Is it music? … This is not the important question. The important question is, is it interesting?

Applebaum’s remark reframes a perennial debate in experimental and contemporary art—whether an unconventional sound, action, or concept “counts” as music—by shifting attention from taxonomy to experience. Rather than policing genre boundaries, he proposes “interest” (curiosity, engagement, perceptual surprise, intellectual or emotional pull) as the more meaningful criterion for artistic value. The quote also implies that labels can become distractions: once an audience fixates on classification, it may miss what the work is doing. In this view, the success of a piece lies less in conformity to inherited definitions and more in its capacity to hold attention, provoke thought, and reward listening, even when it challenges expectations of what music should be.