When I woke up Tuesday morning I heard a voice. At first I couldn't place it; it was a voice I hadn't heard in years. It fought with my blaring alarm clock for my attention, and when my flailing hand finally hit the snooze it came through clearly. Sitting up in my empty bedroom I heard the smooth tones or Rob Thomas in my head as he sang, "she said I don't know if I've ever been good enough..."
The lines bounced around my brain while I cooked breakfast, showered and commuted to work until, unable to hold back any longer, I spent a large part of the morning time-traveling back to high school. Matchbox 20 wasn't a band I loved, but it was a band that made a few songs that I loved. I navigated my spreadsheets and e-mails that morning to the tune of Push, 3am, and If You're Gone and marveled that ten years later I still knew a lot of the words. Not only that, I found myself still liking the songs despite not liking the band anymore and despite knowing that if they came out now I would more likely than not dismiss them. Listening to the tunes again, though, I was unable to disassociate the songs from what I felt when I first enjoyed them.
I wonder now how some of the bands that shaped my late adolescence would fare with critical, curmudgeonly, 27 year-old me had I never heard them in the first place. This Brooklynite doesn't feel the same longing for escape and frustration with his surroundings that made Less Than Jake's "History of a Boring Town" - and the rest of Hello Rockview for that matter - so essential to the Ohio-rooted 17 year-old I was. I can't say whether the angst-filled earnestness that made The Get Up Kids' Something to Write Home About so compelling in 1997 would strike the same chords now without being played on decade old strings.
How much are our feelings for the bands that we love tied to who we were when we first heard them? More importantly, does this make our taste suspect - a product of our situation and environment more than our ear? Or does it just make our relationship with music that much more beautiful and personal?
As someone who's never wanted to level judgment at someone for liking (what I think is) a terrible band I'd have to say the latter. When it comes to music feeling is king. While originality, skill and emotion can often feed into that if a crap song comes along at the right time in someone's life then that song will be playing in their heads for the rest of their life. And while blogs like this can always try to ensure people happen upon songs like "For Me This is Heaven", if it ends up being "I Want it That Way" who is anybody to really judge?
Bands can be picked apart and musicians can be critiqued, but when it comes to fans sometimes the heart wants what the heart wants. Most people will call that a "guilty pleasure" but I say that when it comes to music no pleasure should be guilty. I'll blast my stereo to Arcade Fire and Kelly Clarkson with equal pride because who cares what anybody else thinks of it? When it comes to music cool is bullshit, approval means nothing and Rob Thomas is invited to my iTunes any time I feel like it.
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