Me against the music

I've always had a different sort of approach to music from those around me. Over the years, people close to me have found it helpful to share their favourite pieces of music with me, hoping to share an intimate, personal connection, and it's been something I've almost always completely taken wrongly. One reader in particular I know will utterly cringe at the memory of me pompously telling her off for trying to use 'borrowed words', written by someone else to express what she felt inside instead of putting it in her own way. It's just something that I've never quite got invested in in the same way as 'normal people' seem to, and it still persists to this day.

My top most played song on iTunes is a Ukrainian-language one that was available in English, but I preferred in its native tongue. I've been unbearably smug at being ahead of the curve on some of the very few European pop songs that have escaped into the wild of the UK charts – I was aware of Tatu before they hit it big with All the Things She Said, for example, and I still prefer the original Russian; I'd heard of the Turkish Eurovision band before this year's contest, and I know that a different reader than the one I mentioned before (because I have MORE THAN ONE FRIEND, ha, don't I rule) will always say that the song she associates me most with is a Moldovan one that more than just escaped into the wild of the UK pop scene, but went global via a fat guy dancing on webcam to it on the internet. In fact, maybe I should be slightly concerned or insulted that she associates that with me? Talking of song association, I've mentioned before about the bridges that I was helping rebuild with this blog, but I'm a bit concerned that the revelation that there is one poor soul who shall forever be linked with the Lonely Island song “Jizz in my Pants” might pour another barrel full of gasoline on the newly built foundations. Let's just hope none of the construction crew are smokers!

Were I somehow capable of being even MORE pretentious than I already am, I might suggest that I have a similar approach to music as Kurt Cobain, that I appreciate his approach of using the voice as just another instrument instead of insisting that music has to be its own form of art, conveying messages through lyrics and emotional investment. It's entirely possible that that wasn't remotely his views at all, but I think I read it once somewhere and it stuck with me. If any of my readers want to correct and educate me on what a misunderstood modern genius REALLY intended to get across with his art – I really, really don't care, sorry.

It's for those reasons though that my favourite genres of music are classical, dance and rap – slightly eclectic to say the least, but in a very superficial way I like to be proud of that and how 'quirky' it makes me. Like most aspects of my life, the only issue tempering just how far I take my pretentiousness is effort, in that truly caring deeply about it in any sort of way would just not add anything more to what I get out of it. Plus trying too hard would betray my radiating ennui that just makes me too, too cool. Irony. Malaise.

I know I'm being unbearably smug, but so long as I draw attention to the fact that I'm aware of that it makes it ok. It's roughly the equivalent to answering every question in a debate with another question, that way when you get called out on your bullshit you can claim hey, I'm not invested in this in any way, I'm just playing devil's advocate here! Either way, I'm too cool for it to affect me. Beautiful unique snowflake, etc.

Anyway, reappearing from my spelunking expedition up my own arse, I've come around to the 15 year old 'quoting lyrics out of context' deal, in an ironic way of course. Stylistically, cutting and pasting chunks of feeling out of songs devoid of their original context appeals to me in the sort of sense of a ransom note, cut and pasted out of magazine and newspaper headlines and all the more threatening for it. Picking a single line from a song charges it with all that intent, all the weight of the emotional investment that its original context provided it with, but leaving the littlest remnants of doubt over the reasons and motivations of what parts exactly were snipped out with the line itself, and what parts were intended to hang unsaid in the air along with it. It really is quite sinister, I just can't bear to risk that the intricate subtleties put into it would be missed, I demand recognition of how great I am for noticing and pointing it out!

No, I don't have a corgi / I had a hamster but it died cos I ignored it.