Recently emo has been coming back to me. I may have encountered much of the genre in high school, but it has that undeniable junior high quality to it. Its the kind of music that gives you free license to feel sorry for yourself for whatever real or ridiculous problems you're having, and it makes me feel better to feed that completely self-involved part of myself. If you're not in the mood for it, it can come off at totally pretentious and juvenille, but like I said, jr. high. There's even new stuff these days that maintians the late 90's/early 2000's emo tinge (yes yes, I know it started in the 80's, but then we just called it Punk), and it takes me back. I feel like a lot of music is reminding me of my younger years, before I could drive, when I was even worse at dealing with my hair, when I was too shy to talk to a clerk to find something in a store.
I remember being in my friend's basement at her 15th birthday party and someone had a mix tape that had 'What's my Age Again?' that we kept rewinding and replaying... that's such an awesome song. One line is "nobody likes you when you're 23", and last year I took special note to that sentiment being in the midst of 23-ness. But I'm not sure I acted in the same manner as the blink boys at that age.
Anyway, a small sampling... I'm sure many potential readers will wince and say "I know craploads more about emo and punk than this lame chick", and honestly I'm completely ok with that. I don't claim to be an expert or connoisseur. Its the sound and the corresponding response of the music that I'm referring to. Disagree with comments at will.
But what all this reminiscing really tells me is that I'm getting ooold. Some of the music I've been remembering is from 10 years ago or more. I make random 90's pop culture references to some of the students I TA, and I can't tell if they're laughing b/c they get it or b/c they feel sorry for me and the reference goes over their heads. Most people around me tell me that 24 is not very old, but when I was 17 I would have been like, dude! That is like so old! Its all relative.
Anyway...
1 comment:
Here's something weird that I've noticed: North Americans (incl. me) are always incredibly ashamed of their taste in music, like they live in mortal fear that as soon as they like a song, some judgmental hipster will come out of the woodwork and tell them that liking that song/band is bad or (ugh) that that style of music has been around since the 80s, and how could you not know that, and I can't believe you've never heard of XX...etc. etc. Anyways, Europeans have no concept of this and are thus totally unabashed about liking things that, in Toronto for example, you're just not even allowed to like. Aaanyways, I like that you share your music tastes loud 'n proud. Don't let the hipsters get you!
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