Good day/night, I'm glad you have decided to read this piece, especially if you returned after reading my previous attempt at sounding at all friendly and inviting. I've decided today to talk about my relationship with music, as well as what it means to me and what it has done for me. I'm not too sure where to start, so I think it may sound a little autobiographical at the beginning, but I think that's what a blog is (and should be) sometimes, though I think the self-indulged sound will fade after I have written an introduction, I hope the piece will become more conversational.
2015: the year I moved houses, the year that I became properly acquainted with my now good friend, music. It happened on the way to school, over the period of a week, as I lived with a grandparent, half an hour's drive away from school. Each morning, my dad would drive me and my sister to school, listening to a CD, instead of suffering in silence. One week (excuse the pun, which will become clear in one moment*), in late September, a CD was put on that I liked the sound of, I didn't bother asking what it was, but I knew I liked it. Prior to this event, I didn't believe I liked any music outside of Murray Gold's Doctor Who soundtracks, so this took me by surprise. This was year eight of school, the year others were worrying about figuring out their sexuality, I was figuring out my music taste, to find something with words to badly sing along to with my breaking voice (and enjoy it a little bit) was great, so by the end of the week, I had found out I was in love with Barenaked Ladies' newest album, Silverball. It wasn't for months that it occurred to me that Barenaked Ladies, or BNL, may have released albums before Silverball, I was perfectly happy listening to that and nothing else. probably about a year and a half after delving into the rest of their discography, I began to think about widening my music taste myself for the first time. I managed to do this by filtering my dad's music collection on iTunes to alt-rock, the same genre that they class BNL as, and by doing this I managed to find Eels. There isn't much to say about discovering Eels, other than many of their songs make me extremely nostalgic from the not-so-distant past, but I think they are worth mentioning, since they made me realise that I liked music, not just the awkwardly named Barenaked Ladies.
2018: the year music became something more than entertainment for me. It seems weird that I listened to Barenaked Ladies and Eels on repeat for two years (there were other discoveries, but hardly anything compared to these two bands). I remember family members recommending other artists, but nothing would take BNL or Eels's top spot. In April of 2018, I attended my first gig, it was BNL, and they were great. I remember the electric feeling of seeing them walk onto stage, I remember the bittersweet feeling of them walking off stage after the encore. I knew I wanted to go to gigs as often as I could, but I'd just have to wait until they came back to the UK. Many family members tried recommending artists to me throughout the first half of 2018, many of them, with no success, my music taste didn't expand until I made some good, real, human friends. Moving forward to the summer of 2018, when I visited Spain with school, this is where my taste grew, firstly with the help of my good friend Chris (I hope he doesn't mind me mentioning him, but it must be done). I knew Chris before the trip, not very well, but enough to be comfortable sharing a room on the residential. During the evenings, when we were all sent back to our rooms, we wanted to find something to do, we normally settled on sketching or playing cards, but we needed something to listen to in the background. Chris had brought his speaker, so he put on his playlist and it started off just background noise. We talked about the music we liked, I listed my extremely limited taste, and somehow, we had something in common. I mentioned earlier that in 2017, I had found a few bands who didn't top BNL or Eels for me, well, one of these was Vampire Weekend (my current favourite band). Chris also liked Vampire Weekend. Finding something in common with music was rather special, as this was how Chris and I became good friends, without it, I'm not sure if we would be as good friends as we are today, it gave us something to talk about.
2019: The year my music taste blew up. I owe gratitude for my music taste to mainly two people, the first being my dad, who essentially planted the seed that grew, but also to another one of my good friends, Flick (who I also hope doesn't mind being talked about). Sometimes you need a friend who can be as obsessive as you are about certain things, and Flick is like that with music (it's absolutely great). Because she would always be referencing music and artists, there is always a seemingly infinite list of names to research, some of which are now some of my favourite musical artists. Without Flick, I probably wouldn't be obsessing over the discographies of Prince or David Bowie.
In the present, I have discovered many more bands, through many different means, I have introduced friends to this new music, and each time I do, it feels like that friendship is strengthened.
Music has been the one constantly accessible friend since 2015, whether I need to cheer up, or merely seek entertainment or enhancement of my surroundings, it is special to me because it is something I can research and obsess over, which is something I need. Music has been and will continue to be one of my main methods of socialisation, which is something I find very difficult, it has given me a subject to drop into conversation instead of favourite colours or favourite animals. With music, comes live music, which gives me something to work for, I got through GCSEs because of the possibility that I could see Eels afterwards. At the end of last year, I went to see Vampire Weekend with my - Vampire Weekfriends - who will never be referred to by that ever again, but it needed to be made clear that one of our main bonding points (at least, from my perspective) was the band. That was one of the best nights of my life, which I'm sure was helped by the fact that we were seeing Vampire Weekend, but also because of the connection and pure joy that we all felt really reminded me how important music is.
Well... I didn't mean for that to be that to become a memoir, but that's what seems to have happened. I hope that wasn't too boring, maybe you got something out of it, maybe it made you think about your own relationship to music. I plan on writing another piece like this, about film, but I plan on making that less about my experience with it and more about my opinions. I hope you'll read that next post, it will come at some point next week, I'm sure, but for now, thank you for sticking with one!
J.
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*Thinking about it now, it probably won't become clear, unless you are someone with a knowledge of '90s alt-rock, or you have known me long enough to have me play you the song 'One Week', by the Barenaked Ladies.