Nitsuh Abebe challenges the idea that meaningful music is loud and aggressive:
The truth is that I don't know many music lovers who actually listen like they believe in the myth about revolution and noise– we may have certain tastes and inclinations, but in the end we listen to raw visceral noise when we want to, and swoony pleasantries two hours later, when the mood has changed. But vitality and new ideas can fit into either one of them. And those are things worth demanding even from our "comfortable" listening. It's not like being challenging is incompatible with being beautiful– as far as I can tell, the two tend to go hand in hand.
The Dish 