I made a couple of cds for one of my female coworkers. She’s a woman in her fifties who moved to Colorado in her late teens because she loves John Denver so much, she believed him when he sang about how beautiful the Rocky Mountains are. Of course, John Denver wasn’t lying. The Rocky Mountains are beautiful. But that’s some faith, right there. To leave everyone and everything you know and take a chance, just because a musician sang about a place and you imagine it will be awesome living there.
I gave her Fleet Foxes by Fleet Foxes and Infinite Arms by Band of Horses, because I thought they both had a kind of folky seventies vibe with the kind of sweet singing that a John Denver superfan could appreciate. After she had listened to them, she asked me to remind her, again, what the names of the bands were, and an eavesdropping additional coworker interrupted with an incredulous, “What kind of bands are those?”
Because Fleet Foxes and Band of Horses are more ridiculous band names than, say, Nickelback, or Linkin Park, or, hell, to throw in a popular rock band that I actually like, Foo Fighters? Most band names are stupid. Even classic bands that are revered by all have stupid names. The Beatles is a stupid name. Led Zeppelin is a stupid name. I digress.
“Indie rock bands,” I replied.
“Oh,” he said. “I don’t like indie music.”
At which point my head almost exploded. And, normally, I don’t argue with people about musical tastes, because musical taste is an opinion and everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. But this statement was patently stupid, and I couldn’t restrain myself.
“You know,” I said, “I’m all for everyone disliking whatever they dislike, but it’s kind of silly to say that you dislike indie music, like indie music, the term, describes a certain style or a genre. It doesn’t. It’s a pretty large umbrella and a lot of different music falls under it. Indie music is music that is made by musicians who aren’t on a major label. So, taking that into consideration, and how many different kinds of independent record companies there are, producing totally different kinds of music, how on earth can you say, ‘I don’t like indie music’ and expect that to mean something?”
To which he replied, making my brain explode anew, “Well, it’s like, Mumford and Sons. I think they have good music, but I don’t like their presentation.”
Their presentation? What does that even mean? And did he really just use Mumford and Sons as an example of indie music? That’s like saying Adele, who I love, is indie music or Florence + the Machine, who I also love, is indie music. These are people on major record labels who are HUGE in their own country, and have blown up big over here, too. Mumford and Sons debut album landed at number 2 on the Hot 100 its first week of sales. Most indie bands who ever end up that high on the charts certainly don’t usually do it on their first album. That’s part of what being on a smaller record label means. There’s no money for a promotional push big enough to accomplish that. And, more often than not, they only ever chart higher when they’ve jumped ship to a major label.
So, it’s like, okay, you say you don’t like something, but then your example of that thing is something that doesn’t even really qualify. What. The. Hell. I stopped talking about it, at that point, even to figure out what he meant by “presentation” because I refuse to have a conversation with someone about something they clearly don’t know anything about. I wasn’t looking to convert him. I was genuinely curious about why he felt the way he did, at first, but, then, he lost me.
People, like what you want. Don’t like what you don’t want. But try not to like or dislike things based on preconceived notions rather than actual merit. Maybe it requires more work to actually explore new things before writing them off, but perhaps you’ll find things you love and you’ll make yourself happier, in the end.
