Who ya got?
Beatles or Stones? Biggie or Tupac? Prince or Michael Jackson? Pearl Jam or Nirvana? Who ya got and why? More important: What does your choice say about you? Enough about you—what do these endlessly argued-about pop-music rivalries say about us?
The media has long stood accused of creating conflict where it didn’t previously exist purely for the sake of manufacturing melodrama. This is undoubtedly true, and I angrily denounce any soulless moron who says otherwise. (See what I just did there?) But what about the battles that music fans create on their own? I’m talking about the arguments that take place every day in bars, at parties, and during endless road trips when the radio is broken and the opinions are turned way up.
Some of these debates never seem to die. Was Lynyrd Skynyrd right to go after Neil Young in “Sweet Home Alabama”? Was Kanye West justified in crashing Taylor Swift’s speech at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards? Was Jimi Hendrix a better guitar player than Eric Clapton? Is Toby Keith a better American than the Dixie Chicks? Who would’ve won a boxing match between Axl Rose and Vince Neil?
Music is not like sports—artists don’t have to “defeat” each other in order to gain supremacy. And yet over the course of the sixty or so years that constitute the modern pop era, we as audience members have consistently pitted vaguely similar (though also discernibly not similar) artists against each other in order to determine who’s best.
I’m not interested in settling these arguments—because I don’t think they can be settled and because that wouldn’t be any fun. What I am interested in is exploring why music fans are drawn to these dichotomies, how the dynamics of our most heated musical rivalries stem from larger conversations in the culture (then and now), and what we can learn about ourselves by whom we side with.
Also, I want to understand how in the hell anybody could’ve thought that Mötley Crüe was better than Guns N’ Roses. (It can’t all be blamed on the blizzard of cocaine blowing through ’80s Hollywood.)
Let’s be real: musical rivalries are never totally about music. They’re about sympathizing with a particular worldview represented by an artist over a different worldview represented by an “opposing” artist. You are what you love—and also what you choose not to love. If you pick Hendrix over Clapton, you probably believe that the “burnout” option for rock stars is ultimately more honorable than the “fade away” option. (Or maybe you prefer LSD to Michelob.) If you like Pavement more than the Smashing Pumpkins, you likely find corporate-fueled ’90s “alternative” rock to be highly ridiculous. (Or maybe you prefer California to the Midwest.) If you side with Christina (sorry: Xtina) Aguilera over Britney Spears, you may feel that young girls should emulate a seminaked woman who can sing like Etta James over a seminaked woman who can sing like an oversexed ATM. (Or maybe you’re prejudiced against cyborgs.)
This might sound like harmless stuff, but our musical shoot-outs frequently turn into full-on civil wars. (If you don’t believe me, see what happens when you play Metallica’s “Black Album” for a room full of borderline psychopaths waiting for Megadeth to come onstage.) Musical rivalries don’t matter until they matter to you personally. When that happens, it’s as vital as protecting your own sense of identity.
It’s been said that history is the study of wars and elections—the geography of human dissension, in other words. I think it’s time that this paradigm is applied to pop-music history. So pick a side, pump up the volume, and let’s dive in.