Why Matchbox Twenty is So Bland

Compared to many other criticisms, I've found that calling music "bland" seems to make you more vulnerable to being perceived as a pompous ass. I think it has to do with the fact that the word implies a deficit, whether of musical interest, creativity, inspiration, etc., etc. When you break out the criticism you're implying that you have some sort of vision for what good music should be, but you can come off as focused more on slagging music that doesn't meet that vision than articulating what exactly the vision is.

Even articulating the vision you have, as I've tried to do in some posts here, only deflates some of the pompousness. You're still talking about the bland music in a way that defines it purely in terms of its failure, rather than as a real piece of music that several living humans probably worked hard to make. The best possible option, it seems, is to try and discuss as fairly as possible what's not working for you in the moment, to find affirmative signifiers of blandness rather than defining it in terms of what it lacks.

Matchbox Twenty has been one of my paragons of blandness for basically my entire music-listening life. (Their first album was released in 1996. Yes, you really ARE that old.) My first instincts for explaining why are, of course, in terms of deficits. Their lyrics are full of clichés. Their melodies and chord progressions are standard and predictable, without any of the surprises that make a band like Sloan sound fresh. Their arrangements are standard modern pop-rock productions without any color from unique instruments, unusual sounds, interesting layering. And here I am sounding like a puffed-up arbiter of musical taste, complaining how an undeniably competent and popular rock band doesn't live up to my standards as one random yahoo from Wisconsin.

So I went back and listened to every major single of theirs, and some of the songs from Rob Thomas' solo career, to see if I could start over with a new definition of their particular flavor(lessness) of bland. The lyrics certainly still weren't all that great- it's simply too late in my music-listening life for me to hear anything fresh in in straightforward pleas for a baby to come home or complaints about feeling a little crazy. I've already noted that weak lyrics are okay as long as the music is decent, but it still wasn't. And I'd like to try out two new definitions for why that's the case.

1. Their lack of rhythmic power results in rock songs that don't rock. Consciously or not, we associate rock songs with energy- they're supposed to be blasted out of car speakers, make you lose yourself in tightly packed crowds at concerts. A Matchbox 20 song like "Bent" is written like a rock song, with loud electric guitars and a soaring chorus, but it's so rhythmically flat that it never feels at all energetic. Listen to the drums under the chorus: they're just playing a plodding, steady beat that you or I could lazily tap out on the end table- there's no groove, no force, nothing that grabs. There's a decently written hook

Now compare that to the Goo Goo Dolls "Slide." It's tempting to lump the two bands together as fairly straight-ahead rock bands that were popular at the same time, but "Slide" feels much more energetic because it's doing a lot more rhythmically: the insistent strum of the guitar, a syncopated bass drum rhythm, a tambourine helping to hustle the beat along. No one's going to call it the most innovative song in the world, but it has enough of a kick that I'd never call it bland.

2. The weak vocals limit the emotional palette of the songs. Rob Thomas has one vocal tone and one only: a strained-sounding tenor that communicates emphasis and emotion almost entirely by increasing the strain. That works fine with songs that focus on stress or desperation, like "Push":

But the vocals just sound out of place in songs that try to strike a different tone. To me the most glaring example is "Smooth," his duet with Santana. The lyrics and video alike seem to suggest this is supposed to be a party song, and, well, a smooth come-on to Rob's female companion. When the chorus asks her "give [him] his heart, make it real, or else forget about it," everything else about the context suggests this is supposed to be teasing banter. But growled through Rob's standard delivery, it sounds more like a threat, one that somewhat stifles the lighter tone of the rest of the arrangement.

Taken more broadly, Thomas' ever-consistent vocal style pivots his songs into bland-ville because it also stifles love songs, laments, and other emotions whose musical effectiveness merits a lighter vocal touch or a richer vocal tone. His songs quickly begin to sound unremarkable and samey, because whatever other parts of the arrangement may do to achieve their nuance, craft, and emotional effect, they're largely subsumed under an unchanging and rather unremarkable vocal style. As I've said before, I'm fine with weak singers, but the successful ones find ways to make their vocals serve the songs (or at least pick songs that stay within their limited wheelhouse).

Are these criticisms generalizable to the broader world of bland music? Perhaps. Weak vocals- or, more precisely, vocals that don't support the emotional tenor of the song- can always flatten out musical strengths. And the first point might apply generally in the sense that bland music lacks some of the basic characteristics we expect for its genre- which could just as well be, say, beauty in a ballad as energy in a rock song.