that Titanic is not the greatest movie of all time. But there is no denying that Jark had one of his peak emotional cinematic experiences at the hands of James Cameron. And there’s no taking that back. Is it his favorite film? No. Is it his favorite viewing experience? Well…it’s close.

So we’ve begun to curate lists for what types of art we should take in depending on our mood. We’ll often see a trailer for a film and designate its viewing for “the next time I get strep throat” (The Blind Side). Cuz Jark now knows that, in his normal semi-cynical pseudo-intellectual state, he might scoff at some of the manipulative cinematic maneuverings of a melodramatic sports drama. But once that thermometer hits one hundred degrees, all bets are off.

So instead of making fun of Air Supply or films like The Notebook and The Bridges of Madison County, break out one of those suckers on a day when you are feeling “less than” and they just might take you on the very emotional adventure you’ve been waiting for.