A recovering music snob.
If it hasn’t been blatantly obvious by now, Ya Boi is on a big music kick lately. I have been listening to music. I have been talking about music. I even played a bit of the drums the other day. It has been a good while since I picked up a pair of sticks. I love music. I used to be a bit of a music snob. That’s what I am going to talk about today. Welcome to Monday, by the way.
Before talking about this, I guess I should defend myself. I was a teenager at the time and didn’t know what I was talking about. I retold this story to my friend Alphi the other day, and I cringed as I told it. I am cringing now. As I said, I used to be a music snob. This was when I was just becoming a teenager, around 12 or 13. This is when music became a major part of my life and my personality. It was when I stopped listening to what my dad listened to and started properly discovering bands on my own. This was before Red Hot Chili Peppers became my favourite band, though, so I hadn’t peaked yet. I was more into Green Day and Foo Fighters. Why? Because I was following the crowd, thinking I wasn’t following the crowd. Don’t get me wrong. I still like those bands today, but, and I don’t know if you know this, there are literally millions of bands out there. I thought I knew the “right” bands to like and hated all the “mainstream” stuff.
By “mainstream”, I mean “anything that played on mainstream pop radio.” I was also never a clubber, so when I did attend the few teen discos run by my local youth club, I automatically loathed anything played there. If I were in the DJ booth, it would have been a mix of Kaiser Chiefs, Green Day and Foo Fighters. You know, the real underground music. The story I told my friend is as follows:
I was hanging out with the son of my parents’ friends. I was 12 or 13 at the time. He was (and presumably still is) a year older than me. We were friendly. We grew up together and hung out on occasion, like when my family would visit his family. We were hanging out, and he was showing off his new iPod Touch (remember those). I asked him if I could see what songs he had on it. I looked, and all I can remember seeing as I was scrolling through were those compilation albums like Now That’s What I Call Music and the like. You know, “mainstream” stuff. I cringed then, not like I am doing now. I felt sorry for him and said to him, “Man, you have really bad taste in music.” To that guy, whom I haven’t seen in a while, I would like to apologise. I had no idea what I was talking about.
On a separate but not unrelated topic, I listened to BRAT by Charli XCX the other day, and I really liked it. It was only fairly recently that I stopped being a total music snob and decided to broaden my taste. I am trying to understand music a bit more, now that I have more access to local music. On that, I will be sitting down with Bad Mothers Union later today for an interview, and I am really looking forward to it. All going well, that interview should be out on Friday.
That’s enough from me. Here is some advice before I go: listen to the music you like and maybe even the music you don’t think you like. Things can change. Thank you for reading and for your time.
