Finding Yourself in Your Music Collection

Ever so often you'll see a top 10 list of favorite albums making the rounds on that one social media thing that most everyone has and uses frequently, but is still kind of annoyed with in spite of the fact that they keep using it daily. For a music nerd like me, it brightens up a news feed that is usually filled with bad news, bad moods, and thinly-veiled pleas for attention. Out of all the social media fads and “mini-games”, this is the one that doesn't seem to stay away for very long and surprisingly enough, no one really seems to mind.

Even though a lot of us get annoyed with “poking” and being “tagged” in photos, plenty of us are fine with making these top 10 lists when we're asked, sometimes we even do it independent of being “tagged”. I can only assume this has to do with our old friend, nostalgia and I'm just gonna go ahead and assume that I'm right, this is my blog after all.

I've always found it funny to look back and think about all the music that you used to listen to that you wish no one would ever find out about; we've all got a few cringe-worthy albums in our past. Next time you're at a show, standing beside some leather-clad Hessian swilling cheap, warm beer and trying to look cool while simultaneously fighting back vomit, ask yourself if you think they used to listen to Billy Ray Cyrus when they were a kid.

In fact, go ahead and ask them, might as well interact with people, right? Unless they're just really defensive by nature or have no sense of humor, you'll probably share a good laugh over discovering you both owned the Space Jam soundtrack and wish you never sold it to that used record store. Honestly, you just never know what someone may cite as a favorite, people are often surprised to hear how much I love listening to James Brown and Funkadelic; proving that you can't judge a book by it's cover.

While it's true that I'm about as Metal as a horde of un-dead Vikings riding steel dragons to fight ogres with swords made of fire while King Diamond stands on a mountain playing “Abigail” in it's entirety, this wasn't always the case. As a child, I owned a Spin Doctors cassette; there, I said it. Part of the fun of making those top 10 lists is seeing how much you've changed as a person through your listening taste.

Maybe you went through a goth phase when you were fifteen and shudder at the thought of what would have happened if your parents actually did let you legally change your name to “Misery Von Ravenborn”, but you still love Marilyn Manson and don't care who knows it. Some people call those “guilty pleasures”, but I don't really subscribe to such notions. I may not want to broadcast every questionable bit of music I own, but if I'm listening to it when you come over, I'm not turning it off. Our music taste is an extension of who we are as people and we shouldn't have to change it or ourselves for anyone.