<\/a><\/p>\n

Someone I used to date always said that I only hated everything that existed.\u00a0 I fucking hated that guy, but he may have been on to something.\u00a0 I\u2019ve long been called many things; a contrarian, a hater, overly opinionated, and my personal favorite, too intense<\/i>.\u00a0 But while those assessments can ring true, they don\u2019t take into account my aptitude for eating crow, a skill best exemplified in my musical flip-flopping over the years.\u00a0 Lengthy is the list of bands I used to \u201chate\u201d and now adore.\u00a0 Changing your mind is a simultaneously painful and elating metamorphosis to endure.\u00a0 Especially when it requires letting go of a pre-teen ethos deeply rooted in punk rock; a genre that is constantly evaluating it\u2019s own badassness.\u00a0 My leading question as a 14-year-old closet pop-addict being: does liking ABBA<\/a> make me less punk rock?<\/i><\/p>\n

Before my musical diet broadened exponentially, before I caught myself enjoying a Taylor Swift song<\/a> here and there, or found out that I did <\/i>in fact like hip hop, The Cardigans, and Kate Bush, I pretty much only listened to punk<\/a>.\u00a0 I wanted music with anger issues.\u00a0 I was allergic to melody…or so I thought.\u00a0 There was a specific regimen of sloppy, fast, and distorted a song had to abide by to catch my attention.\u00a0 It was a closed mindedness I\u2019m shocked anyone was able to put up with.\u00a0 My mom would softly chide me as I furiously jabbed the radio tuner in search of something to appease my limited tastes, \u201cvariety is the spice of life, you know.\u201d<\/p>\n

And she was right!\u00a0 But I couldn\u2019t even see the variety so intrinsic to punk rock at first: jazz, ska, rockabilly, country…they all found homes in the tedious sub-genres of punk at some stage or another.\u00a0 But at the time it had a narrow definition, and more importantly, existed in a vacuum.\u00a0 Whenever my dad would try to relate to me by voicing observations such as: \u201chey, this is really just sped-up pop music!\u201d I would defend its \u201chardcore\u201d integrity with a spiny vengeance.<\/p>\n

Pop was also burdened with a slim definition.\u00a0 Pop meant flaccid and saccharine.\u00a0 Pop was the noise that bubblegum made.\u00a0 Pop was the opposite of punk, unless it was pop punk, a genre I absolutely indulged in but would go to painstaking lengths to rename as \u201cskater punk\u201d or \u201cneo-punk\u201d because semantics and titles meant that <\/i>much to me.\u00a0 I wonder why.<\/p>\n

There were countless bands that I tossed aside in my one-woman-war against melody.\u00a0 The Smiths were top of the heap.\u00a0 Did I really hate The Smiths because I\u2019d patiently, painfully sat through full albums and just couldn\u2019t stand the irresistible brightness of Johnny Marr\u2019s guitar, or Morrissey\u2019s delicious voice?\u00a0 Or did I stop my investigation\u00a0 short of listening, scoff at the flowers in Moz\u2019s pocket, and turn away the moment I realized that everyone else<\/i> loved them?\u00a0 As we know, pop is short for popular, and with discriminating ears I\u2019d decided that \u201cpopular\u201d was synonymous with \u201ccrap.\u201d<\/p>\n

It took me a long time to realize that hating something because of its popularity is just as lame as liking it for that reason.\u00a0 Concept, <\/i>I\u2019ve learned, can be the enemy.\u00a0 <\/i>Those little placards next to the paintings at museums can never communicate what it is that the canvas does to you.\u00a0 It may seem funny that a music critic is telling you to not listen to the ideas surrounding music, but before a critic I\u2019m a listener, and one thing I\u00a0 know is that diving in on your own, swimming around, feeling the temperature and the texture of a song…that\u2019s all that really matters.\u00a0 Gleaning significance from a concept-a synopsis really, no longer interests me…I want the meat of the thing.\u00a0 And it was with this abandonment that I was finally able to enjoy a whole slew of music I would have shrugged off in my younger years.<\/p>\n

If concept is the enemy, context <\/i>is a friend.\u00a0 After all, it was context that first tricked me into liking The Smiths.\u00a0 I was on an ugly grey balcony in Seattle, the balcony belonging to a friend\u2019s hip older brother.\u00a0 It was the summer before I moved to New York and I found myself dating hip big brother\u2019s college friend, a coy Brit who played with his bangs too much.<\/p>\n

The brother, being a musician, had a hoard of instruments strewn about his apartment, along with plenty of friends who could play them.\u00a0 What college apartment would be complete without the requisite acoustic guitar, after all?<\/p>\n

Though I grew up in the midst of musicians and have been witness to my fair share of casual-setting sing-alongs, I’ve never taken a shine to them.\u00a0 Too intimate.\u00a0 Too showy.\u00a0 Mostly too intimate.\u00a0 This occasion was no different.<\/p>\n

Some guy with a fashion mullet and a purple zip up hoodie started strumming away on a six-string, and though I already wanted to run far away, I remained board-stiff in my deck chair.\u00a0 The song was requested by the Englishman, who shortly began to sing:<\/p>\n

“stop me, uh-uh-oh stop me, stop me if you think that you’ve heard this one before…”<\/p>\n