Yearlong Song Challenge, Day 40: Joe

Prompt: "The song that someone told you was their favorite song and in that moment you knew for certain that they had different taste in music than you"

Selected by Joe

"Dancing with Myself"

Billy Idol

Don't Stop EP, 1981

just let it flow

okay

just start writing

i am!

why is this one giving you trouble

i don't know. something about not wanting to be perceived as judgy, maybe.

who would you be judging

the person who I'm writing about, the person with the different musical tastes

but no one ever said "worse" musical tastes, note. and so maybe your read on the prompt was itself judgmental

see, good, this is why i'm typing it out in this style

maybe you'll also think of an applicable song at some point

hopefully

who in your life has different musical tastes than you

everybody

fuck off

no really, i'm just saying that maybe musical tastes are like snowflakes, no two are alike

but there is overlap

sure

and you're saying that the only people ineligible for the spotlight here are those who have the exact same taste as you, but that those people don't exist

yes?

so then why the prompt, what's even the fucking point of doing this

i don't know, to write

but if you're just writing about anything all the time then why the fucking song challenge

it's fun

is it?

well not when you're breathing down my fucking neck about writing this fucking blog post at three in the fucking morning when i can't sleep

tell me your thoughts

originally i had a few paragraphs devoted to work, my job, which i haven't been liking recently. the prompt was a trojan horse to me bitching and moaning about my employment, basically. i deleted those paragraphs because it felt embarrassing and whiny. even though work does suck. i was at a meeting recently with maybe 30 coworkers and boss and boss's boss who was running the meeting and i decided i would speak up and say how fucking burned out i am at this job and how my morale is low and how i've never experienced anxiety about work at this job or any other job in my entire fucking life until the past ten months, which have been a fucking shitshow, and i'm greeted with like the worst possible fucking answers by boss's boss, like total non-answers, and i just start getting pissed off and stop talking because i hate this person in this moment and i hate everyone in this moment including myself, which, after i cooled down a little, later on, i start to realize that maybe i'd be angry no matter what i was doing or no matter how shitty or unshitty my job was, that maybe i'm just sad that i have to work at all, that maybe this is just me being selfish, whiny, that maybe i should just buck up and do what i have to do etc etc etc etc but don't you see how fucked up that is, that i'm experiencing burnout and i get the courage to fucking say Hey i'm burnt, and then somehow it gets twisted so that i'm the problem, and my boss and boss's boss sleep soundly at night while i'm tossing and turning and dealing with my issues by trying to think of a song any song at all that any of my superiors have ever even mentioned so that i can crowbar all these anxieties into a fucking song challenge prompt?

you couldn't think of a song, is what you're saying

i couldn't think of a song. i had "love train" at one point, but hearing that song at one of those noxious patronizing morale "boosters" run by upper management might have just been a figment of my imagination

also that hypothetical doesn't sound like it involves anyone telling you it was their favorite song

i know

what else you got

i don't know, it's tough, because i feel like i should have a bad song in here, because if someone told me a bad song was their favorite song, and i already knew it was a bad song when they said it, then i'd know instantly that they have tastes that are different than mine...... but what if it was a good song, and i still knew

like what

i'm thinking of this one time i went to "business camp," summer of 2005, a lot to be said about that week but the specific anecdote i'm recalling is hanging out with the temporary friends that one tends to meet in those situations and chilling in his dorm room and hearing him play System of a Down

"Chop Suey!" is a good son

i know, but you see, i could still tell that we have different tastes in music when this was the album he chose. especially in 2005, when i was still knee-deep in classic rock and like right on the fucking cusp of falling face first into indie rock, and nowhere near Toxicity, that would take like fourteen more years for me to give that a try, and like it honestly, that album, which is good not great, and definitely not in any way defining of my own musical tastes

then how would you describe your musical tastes

i mean, you know what i like, because i write about it in these types of spaces. but i would also say that I am a lot more open minded these days then i was in 2005, and more than i was even five years ago. if i meet a new friends and we're hanging out today in his lycoming college dorm room and he plays "Chop Suey!" for me and says this is all he listens to, then i think i would be able to assume that we listen to different styles of music generally, but i also would hold any judgment over the situation either. it's just different, that's all

you still haven't chosen a song, regardless

see, i think it could be anything, and so i think this is analysis paralysis

it can't be anything, though. not every song in human history was described to you as someone's favorite.

but it could be, and i would make assumptions regardless of what the hypothetical person said was their favorite. Even if it was a great song, i would still assume that that choice says something about them that makes their tastes different than mine. i don't think any one song necessarily says that someone has shitty tastes, by the way. the only way you have shitty taste, in my opinion, is if you don't care about music and let some fucking robot play you songs in the background and you don't give a fuck. so if your music taste is "spotify algorithm" then you have shitty taste in music, or rather no taste in music, but there's no song in that answer, that's the whole fucking point, but that makes the situation moot, because i need to pick a song for this prompt

but what someone asked you what your favorite song was and you said it and then you asked them and they told you the same song, what then

i don't even know if i know what my favorite song is

let's say you did

okay, fine, let's say it was "The Boys Are Back in Town"

and what if the person you're asking also said this song? would you think they had good taste in music?

not necessarily. in fact, i would assume they had different taste in music than me, still. i understand that it appears paradoxical, but it's true. we all want to be unique. i came to "The Boys Are Back in Town" in a completely different way than you came to "The Boys Are Back in Town," and without knowing facts, i would just assume that you came to love the song through means that are different than mine, e.g. maybe you grew up passively hearing it on classic rock radio or "this is just what i listened to as a kid when i was bored at home" or some shit like that. completely different circumstances

that's where the judgment comes in

i guess so, yeah. i can't help it.

but you said you're open-minded and honest these days about good music everywhere

true, but it's like

oh god don't say the rat movie

ratatouille, good art can come from anywhere, but doesn't necessarily come from everywhere, not every rat is a chef, you gotta appreciate art from all different sources, but it would be boring if everything was good and everything you heard was worthy of existence. there's gotta be bad music to make the good music pop. and we have to be brave enough to say bad music is bad when we are confronted with it, or else we're allowing the real actual good shit to be watered down

you still don't have a song

what if i picked a song from the pixies

who told you their favorite song was a pixies song

no one

well then it doesn't count

but then i could mention something else i've been thinking about

don't let me stop you

pam was telling me the other day how she had a crush on a dude in college, a guy who liked the pixies i guess, and she found out that one of her female friends also had a crush on the guy, and that this other girl was saying that it was "meant to be" because they "both listened to pixies." she wasn't saying this to prove anything to pam, as far as i know, but this made an impression on pam anyway, she told me. she said that she "didn't feel cool enough" to listen to any music from the pixies in the aftermath of that

which is fucked up because pam is cool

of course, and that's probably the most important point, but the secondary point here is that "coolness" has nothing to do with what we can or should listen to. music can be cool but anyone can listen to cool music. music can be cool and it can be lame and it can be anywhere in between, but the music shouldn't say anything about the person listening. i feel cool as shit listening to, i don't know, fucking fontaines d.c., as one of a billion examples, and i feel lame as shit listening to the pixies, who suck, but that doesn't mean i am cool because i listen to Skinty Fia and it doesn't mean i'm lame if i loved Doolittle (which i don't, because it stinks). my oldest male friendship is with my cousin-not-related harry, and he is someone whom i'd consider cool, and the man once spent an entire weekend in the poconos listening to "Mambo No. 5" on repeat. i'm not gonna sit there and judge him because he clearly has different musical tastes than i do. has nothing to do with cool or lame. it's just different.

what is cool even

exactly. maybe cool is just being open to new sounds and new experiences. maybe being lame is being walled off because you think you're cool. maybe pam dates this college dude and he burns her a mix CD of hack alt-rock Pixies bullshit and that makes him cool because he's sharing and that makes her cool because she's open to it. maybe judging people for what they listen to is the lamest of all. unless, again, it's fed to you by the algorithm, in which case i say: LAME

you still haven't picked a song

i know, i'm trying to think of a situation in which someone told me their favorite song at all, which, ya know, it's not like i'm walking around asking people their favorite song, don't let my behavior on this blog fool you

are you saying you can't think of a single person who has ever told you about a bad song

i can but that's low-hanging fruit, i can name twenty people in the next ten seconds who have musical tastes completely opposite from mine, but that doesn't mean i'm going to call any of them out for it here

you do call people out here, though

what

on those end-of-the-month things, you list "worst songs"

and that's judgment?

kind of! it's like, you're telling someone who wrote something here about a song that that song is bad, that's a judgment

but i only feel comfortable saying it in that way because of how i frame the purpose of the song challenge, that i believe this is a writing assignment, not a music assignment. you can write an excellent blog post about a bad song if you wanted to

but still a judgment on the song

okay, fine, sure, but everyone has picked at least one not-great song so far, and not even counting any of the "least favorite song" prompts either. including me, i'm sure, if you asked someone else besides me. doesn't necessarily mean i have to make any snap judgments about their general musical tastes. i can, but it's not necessary here. i have all year to get to know people's music point of view. 

so you're saying it can't be just one song that makes you think of someone as having different musical tastes than you

sure, it has to be a bunch of songs

but see now you're just trying to get out of making a decision here, i think

okay, should i just pick at random

yes, please, we're both falling asleep here at the laptop, it's tough being a devil's advocate figment of your imagination

...shit i really did just fall asleep there for an hour, whoops

what did you get from your dreams

well you can see it at the top of this blog post i guess. my friend mary told me this was her favorite song. i think

she ever write on the blog?

nah

she has different taste in music?

i think

you keep in touch?

not really. kinda grew apart, as these things usually go. definitely see her occasionally when the mutual friends whom we keep in touch with organize gatherings. you know how it is

so why this song

i don't know, felt innocuous to me. it's not a bad song or a good song. it's a popular song but not obnoxiously so. it's definitely a favorite song that makes me know that we have different tastes in music. and there is a very, very low chance that mary could be reading this right now and get the wrong impression.

there's a very, very low chance that anyone is still reading this blog post at this point

yeah, that's fair

do you feel like you've said all you needed to say

i guess. feels anticlimactic 

yeah, i'm surprised you didn't try to say something like "and it was in that moment that i knew i truly was dancing with myself" or some bullshit like that

ya know, not every blog post is going to be thematically satisfying

okay