The other day at work, I started listening to some music in my office. I looked up Metallica’s Black Album in YouTube (their most popular and significant album that catapulted them from heavy metal icons to overall mainstream success) and get some of that Enter Sandman in my ears to energized myself through a tedious day.
After rocking out to about half the album, I noticed the thumbs up and down icons at the bottom. This is where people get to click whether or not they like the video. There were ‘1K’ thumb downs on this album.
WHAT?!?!?!
How can there be 1,000 people who actually said to themselves ‘eh, this really doesn’t do it for me, I will make sure to click that thumb down thing at the bottom to voice this really shitty opinion’. I mean think about it for a bit. This album has literally 8 songs that received nation wide play on the radio/MTV. When you went to look up the album, were you not familiar with the songs? Was this all new to you and had no idea how ‘Enter Sandman’ sounds, or ‘Wherever I May Roam’ goes? What did you expect? Completely surprised by these songs….never heard them before…….didn’t like the album and voted ‘no’. Really. Maybe never even heard of Metallica. Maybe the name ‘Metallica’ is misleading….I mean it is not like they have ‘Metal’ in their fuckin’ name. May I suggest never looking up anything again on YouTube.
Then I got curious and looked up even more famous and revered songs. Maybe this was just simple Metallica hate.
Here is what I found:
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Michael Jackson ‘Billie Jean’: 47K dislikes
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Elvis Presley ‘Jailhouse House’: 14K dislikes
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Beatles ‘Let It Be’: 2K dislikes
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Nirvana ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’: 99K dislikes
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Public Enemy ‘Fight the Power’ (this one is for me): 1K dislikes
Granted, the quantity of dislikes are tied into how many people viewed the video. For example, the Nirvana one had a ton of ‘likes’ as well. But it still stuns me that anyone would go out of their way, look up these songs, and say ‘eh, I’ll pass’, much less over 1,000 in all these cases.
So I did some further research:
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Aqua ‘Barbie Girl’: 1M likes
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Ray Stevens ‘The Streak’: 37K likes
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Taylor Swift ‘Shake It Off’: 6M likes!!!
OK, so you are telling me that 37K people liked ‘The Streak’, possibly one of the dumbest songs ever made, and 99K thought ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ didn’t quite make the cut.
So I dared to look up one more song. One piece of work that may be considered the greatest work of musical art ever. And……:
- Beethoven 9th performed by the Chicago Symphony in 2015 (a great recording in HD): 1K dislikes
NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Well, to be fair, there were 41K likes, but that still leaves 2% of the overall viewing population saying that Beethoven isn’t quite up to their standards.
The more I learn about other people, the more I realize how different we are. And not in that good way where ‘it takes all kinds of people’ thing. No, different like ‘there are some seriously stupid people out there who just have to stop….being….here….in everyone’s way and are seriously holding back the human race’.
If we can’t even agree on Beethoven’s 9th, what are the chances we can agree on anything?