By Kaylee Johnson
Campus News
I know what you’re thinking: another elitist article about how soulless mainstream music is, written by an indie music fan who obviously only buys organic cleaning products. But, I try to remain judgment-free when it comes to the musical tastes of others. That’s not to say I have not unmatched with men on Tinder and Bumble based on their weak spotify playlists. I just can’t imagine dating a man who actually enjoys listening to music (aka grunting and screaming) from Post Malone and Ariana Grande. I suppose academia and exposure to new art has increased my snobbery, as I tend to turn my nose up to anything mainstream these days. But I find that when a celebrity novel, a Broadway show, musician, or designer is trying to appeal to a particular archetype, they lose their uniqueness along the way and the final products become diluted and unmemorable. My family says I like anything “indie:” indie films, indie bands, indie coffee shops, and indie poems. They are correct, and my reasoning is that these indie productions or albums usually have an edge or zest that albums from famous record labels lack; they are not trying to play it safe. Over the past two years my taste in music has evolved immensely; Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber to The Beatles and The B-52’s. Partially because I started spending significant amounts of time in the music department of my college, where hippie bands cover obscure Green Day, Culture Club, Weezer, and Phish songs. The music majors at my college may always smell like skunk weed, wear shirts with holes that they cut out with their mother’s floral print sewing scissors, and have long greasy hair, but they certainly have impeccable taste in grunge music.
Having SiriusXM in my car during my long commute to and from Albany everyday also immersed me in new music, and the history behind it. The Beatles Channel has amazing guest DJs, including Stella McCartney, and friends of the Beatles who know insider information and the stories behind the songs. I also started listening to the New Wave channel and favoring The Pretenders, Culture Club, Berlin, and Missing Persons; bands with funk and well written, heartfelt lyrics. This all may seem insignificant, but if you could hear the trash I was listening to prior to my cliche college metamorphosis/nervous breakdown, you would agree that it is worthy of an article. How does one go from listening to the “High School Musical” soundtrack to Nirvana and Hole? I spent all of finals week listening to angsty Courtney Love music in sports bras and panties, studying multi-colored notecards all night. This severe evolution symbolizes the shedding of my youth. New Wave music got me through romantic troubles, family trauma, and bouts of depression this year; issues that were nonexistent during my privileged, coddled youth, when I rode a horse named Buttercup in the Hamptons and attended private school. Being hyper programmed and forced to attend ritzy political galas and exclusive beach clubs made me thirsty to fit in, and pretend to like the mainstream. But as I have grown older and bolder, I have found that it is much more gratifying to not fit in.
On my fourth day in Mexico last month, my mother woke me up at sunrise, excited and obviously affected by the sunstroke she had experienced the day prior, claiming that she bought me two front row tickets to the Jonas Brothers concert coming to Albany. Now in my defense, this is not the kind of news that one expects to hear at sunrise in Mexico, covered in aloe vera and somewhat high off of low dose painkillers. But, while wearing an oversized T-shirt and no makeup, I came up with a very aloof, pompous monologue about my hatred of the Jonas Brothers and my growth as a woman and artist, unaware my mother was wallowing in the nostalgia of the time she took me to a Jonas Brothers concert in 2008. She spent over two hundred dollars per concert ticket, because she still views me as an awkward preteen fangirl. Later, she sat next to me on our bus ride to Yucatan and asked what I was listening to, so I introduced her to Alanis Morisette and Courtney Love, and the woman that likes Kenny Rogers and Jimmy Buffett had never looked so concerned in her life.
I resold the Jonas Brothers tickets and spent the summer writing, reading, and painting in my studio while listening to the Mamas and the Papas, Talking Heads, and 10,000 Maniacs. Now, the only time I listen to those cringeworthy Hannah Montana, Justin Bieber, Jonas Brothers, and “High School Musical” albums is when I am in severe crisis; full fledged insomnia induced nervous breakdown mode, usually caused by some indie actor or filmmaker with rage problems. In those unruly moments, Hannah Montana speaks to my twenty-one-year-old soul as much as she did when I was eight and wearing blond wigs and sequined blazers. As I have written in previous articles and essays, I try my hardest to avoid inertia in all elements of my life, and music is no exception, but I am also not opposed to looking back every once in awhile; nostalgia in small doses can really take the edge off.
Kaylee Johnson is a senior at the College of Saint Rose, majoring in Education with an English concentration. She plans to pursue careers in writing and teaching.
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