Sunday
Apr032022
Sunday's Best: Week 13, 2022
Sunday, April 3, 2022 at 02:20PM
H/T to our beloved Metalboy! for linking the article below to me. It's a great New York Times opinion piece about the importance of the guitar solo and how music has evolved without them in modern songs (mostly). The article has special graphics and musical snippets. The piece notes that the nominated songs for the Grammy Awards - airing tonight - do not feature guitar solos.
“It’s easy to dismiss the guitar solo as an outdated, macho institution,” writes @nabilayers. “But the emotional power of the form endures.” https://t.co/3TY2qm90IJ pic.twitter.com/fZSBEDGQ7q
— New York Times Opinion (@nytopinion) April 2, 2022
Sharing one of the best live guitar solos of all time is our Sunday's Best for this week. Here's Ozzy Osbourne and Randy Rhoads, "Suicide Solution" from the album Tribute.
Reader Comments (3)
Solos are vital to my enjoyment of most metal songs (probably a close second to the lyrics). Obviously, the frame is the song itself. A crap song with a good solo won't really do it for me, nor will interesting lyrics attached to a dud of an overall song.
I liked the author's (interested and invested, given he is a record executive and is speaking about an artist on his label) take: "It wasn’t about flashy antics or the speed with which Ms. Lenker [of the band Big Thief] played the notes; it was about the raising of the emotional stakes that occurred when she gave more."
Granted, some of the greatest solos are flashy and are speedy. But that is really beside the point. A good solo serves the song. But it also opens up a song, often changing the song in the process.
I do think the author hits a bit of a false note by suggesting that the solo died because of
"the excesses of 1980s guitar culture." Sure there was some wanky stuff going on. But that, and his lean into a comment by a member of the Pixies, does not a point make. The truth-ish take? Not all music calls for a solo, and not all artists like them. That is a bit different than how the author frames it. I listen to plenty of genres where the solo, no less the guitar, are nowhere to be found. But note that I initially said "metal music." I would probably add classic rock, AOR, and the like to that list too.
A solo is, done right, a rhetorical flourish that makes the song more than it would be without it.
Great topic!
Guitarists of The World, unite for one giant “F.U.” solo to let people know the notion of the fading guitar lead is ludicrous!
p.s. Sorry I ain’t been commenting more, HIM! … Just SO exhausted with work, I’m sleep typing as we speak!
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