How important is originality?

This will be an interesting discussion, and I'll jot down my thoughts later today.

Good topic! I'd distinguish qualities that make an album great for me personally from qualities that I'd say make an album great so that I'd appreciate it as a reviewer. I can take more individual points of view or points of view that seem to be more "general" to me, where I try to appreciate qualities that can be explained and discussed in a way that may appeal and be informative to others. I could call this a more "objective" point of view, but I'm aware that I can't be really objective (and nobody can) even when trying to take a more "general" point of view. Still, it's at least an attempt to get closer to the essentially unreachable "objectivity" ideal. (Actually taking this point of view and also reading/hearing what others write about music helps my individual emotional taste, too, because it makes me see qualities at times that I would've missed otherwise.)

Now when it comes to originality, something fresh appeals to me generally, something that makes me see things from a different angle, something that opens a new world of listening to me. This also works in a direct emotional way. But you're obviously right about the fact that there's a difference between what seems to me original because I hadn't heard anything like this before, and what is really original because indeed there was absolutely nothing like this before.

Still, if the crowd intelligence of lots of people on the internet tells me that ITCOTKC was really original and this resonates with my personal impression, I'm prepared to believe it, whereas I know very well that Manfred Mann's Earth Band's Watch is not terribly original despite being my first prog experience and therefore sounding pretty much like the most original album I've ever heard. I know that I have a tendency to appreciate most the first album(s) of a band that I've heard (be them the first or most generally appreciated of the band or not) because these sounded most original to me, but I can take the more generalist point of view and see that I'm biased there.

In any case, originality "feels" like a good quality to me (unless of course I come across something original that doesn't sound good to me).
And then this doesn't mean I can't value consistency, and also it's still original enough and certainly worthwhile to put some effort into letting a good original idea grow and mature, rather than chunking out something totally new all the time. David Bowie's Low is undoubtedly very original, but I'd think that had he developed this kind of stuff over four albums, I'd have liked the end result more.

A further aspect is that some people may have ideas that others had before but they weren't aware of that, and the freshness quality of originality of those who came first and those who did something similar later that was totally new for themselves could still be the same.

I think Karl Kraus once said "It's not important who had an idea first, it's important who has it best."

And then:
"On the other hand, imagine Wish You Were Here and Selling England by the Pound were debut albums and they were original. Would that make them better albums? I seriously doubt it."
But every album has a story behind it and doesn't appear out of nowhere. These two albums were not debut albums and behind them is the whole earlier history of the bands that made them get there. They couldn't have been debut albums in this world, only in a world turned upside down, and nobody knows what rules would hold in that world.

Originally is overrated, as people are drawn to what they're familiar with.

True originality is rare and as time goes on inevitably it's going to be rarer - we're about fifty years into the history of "progressive" rock music at this point.

Edited by Mascodagama - August 21 2016 at 06:59

I predict a Starcastle album will dethrone Close To The Edge as the most popular album on here any day now

rogerthat wrote: paganinio wrote: 2. Consistency is also a highly valuable quality that no one seems to talk much about. When I buy an Opeth album, I expect to hear the exact same genre, same style, same guitar, drums and growling vocals that I heard on Still Life, Blackwater Park, etc.. I expect the album to be 0% original, and 100% staying true to the classic Opeth sound. If the album sounds original, I'm disappointed because that's not what I spent money to hear. Actually if I vice versa this entire para, it would sum up the reason why I can't be bothered collecting AC DC or Motorhead's discography even though I absolutely love the sound of these bands.  But it's the same sound on every album, so why should I collect every album to listen to the same sound over and over again?  I would rather watch them live, much more fun.  I would rather even buy live albums than studio albums in such a case.  A new studio album is equivalent to a new movie or a new novel.  The idea is that it is different at some level from the previous one by the same artist.  If it has nothing different to offer, there's no reason to buy it if I already have the previous one.

I completely understand your point and I used to think a little like it as well. "Originality doesn't make the album sound better" is something which could be an obvious (but too hasty!) conclusion. 

Why we love music is how we are trained by our culture/other people and ourselves (you can influence what about music you love a little by yourself), you are "trained" to recognise and like chords, it's not a  coincidence that everyone likes some music. (That's ALOB's post freely summarised)

It's also no coincidence everyone has different taste, most prog lovers have a true, deep interest in how music can be renewed and be different than the "average pop song". The core of progressive rock (and maybe some will argue this but I'll proceed anyway) is to make something more complex and with more creativity by not repeating what has been done to death- the verse-chorus structure, as an  important example. This requires more skill of the composer and that's a quality to appreciate, right? Now something deep inside me, which is also something which is learned to me as nurture, tells me that originality is an important skill/virtue/quality. There are many other qualities like this (perhaps more superficial and even more natural) like harmony, tone, rhythm and eclecticism as a more complicated example which make music beautiful- but they're all qualities we appreciate because we learned to appreciate it. 

It's maybe hard to understand why originality makes us appreciate music more, but it's something important which makes the music harder to make and is a part which does makes it truly better, I dare say so.

From a different perspective - let's repeat the examples above stated - sound, chords, rhythm and tone are "vertical" looking (taking a fraction of the music and analyse everything of it, visualise it via music notation if you like) at music and it's easier to explain why we love these. Things like eclecticism, form (the most clear example of horizontal) and originality is a more "horizontal" way of looking at music. It's harder to explain why we exactly love these qualities, but these are all more compositional qualities, which are harder to appreciate if you don't listen deeply (I'm not saying you're listening to music in the wrong way). But a sophisticated form is something which one can truly love about a piece, don't you adore that moment when a fragment is recapitulated in a powerful way? (The end of Starless being an excellent example)

Edited by DDPascalDD - August 21 2016 at 12:42

Guldbamsen wrote: For me personally it's also a question of the particular style which is being aped - or indeed whether or not it's a style that has been reproduced a thousand times over ie the ol Genesis formula: twelve string guitars, mellotron, Hackett leads and a theatrical frontman. Then I very quickly get bored, but then again the same goes for 90% of the so-called Berlin Schule connoisseurs who practically have been dishing out Rubycon/Stratosfear part 2 (more like part 24542859) the past 4 decades.

I appreciate originality, but the lack of it doesn't necessarily make me enjoy an album any less.

In fact, since there won't be any more classic 70s prog albums, I wouldn't mind new bands making new albums like them. If there was a band that sounded exactly like classic King Crimson or VDGG (and actually wrote good songs, unlike most retro bands), I'd probably love them.

^ well said, Atavachron. As far as the Top 100 albums, i have heard them all and own all but two. There's probably only about 5 in the top 250, mostly newer releases that i haven't heard as well.