Today's quote

From Gavin M. of Sadly, No.

you can often learn more about a genre of music by studying the bad records than the good ones. The reason is that you can see mistakes of judgment and technique that lay bare the artist’s intentions. The artist can’t hide from you as successfully as a craftier, more practiced and opaque artist would be able to. Most good art is in a sense alike in that it’s able to speak to something more intrinsic than base culture, something cross-platform or common to the human condition. (Neil Young calls it ‘the spook’; a great song has the spook in it.) Most bad art is concerned with trying to be a successful example of itself, or of a genre or movement — with trying to operate its own cultural tools correctly. Bad art struggles to express its difference.

He goes on to apply this principle to the writing in Right Blogistan to good effect, but it's the principle itself that I felt compelled to share.