The Crossroads Between Objectivity and Nostalgia

Something I’ve spent the majority of my “adult” life grappling with is the intersection between art and nostalgia. It’s a concept that I’ve only recently come to recognize but has essentially acted as the thesis for this entire blog without me even knowing it. As a result, this post feels like what the past year’s worth of writing on here has been building towards.

Reflecting on my most recent metalcore-infested post I began to think “why do I love these albums so much?” Even within that blog where I’m gushing over these albums, I repeatedly felt the need to clarify that I don’t think they’re great feats of art. Is that because I’m embarrassed of liking them? Probably… But there’s more to it than that.

In that same post, I also talked about my positive (or not-so-positive) memories associated with each album, and I even gave a wine-like pairing of what I was doing while listening to each album. Earlier this week Of Mice & Men surprise released a new song called “Back To Me” with their new line-up sans-Carlile. It’s always a bummer to see someone leave a band (especially due to health-related issues) but it’s also a bummer to hear a band without the member that you held most dear. Listening to the new song led me down a Tidal-binge on the rest of the band’s greatest hits. Over their eight years as a band OM&M have undergone a significant shift in sound, transitioning from breakdown-heavy metalcore, then nu-metal, and more recently full-on buttrock. It’s not a transition I love, but God knows I respect their freedom to chase that artistic dragon. When I pressed play on the band’s 2011 standout O.G. Loko I realized something: when all’s said and done, this track (from an album I’ve barely listened to) didn’t sound all that different from the band’s 2010 album that I hold so dear. Someone coming to the band from an outside perspective would probably find the two indistinguishable.

A brief history of Of Mice & Men

I’ll be the first to admit metalcore is a genre that breeds repetition and cookie-cutter behavior. Fans know what they want, and most bands are happy to give it to them. That’s another one of the reasons I respect OM&M’s shift toward nu-metal and away from their origins: it’s a risk. At the end of the day, there’s not that much of a different between the band’s first album and the second. The difference for me was that I listened to the first ravenously during an awesome time in my life, and only listened to the second a few times at most. There’s probably someone a year my junior who feels the exact same way about the band’s second album compared to their third. And so on and so forth.

To get away from metalcore (and back to myself) I’ve spent the last several months ranking and re-ranking my favorite albums of all time. Some of the categories like classic rock were easy. Not only because it’s a genre I’ve been listening to my entire life, but those albums and songs have saturated our culture for decades. There’s some sort of rough consensus in the collective unconscious that The Beatles are great… and you know what? I agree. Because of this weird conflux of pop culture, history, and personal experiences, I can easily say that Abbey Road is not only my favorite Beatles album, it’s also an incredible piece of art that I feel no shame (or risk) in elevating on a high pedestal.

Then I look at hip-hop. The genre’s been around since long before I was born, but it was a genre I only started to personally engage with a few years ago. As a result, most of my favorite hip-hop albums are from that exact time frame. I know they’re not all “incredible” (at least not as incredible as Abbey Road) but part of that is recognizing my own inexperience with the genre. I know, I know, I know there’s older hip-hop I need to listen to that are essentially as “classic” as Abbey Road, but it takes time and effort to become fluent in a genre. I have barely listened to Jay-Z, UGK, Madvillain, Biggie, 2 Pac, and a whole host of other artists that I know are great. It’s like that guy who hasn’t watched Star Wars. He knows it’s a good movie, but you incredulously asking “Seriously? You haven’t watched STAR WARS?” just discourages him. 

I recently watched Casablanca for the first time a week ago (shout out to Mother’s Day). That’s a movie that’s frequently held up with Citizen Kane and Godfather as “literally the best movie of all time.” For years I’ve known that it’s great. It’s been on my “to watch” list… and you know what? It was pretty good. What can I add to the conversation about Casablanca that hasn’t been said before besides ‘yep, everyone was right, it is really good.’ There are other movies like Fight Club and From Dusk Till Dawn that I recognize aren’t peaks of cinematic triumph or artistic feats like Casablanca is, but you know what? I like them more. I like them more because I’ve seen them more, I’ve had more time to digest them, and I have more positive memories tied to them. That doesn’t mean they’re better than Casablanca, but I like them far more.

Back to music. 

In creating that list of my favorite albums I’ve fudged a lot of genres, added categories, and made incredibly arbitrary distinctions, all because I wanted to fit more albums on there. I don’t put all those genres or albums on the same level. My favorite metalcore album does not stack up to my favorite classic rock album, that’s comparing apples to oranges. Or apples to pool cues.

A separate conversation within this is exactly how long an album should take to be placed among your “favorites.” And even more: what about an album that’s new to you, but “classic” within its own field?

Up until this year… Hell, up until a couple months ago, I’d never listened to The Strokes debut album Is This It. Until 2017 the only three Strokes songs I’d heard were “Reptilia” (shoutout Rock Band 1), “New York City Cops” (shoutout iTunes DJ, you will be missed), and “When It Started” (shoutout Spider-Man 1 soundtrack). Ironic since “New York City Cops” and “When It Started” were swapped on the US version of Is This It due to 9/11… but I’m getting wildly off-topic here.

Pictured: A bastion of high art

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The point is that it took me seventeen fucking years to listen to one of the greatest “indie” records of my lifetime… But is it fair for me to claim that? Sure I like Is This It a lot, but I’ve only listened to it about 10 times according to last.fm. So is consensus swaying my perception? Is two-decade-old critical acclaim forcing me to enjoy an album more than I really do? Is personal shame making me think higher of the record than I should be? Maybe, but I don’t think so. Is This It is great, no matter how you cut it. Removed of nostalgia, I enjoyed it and continue to play it every couple days.

Meanwhile, another album that didn’t quite make the cut into my favorites list was 2016’s Psychopomp by Japanese Breakfast. It’s an album that I adore, but (again) I’ve only had a handful of months to really sit with the album and let it marinate. As much as I wanted to say ‘this is one of my favorite indie albums’ I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it. This is an album I’ve listened to more than the Strokes, yet it didn’t carry the acclaim of “definitive album of the 2000’s” and thus I didn’t feel comfortable ranking it up against the classics. Same with Car Seat Headrest’s Teens of Denial. I love the album, but I don’t feel comfortable enough with my personal feelings toward it, nor its place in history to confidently place it amongst my favorites of all time.

I’ll admit I’m overthinking all this. All these albums and movies are great, and at the end of the day, nobody really gives a shit about my “list” or ranking of these albums. Yet this is a concept I’ve been struggling with lately on an artistic level. How can you stack an album that you’ve been listening to for a decade up against anything else? How can a movie that been heralded as the greatest of all time (for 75 fucking years) really compare to anything that I’ve seen a dozen times? How do you even begin to compare the two? 

To bring this full-circle (and give a total cop-out answer) I think the answer is a case of “beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.” Those two OM&M albums are great. I think they’re an acquired taste for sure, but an outsider to the genre would probably hear two songs next to each other and probably think ‘these are different songs?’ 

I think all these qualifiers are sliders. Personal history. Critical acclaim. History. Context. Time. are inextricable from art. I guess I’d argue the art can still be judged on its own in a vacuum, but that’s not how anyone judges it… ever. We hear, see, and experience things on our own terms.

I guess if anything I’m arguing that personal history (nostalgia) is one of the most powerful influencers when it comes to my interpretation and experience of art. I use music like a time-traveling drug. You know that feeling when the holidays hit and you hear “Silent Night” for the first time? I have a calendar year’s worth of songs like that. I have albums that bring me back to distinct times, years, and moments in my life. I love that art can do that. I love that this coming August I can put on Frank Ocean’s Blonde and it will transport me directly back to Summer 2016. That kind of personal connection to music is something that can (sadly) never be duplicated. The beautiful part is that we all have our own narratives like that. We all have a list of albums… or movies…. or food… or podcasts… or whatever that evoke something within us. I’m just far more obsessive about documenting my own. 

My own history. My own context. Some far-off part of my own mind is the reason that I don’t like one Of Mice & Men album as much as it’s nearly-identical predecessor. Unfortunately, that conflux is something that can never be fully translated or explained no matter how hard we try. That unique perspective is the one thing we share, even if nothing’s shared. And that’s what we bring to art. That little piece of us that adds onto to something that’s already an inherently human and beautiful and pure creation. It’s what makes art beautiful. It’s what makes the world beautiful.

The Hidden Beauty of High School Metal

I am not a cool person.

Despite concerted efforts to highlight my exceptional taste, willingness to branch out, and seek artistic alternatives within overcrowded frameworks, I’m just a nerd. Anyone who knows me in real life can attest that I’m in fact not the cool person (ironically) pictured above. Actually, this blog is as much about my own embarrassing history and musical hangups as it is trying to turn people onto good things. The point is it’s all kinda good, you might just need to shift your perspective, lower your expectations, or revert your brain to a child-like state to enjoy them.

This write-up is definitely one of those. Don’t expect any discussion on “traditionally good” music, thoughtful insight, or analysis of the new Kendrick Lamar album. Make no mistake, this is all embarrassing shit.

A few months back I tried to compile a list of my favorite albums of all time. What originally started as a top ten list quickly evolved into an amalgam of over 100 albums spanning dozens of genres. From the first time I heard AC/DC at 11, to high school heartbreak, to collegiate celebration, this document is a comprehensive look at my taste and who I am as a person.

While the hip-hop section needs some diversification, I’m pretty happy with the general makeup of this look at my musical soul. One of the biggest sources of shame, however, is the “metalcore” category. It’s a genre that I listened to all the way through high school and has become taste-defining for better or worse. Metalcore is a very “seasonal” genre for me, and with spring officially upon us in Oregon, I’ve recently broken out a handful of these records and found myself falling back in love with them.

I’ll be the first to admit that this is almost fully nostalgia. I don’t think these albums are high art, or even worthy of the praise that I’m about to heap upon them, but they bring me back. You know what I was doing in 2009? Enjoying life. I had my first real girlfriend, I was walking to school every day in the warm sunlight with a (now sadly discontinued) Quaker Oatmeal To Go bar in-hand. I was listening to this music, my friends were listening to this music, and it was a scene that I cared about deeply. It was a healthy way to let out teenage angst, and it felt like a genre that was “alive,” with new bands and ideas popping up regularly… Honestly very similar to how I feel about the hip-hop scene right now. But in high school metalcore was just unknown enough and just unpopular enough for me to fully rally behind. It informed my personality, my clothes (shout out to Hot Topic), and absolutely served as the soundtrack to these four formative years in my life.

A Skylit Drive - Adelphia

Adelphia is the sophomore effort of Californian metalcore band A Skylit Drive. Fronted by abnormally-high-pitched singer Michael “Jag” Jagmin, Adelphia allowed the band time to take a more structured, varied, and thoughtful approach to their songwriting which improved markedly on the band’s earlier sound. The combination of Brian White’s screamed vocals with Jag’s nearly-feminine singing is an intoxicating mix that (when paired with the tight instrumentation on this record) made for ASD’s most memorable record.

Pair with: Gears of War 2 King of the Hill on Pavilion

Of Mice & Men - Of Mice & Men

Of Mice & Men began with a blistering cover of “Poker Face” uploaded to Myspace in early 2009 (in case you needed a reminder of where we’re at in time). After being kicked from electronicore band and crabcore creators Attack Attack!, screamer Austin Carlile embarked on a new venture named after the Steinbeck novel of the same name (cleverly differentiated with an ampersand). Within a year of the Gaga cover, OM&M had dropped their eponymous full-length album to critical acclaim. Clocking in at a little over 30 minutes, Of Mice & Men is an unflinching album that rides on the coattails of Carlile’s throat-shredding vocals, as best exemplified by the closing track’s final minutes.

Pair with: post-work drives to nowhere in particular

I See Stars - 3-D

Perhaps most embarrassing of anything on this already-embarrassing list, I See Stars is a techno-influenced metalcore act from Ohio. Comprised entirely of teenagers at the time, I See Stars released their debut album 3-D in April of 2009. With song names that alluded to Fight Club and Shell Silverstein, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more Taylor-Grimes-tailored album in 2009. Everything about this album, from the keyboard-infused breakdowns to the inexplicable Bizzy Bone feature just clicks for some inexplicable reason. I don’t believe in guilty pleasures… but there’s definitely music I listen to that I wouldn’t play in the presence of others, and 3-D is one of those.

Pair with: 7 am springtime walks to high school while enjoying an aforementioned Oatmeal Bar

In Fear and Faith - Voyage

In Fear and Faith stand alone as one of the most unique bands on this list due solely to their instrumentation. This genre reuses the same sounds, themes, and ideas so much that it became cookie cutter within a few years of its explosive growth at the end of the 2000’s. In Fear And Faith presented an alternative: a metalcore act that centered around a theme (pirates of all things) and more importantly the Niroomand brothers Mehdi (drums) and Ramin (guitars and piano). Ramin’s keys alone added a level of composition and sophistication that was unlike anything else in the genre at the time. Their debut Ep Voyage remains my favorite release of theirs, but their second EP Symphonies highlights the absurd talent of the Niroomand brothers.

Pair with soaking up the sun and basking in the insanely violent X-Men Origins: Wolverine game (which was better than it had any right to be).

Broadway - Kingdoms

The enigmatic (and hard to Google) Broadway is a metalcore band that takes queues from pop-punk and tackles a variety of relationship issues from the perspective of the band’s high-pitched singer and screamer Misha Camacho. The band’s debut album Kingdoms follows the exact beats of a relationship that’s in the process of falling apart and served as the perfect medium for me to project my own relationship strife onto at the time of its release.

Pair with: sadly playing Metro 2033 in the midst of a breakup.

Alesana - The Emptiness

Speaking of breakup albums, Alesana’s The Emptiness was my go-to album for a sad spring break trip to the Oregon coast. The Emptiness is a concept album loosely based around a mishmash several of Edgar Allan Poe stories told through Shawn Milke’s shrill clean vocals and Dennis Lee chilling screamed vocals. This cinematic and aggressive retelling of a failed relationship was exactly what I needed to hear at the time.

Pair with: a sad, rainy Oregon coast.

We Came As Romans - To Plant A Seed

We Came as Romans were one of my first few “real deal” concerts (i.e. going with a group of friends and not my parents). Experiencing the rawness, energy, and passion of this genre firsthand was a life-affirming experience that solidified the genre’s legitimacy for me. We Came As Roman’s debut album To Plant a Seed features 10 vaguely-religious tracks that delicately balance Kyle Pavone’s autotuned cleans with Dave Stephens’s low growls. Being within 20 feet of the entire band as the music faded and the entire venue joined in on the opening track’s group chant was a magical moment I’ll never forget.

Pair with: a crowded, sweaty Hawthorne Theater

Miss May I - Apologies Are For The Weak

Last but not least, we have Miss May I’s debut album Apologies are for the Weak. This tightly-honed metalcore album is biting and unrelenting enough to hold your attention, but just lyrically veiled enough to serve as background music when you need it to be. The defining moment is the breakdown in “Forgive and Forget” accompanied with clean vocals of all things.

Pair with: learning to drive in the early Oregon Summer in between fits of GTA IV.

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I don’t think these albums are high art. I don’t think they’re the greatest of all time. Hell, I don’t even think they’re the greatest within their own genre. My favorite season is always whatever one we’re currently in the midst of, and this spring has simply brought out an immense happiness in me. Partially because of the sun, and partially because I can revisit all these albums again, if only for a few months. They’re special because I only listen to them a handful of times a year. Sure they inform my taste, personality, and a very distinct time in my life, but it’s nice to be able to revisit those memories. Even if they only evoke split-second pangs of beauty and happiness, this grouping of albums served as the soundtrack to a formative time in my life, and what are we if we don’t appreciate where we’ve come from? That’s something to treasure and hold close, no matter how embarrassing.

Das Racist, Weed, and Artistic Hang-ups

The fall of 2011 may have been the worst, most soul-crushing time of my life (at least so far, things could always get worse!) That summer I had graduated from high school and, unfortunately, discovered weed. By the time September hit I was starting my first term of real-deal college and struggling with the weight of what that meant. Most of my friends had moved away and I was going to a massive school where I knew no one and everyone was older than me. I was in a new situation, scared, and alone, so I clung onto the things that I knew would comfort me. At the time, that meant weed. I ran in the worst direction possible.

Weed made me feel perfect. It was almost literally heaven on earth. It is terrifying knowing it takes so little to make me so happy, but it also meant my ideal night involved a vape, podcasts, and copious amounts of junk food. I was drawn towards it because it felt like the only way to adjust. I could tell college represented a major shift in my life, and I could also tell I was not ready for it. I just wanted to keep playing video games and fucking around with my friends from high school, but that was now impossible. So instead I smoked and played video games by myself. Great.

I tried pairing pot with everything I could think of, and (aside from social interaction) it made everything better. Listening to music on weed? The most heavenly sound I’d ever heard. Listening to a podcast on weed? I had a hard time trying to breathe between all the laughter. A single Jones Soda was world-shatteringly delicious. In a way it was beautiful. It made the things I already liked even better. Something as insignificant as a 99 cent can of Arizona from the shithole 7-11 around the corner could be the highpoint of my night. It was beautiful and terrifying.

I recently read a quote from Anthony Bourdain that perfectly sums up what I’ve learned from this time: “There’s a guy inside me who wants to lay in bed, and smoke weed all day, and watch cartoons, and old movies. I could easily do that. My whole life is a series of stratagems to avoid and outwit that guy.” I don’t want to fall into that. I don’t want to go down that well. I won’t.

I still learned something from this period. I learned about myself, I learned how not to handle pressure, and (more importantly) I discovered some great art during this time. I discovered the comedy podcast Uhh Yeah Dude, the crushing heaviness of stoner rock (a bit on-the-nose), and the hip-hop group Das Racist.

Aside from Eminem (every white kid’s favorite rapper), Das Racist was the first hip-hop group I genuinely enjoyed. They were the first artist within this genre that I discovered on my own. It’s selfish, but sometimes there’s a gross satisfaction with being the first person in your group of friends to discover something. For me, that was DR.

Das Racist are a now-defunct comedic hip-hop trio based out of Brooklyn, New York comprised of rappers Himanshu Kumar Suri (Heems), and Victor Vazquez  (Kool A.D.), as well as hype man Ashok Kondabolu (Dapwell). Many people were first exposed to the group in 2008 through their fluke viral hit “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell.” While literal essays have been written dissecting the song’s lyrics and meaning, it’s likely that if you listen to this track on your own you’ll get something out of it on at least one level.

As a group, they’ve often sat in a weird position, half of the people that heard “Pizza Hut” assumed they were some one-off youtube comedy group. The actual hip-hop community still seems divided between one camp who initially dismissed them as joke rap and a second that stuck around saw something deeper. The group’s hip-hop identity crisis is perfectly encapsulated in (what I consider) their definitive song “hahaha jk?”

When I was first turned onto the group they only had two mixtapes out: Shut up, DudeandSit Down, Man. Because my only other deep exposure to hip-hop at the time was Eminem, something about Das Racist opened a door in my mind. I didn’t know that hip-hop could be this funny or this tapped into pop culture. The trio’s incessant references to junk food, internet in-jokes, and 80’s icons was an intoxicating mix. To witness all of the things that these guys were pulling from and then piecing it together for myself was a fucking trip. And even if I didn’t get every reference the group was dropping, their delivery was so silky smooth that I didn’t even mind.

The reason I started this off by talking about weed is because, yes, I used it to escape, but it has also forever tainted the way I perceive most of the music I was listening to at this time. Maybe this filter was more from the overall darkness and feeling of treading water, but the weed certainly didn’t help. Sometimes an album, video game, podcast, or movie, can become so entangled in a feeling that it becomes impossible to separate. I guess it’s kind of like nostalgia, only it’s not necessarily a positive feeling. In this case, the fall of 2011 was an absolutely terrible time in my life. I ran to weed and used it to accentuate my already isolationist and habitual tendencies. I’d listen to the same songs, podcasts, and albums while smoking. As much as I love it, it’s hard for me to listen to Uhh Yeah Dude just because the host’s voices bring this feeling back so strongly. What once was an incredible escape has now become tainted with darkness and listlessness (which is exactly the opposite of what a comedy podcast should evoke).

Nearly everything I was consuming at this time has been filtered through this lense, it’s all associated with this weird, dark, directionless sinking feeling… All of it except Das Racist. Somehow they are the one that gets a pass, and I don’t know why. I listened to “Amazing” nearly every day. The released their debut studio album that same fall. You’d think they would be just as tied to this negative emotion as the rest of what I was consuming at the time, but somehow they came out unscathed.

I think it’s just a testament to how fucking good they are. Das Racist is somehow able to levitate above my own mental connections, above this weird filter, and above my own negative nostalgia. That’s impressive. I have absolutely no idea how to end this other than saying Das Racist aren’t the typical rap group. There’s a stretch of songs on their second mixtape that exemplifies everything the group does well: Rapping 2 U,  Rooftop, and Return to Innocence. DR were able to make something wholly unique within the hip-hop genre (a scene that I was decidedly not a part of and wanted nothing to do with). They created something that left a major impression on me and is one of the few things from that time in my life that I can still listen to fresh and without any negative associations.

Weed fucking sucks. I obviously “get” weed, but after enough bad trips, stupid decisions, and perspective, I’ve come to realize that it’s not for me. I don’t look down on people that smoke, and after all, it genuinely helps some people… but I just think that in my case it did more harm than good. I’m glad that I experienced it, and it absolutely opened my mind up in different directions, but it’s not something I’d ever want to “return to.” Das Racist is my one solid tie still remaining from that point in my life, and the fact that their music was able to come out the other side of that experience unaffected is fucking commendable. It’s rap no one else does, and that no one else can do. It was cultural, self-aware, tapped-in hip-hop that is not only unaffected by my own stupid brain, but a genuine joy to listen to. It showed me what hip-hop was possible of achieving, and the fact that it’s just as comedic as it is genuine is an incredibly rare feat. Thank god for this group of three racially-ambiguous men.

Combating Fall

The thing that I love most about Oregon (aside from our craft beers, eccentric facial hair, and borderline-oppressive foliage) is that we get to experience all four seasons. The ability to witness the shift of each season is a beautiful thing, but fall always seems to be a time of the year that’s laced with bittersweet melancholy.

Aside from the turning of the leaves, the vanishing sun, and the unrelenting torrent of rain, fall has always been a season of loss. It’s synonymous with the beginning of a new school year, and that’s a feeling that I’ve always dreaded. It’s not that I disliked school, but I’ve come to realize that the first week of classes represents something more than just “the start of a new school year,” it’s realizing how little you did with your summer, and how much you still wanted to do. It’s a sea change that is so closely tied to the season that I can’t help but feel a lingering sense of sadness through the month.

I’ve realized that my nostalgic tendencies are (in many cases) simply coping mechanisms to combat the inherent feelings of sadness that some seasons bring. I’ve also realized that for about a decade every fall has represented “the last year” of something in my mind. In middle school it was ‘holy shit, high school. This is the loss of all childhood innocence.’ Halfway through high school it was ‘holy shit, I’m taking classes and I need to get a job?’ Throughout college it was a constant stream of ‘holy shit, this term is gonna be even harder than the last?’ Last fall it was ‘holy shit, I need to finish school, work my job, and work an internship?’

I now realize that each fall before this I was concerned solely (and selfishly) with a loss of free time. Summer is nothing but free time, it’s the ultimate fuck-around season. Fall is the antithesis of summer, it’s a complete sea change in everything from the weather to my daily routine. Nostalgia is just finding things about the season you like and holding onto them for dear life. There’s something comforting about breaking out your jeans from last year, or listening to an album that you only listen to during this time of the year.

But up until very recently, my free time was what I valued above nearly everything else. Fall takes all that away because what used to be endless hours of summer fuck-around time is now dedicated to school. This past year I wrapped up my final term of college and an advertising internship, and all of my greatest fears were realized. The past 8 months I’ve had the least free time that I’ve ever had in my life, but something unexpected happened: I didn’t mind. I absolutely loved that internship and rarely ever longed to go back to the carefree “fuck around” summers of past. I was willingly trading in my free time for work because I finally found something that I loved doing.

Now I sit here as I’ve finished my final year of college and that internship feeling the same creeping dread as previous years, but for an entirely different reason. Now I just hope I find a job that I enjoy as much as that internship. I want to find something that I enjoy that much and would unwaveringly trade in my free time for.  

I recognize I’ve experienced this insane level of restlessness and uncertainty before and it’s turned out okay every other time. In fact, I’ve come out of each one of those experiences a better person… but this one feels different. This one feels final.   

I think what it comes down to is that if I enjoy what I’m doing, then that panic dissipates almost immediately. I just don’t know if I’ll enjoy it until I experience it, and up until that point, it’s just an unknown that my paranoid mind fills with only the worst possible outcome. I’m afraid of the unknown. I’m terrified of change, and fall is a season that always brings change. I just don’t know if it’s for better or worse until it actually happens.

At the time of writing, I’m terrified that I won’t find a job, or that my job will feel like work. And don’t get me wrong, I love work, and I’ll willingly ring myself dry if it’s going towards something that I find satisfying. But I’ve also experienced jobs that are immensely unsatisfying. I just want to write. If I can write I’ll be happy. And if you enjoy what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life (just look at pornstars, they never have any lasting psychological issues). I don’t know. I’m on the edge of an abyss and I’m about to be in control for the first time in my life. I’m just as scared as I am excited. I don’t want to make the wrong first move. I don’t want to fuck it up right out of the gates.

Every other change has been for the best, so I can only hope that this one will be too. I can feel the existential dread creeping in, but I’m too far along to turn back now. The biggest difference is, this time, I need to seek it out. This isn’t an impending school year that I’ll have to participate in regardless of whether I’m ready or not, this is something I need to undertake on my own. Change won’t come to me. A job won’t fall in my lap. This is one change that I need to charge into headfirst. I can’t wait for life.

VH1 and Sponginess

For all my talk about metal, hip-hop, and my punk counterculture mentality (make no mistake, I am a hipster shithead at heart) I also have an affection for a very specific era of pop music. At the risk of talking about the same year again, 2006 was an important period because I had nothing better to do than absorb everything around me. I was culturally-conscious for the first time in my life, and as a result, much of what I care about stems from this time.

Specifically, in 2006 I had nothing better to do than watch VH1 every morning. It’s a weird go-to thing for a thirteen year old to watch on a saturday morning, but I guess at the time it was an intoxicating mixture of titillation and maudlin pop tunes. As seems to be a recurring theme during this time period, I just didn’t know any better. I was a sponge, happy to absorb whatever random droplets of media rolled my way. 2006 was also early enough that I couldn’t really seek out anything on the internet, and I was far too young (and lazy) to actually go and discover things in a record store. As a result, I defaulted to watching VH1 for one to two hours every morning. Nothing weird about that. Just a 13 year old boy watching the top 20 adult contemporary music videos. Over and over and over again.

While I think it’s a hilarious image in retrospect, I actually have a profound appreciation for what is ultimately just another year of generic pop songs. There’s probably someone a year older than me who feels the same way about 2005, and there’s probably someone a year younger than me who feels the same way about 2007. But for me, I have a soft spot in my heart for The All-American Rejects, The Fray, KT Tunstall, and Shakira. Her hips didn’t lie to me.

This Spotify playlist is relatively comprehensive and reflective of the hits that year. Now let me stop you before you say anything else. There’s a lot of corny shit in there. A lot. I recognize that. “Bad Day” by Daniel Powter? Yeah you’re the reason I’m having a bad day, Daniel. “For You I Will” by Teddy Geiger? How bout you don’t, Teddy boy. “Waiting on the World To Change” by John Mayer? How ‘bout you make the first move, Mayer. Yeah this is basically sitting in a dentist’s office waiting to get your teeth drilled music. This is some cornball shit, and I fully admit that. Sometimes dragging your shame songs out into the light is healthy.

VH1 wasn’t all bad at this time, there was also some genuinely good stuff from this era that I’ll still listen to occasionally: “Crazy” by Gnarls Barkley, “Dani California” by the Chilli Peppers, and “Idlewild Blue” by OutKast are all songs I unabashedly and unironically love. I just find it weird that all these genuinely (and objectively) great songs occupy the same space in my mind as stuff like “Unwritten” by Natasha Bedingfield.

God knows I’ll never put down an individual’s taste, but there’s no reason I can’t put down my own. I’m grateful that I moved out of this phase within a year and stopped relying on “the charts” for new music by the end of the year. I’m sad that this is the closest I’ll ever get to feeling like a member of the MTV generation. They got Nirvana, and I got Blue October. They got The Breeders, and I got P!nk. They got 90’s Madonna, and I got 2006 Madonna. It’s not all bad music, I’m just sad that these are the songs that I associate with my early teenage years. It could have been so much better. I could have been so much cooler. But hey, sometimes ya just gotta roll with the punches. Sometimes you can’t keep a 13 year old from obsessively watching Nelly Furtado. And now, for better or worse, 2006 pop is one of foundations of my musical pyramid. Such is life. Sometimes you can’t hide your inner teenager.