Nobody Asked is a podcast on the subject of subjectivity vs objectivity in music, and more widely in art as a whole. We discuss the arbitrary nature of music reviews, both professional and amateur, and the importance of staying true to yourself in taste.
About us
Chloe is a film student at Freestyle who hopes to start her own public relations firm one day. She’s currently working on her senior narrative, which is a seriocomedy about an accidental murder in a high school newspaper. Her favorite artists are Joni Mitchell, Still Woozy, and Air.
Nadia is an avid music listener and student at Freestyle. She hopes to continue to gain a deeper understanding of the music industry even as a non-musician, and to create visuals and cover art for musical artists. Her favorite musicians at the moment are Worldcorp Enterprises, Massive Attack, Marjorie -W.C. Sinclair, and Dean Blunt.
Introduction
With this project, we as a class aimed to understand what a powerful medium podcasts can be. An audio-only format is unique, as it is a step up from text, but also doesn’t have visuals, like a movie, allowing the listener to use sound to create an image in their head. It is also unique in that it is accessible, both to produce and consume. Some podcasts we enjoy are Emergency Intercom, TMG, Unf*ck Your Brain, and Smartless.
For our podcast, though, we took inspiration more from things in our real lives than from other podcasts. The original idea for a podcast about music criticism stemmed from our experiences with self-proclaimed music critics we know, and developed into a more nuanced discussion of art criticism and the way people tend to try to fit music into quantitative boxes with numerical ratings.
Reflection
Both of us had a lot of fun with this project, and are proud of how it turned out. We did a great job of collaborating and building off of each other’s ideas, and we hope that this comes across in our finished product. We initially struggled a bit with writing a script for a podcast since it was a new medium, but it eventually began to flow and came together very well. Group or partner projects can sometimes be difficult, but we didn’t have much trouble working together and compromising!
If you’re a first time podcaster, we’d suggest making sure that your script flows and feels natural, kind of like a conversation (with other people on the podcast, or even with the listener).