Is 'On The Run' Music?

Spoiler Alert: Yes, it is.

Last night I bore witness to an intriguing debate. It started with the question of why a certain Pink Floyd fan I know doesn’t like Radiohead. The Pink Floyd Fan, or PFF, didn’t see the relationship between the two bands as strongly as did the Radiohead Fan, or RHF. PFF felt that Radiohead was too disjointed, too progressive, and they lacked the melodic consistency and emotional current of the Floyd. RHF, on the other hand, celebrated the occasional dissonance and dysfunction of Radiohead, and felt their inventiveness was on par with Dark Side of the Moon.

I left the discussion momentarily to take a phone call, and when I returned, the debate had changed. On The Run, an instrumental track from Dark Side, was on the stereo. PFF was arguing that On The Run was not a song, which RHF felt was ludicrous. PFF argued that, while the piece does convey emotion in the context of the album, it would be a meaningless cacophony of sounds when standing alone. RHF disagreed, saying the emotion of the piece was clear. What ensued was a debate of increasingly heated rhetoric, culminating in both sides essential having two different conversations. RHF was trying to talk about On The Run in terms of what music is or isn’t. He was arguing the vague and indefinable nature of music, like trying to define the color red. He made the point that music doesn’t necessarily need to have a narrative to be enjoyable, much like a sunset doesn’t need a narrative to be pretty.

PFF, on the other hand, was talking about On The Run in terms of what works or doesn’t work for him. He argued that music without narrative structure is just a bunch of sounds. As analogy, he talked about a helicopter. Is the regular beat of a helicopter’s spinning blades music? He said no. He argued that On The Run, outside the context of the album, was just noise, just as any one of its constituent parts would just be noise if isolated from the whole piece. When RHF compared On The Run to techno music, PFF argued that to him, most techno music is just noise. It just doesn’t ‘work’ for him.

To an outside observer, it’s clear these two sides were not arguing the opposite sides of the same question. RHF was trying to talk about what music is or isn’t. PFF was trying to talk about what works or doesn’t work for him, which is code language for what he likes or doesn’t like. At its heart, this debate is about defining art. Is the definition of art objective or subjective? If you consider something to be or not be art, can you be wrong or right?

For starters, there has to be more to the definition of art than simply what we like or don’t like. I’m not much of a Toby Keith fan, but I would never try to argue that Toby Keith’s racist, nationalist songs aren’t music. On The Run is not the best song on Dark Side, in fact, it’s probably my least favorite track. But I would never argue that it wasn’t music, in any context or no context at all. I define art as human creativity expressed in a medium or combination of media. Music, therefore, is human creativity expressed in the medium of sound.

That is a broad definition, and open to much subjectivity. But locally applied, it becomes obvious that under my definition, On The Run is definitely music. If you need to define music in terms of its common elements, we can do that too. The common elements of music, technically speaking, are pitch, rhythm, dynamic, timbre, and texture. Examining On The Run, you’ll find each of these elements. I’ll let you do that on your own time.

To the larger issue, does music have to ‘mean something’ in order to be music? Does it have to ‘work for you’ in order to be music? I say yes, but no. Yes it has to ‘mean something’ to be art, but it doesn’t have to mean the same thing to everyone. And for those who would claim that On The Run means nothing to them outside the context of the album, I would argue two points. First, who cares what it means outside of the album? It’s PART OF THE ALBUM, and therefore you’re arguing a hypothetical context. It’s like saying “Arizona would be a shitty place to live, if it were overrun with zombies.” Well, yes, but so what? It’s not (yet,) so your point is moot. Second, when you say On The Run means nothing to you outside of the context of the album, do you really mean it? Does the song, listened to in isolation, become indistinct from the background noise of everyday life? Does it suddenly lose its pitch, rhythm, dynamic, timbre, and texture? Does the emotional urgency and sense of breathless anxiety suddenly disappear from the piece, just because you didn’t listen to Speak To Me/Breathe immediately before it? By that logic, Nirvana’s In Bloom isn’t really a song if you don’t hear Smells Like Teen Spirit first. And don’t try to tell me that In Bloom is a bad comparison, because it was written to be enjoyable in isolation. That’s my point exactly: On The Run was written to be listened to IN THE CONTEXT OF THE ALBUM, and therefore any discussion of its musicality independent of the album is irrelevant.

And as for the techno analogy, let’s not confuse what we like with what something is or isn’t. I don’t like Raisin Bran, but it’s still part of a balanced breakfast. Maybe PFF claims not to distinguish techno from noise, but I don’t see the Rave scene jamming out to the sounds of traffic or the hum of a chainsaw. Maybe you need to be high on E to enjoy techno, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is music. You’d have to be pretty high to enjoy most David Lynch movies, but that doesn’t mean they’re not movies.

What any of this has to do with the difference between Radiohead and Pink Floyd, I don’t know. Personally, I like them both.