The Uglification of Music.

The Uglification of Music . Can a return to beauty save music? Okay I know you’ve just started reading this, but please stop (temporarily), then go and listen to the second movement of J.S. Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D major. Its nickname is “Air on a G String”, so just search for that. Even if you know this piece, please go and listen to it again. Then come back. I’ll wait… So how do you feel now? Calm and cleansed, right? It’s like a warm, relaxing, musical bath. That, my friend, is the power of beauty! It’s only about five minutes of music, but it literally changes our body’s chemistry, which in turn improves our mental and physical health. In five minutes! And all we have to do is close our eyes and listen. If you’re like me, you’ll now have two questions on your mind. Firstly, if five minutes of beautiful music can make us feel that good, then why don’t we listen to more beautiful music? And secondly, why is almost all music nowadays so ugly? The answer to the first question of why we don’t listen to more beautiful music is that we live in a culture of non-stop stimulation, so the peace that emanates from beautiful things feels boring to us. That’s why most people prefer looking at screens rather than trees, and listening to podcasts rather than birds. This need for constant stimulation is why the world is overrun with phone zombies, or phombies, as I like to call them. When I was growing up in the ‘80s, people were told to stop and smell the roses because the pace of life was getting faster and faster. Nobody seemed to have time for the simple pleasures anymore, like enjoying the beautiful scent of a flower. In those days people at least saw the roses, even if they didn’t stop to smell them. However, these days the only roses most people see are in their social media feeds. The non-stop stimulation from phones is addictive. Beauty doesn’t stand a chance!

You can listen to The Uglification of Music. online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

The Uglification of Music. is an episode from Hack Music Theory by Ray Harmony.

This episode is 12:38 long.

This episode was published on Nov 12, 2025.

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