FORSGREN: Music is nothing to get snobbish about

Babymetal, the world’s favorite brutal metal band fronted by a trio of pop-singing teen girls, dropped a new record last week. This has stoked the ire of many metalheads who feel Babymetal was sent to destroy metal music and wipe it from the face of the earth.

These metal fans often spew vitriolic statement about the purity of “real” metal or keeping the music “real” and “true cult.” They endlessly rail against posers and whatever they think is not metal.

I find this kind of sentiment as illogical as I find it hilarious. It amuses me that fans of such powerful music can be so scared of three Japanese girls singing pop tunes over metal riffs. It also puzzles me that so many metal fans are screaming, “Not metal!” or that Babymetal is breaking the rules, when breaking rules is what metal is supposed to be about.

Urban Dictionary defines the term “music snob” as “a person who believes s/he has a more refined taste in music and has much more knowledge in the field of music in general. Every song and genre is unacceptable unless the snob happens to like it, then it is absolute perfection.” I think that certainly applies to these metalheads who keep bagging on Babymetal. But metal fans aren’t the only music enthusiasts prone to this kind of snobbery.

I first experienced music snobbery in high school at the hands of country music fans. It was a time when Garth Brooks was taking over the world and country music was replacing hair metal as the music of choice for local high school kids. Yet I was getting into thrash metal bands like Megadeth and Testament, which meant I got belittled by a crop of dudes who would scream things like, “If it ain’t country, it’s crap!”

Country music, like metal, is a genre that seems to be defined as much by what it’s not as what it is. Country fans will dismiss artists wholesale for “not being country enough,” which I find a bit ironic considering the fact that country music hasn’t been much more than a terrible approximation of southern rock for something like 20 years.

Then there are the snobby music hipsters who can’t like an artist who’s not obscure and think anything popular is worthless. These are people who claim to have loved an artist before they got big or say that there’s no good music being made nowadays.

These people are clearly ridiculous. The popularity of an artist or song isn’t necessarily a good indicator of its quality, and the reverse is also true. The fact that a song or artist hasn’t achieved mass popularity doesn’t mean it’s actually good. Many times, there’s a good reason why a band hasn’t endeared itself to a wide audience.

I myself have been guilty of music snobbery from time to time. It’s easy to get carried away when you’re passionate about a band. But with time and a little (very little) added maturity, and I’ve come to realize that the fact that I love metal, or any other genre of music, doesn’t make me better or intellectually superior to anyone else.

The music you like is not an indication of your intellectual capabilities. I’m not dumber than some jazz fan just because I can’t make melodic sense out of a John Coltrane solo, just as said jazz fan isn’t dumber than me because he can’t make sense out of a Cannibal Corpse or Morbid Angel song.

Music snobbery needs to go away. We all need to enjoy what we enjoy and not shame others who don’t have the same taste. It’s not easy, though. Every time I meet a Nickleback fan, I have to fight the urge to educate him or her about all the reasons why Nickleback is an abomination. But I’ve realized that I’m in the wrong, and if a bonehead like me can figure this out, anyone can. Remember: “The world don’t move to the beat of just one drum … it takes diff’rent strokes to move the world.”

Oh, by the way, the new Babymetal record, “Metal Resistance,” is just as fun and stylistically unhinged as its predecessor, while showing musical growth and maturity. If teen, pop-singing girls fronting a band that spews significant heavy metal fury sounds interesting to you, do yourself a favor and check it out!