As someone who often uses it, it was only recently that I asked myself why Spotify has a private listening feature. In the age where people share everything from baby pictures to bowel movements online, why are we hiding what we listen to? Like all good, and slightly dubious, psychological self-diagnoses, I must return to my childhood. If you opened my wardrobe a few years ago, you would have been confronted with my clandestine collection of posters of various boybands and X-Factor hopefuls. Like many of those contestants, the posters are now long forgotten and probably gathering dust under my bed – but the notion still stands. I was, and to some extent still am, quite literally a closeted pop music fan.
So here it is: I like pop music. Even as I write this, I can hear the distant disapproving tuts of indie music fans, turning up their gramophones to drown me out with a vintage first pressing of a Smiths vinyl I probably haven’t heard of. But please, hear me out. I am not totally oblivious. I know that every beat and overtly auto-tuned note is engineered for my easy consumption. While those with more refined taste consume the musical equivalent of wholewheat bread, initially hard to swallow but ultimately good for you, I am living on ReadyBrek and puréed carrot, bland and easy to digest.
I understand that the appeal of these songs is that they are made to be appealing and that lyrics like “I really really really really really really like you” are hardly Wordsworth, but unless Taylor Swift has moved on from shaming exes to indoctrinating her fans with subliminal satanic messages, I can’t say I see the issue.
I am a humanities student. I spend the majority of my time thinking so deeply about art that even the word ‘Michaelangelo’ induces a migraine, so why can’t I indulge in a little nothingness? Rihanna’s mindnumbingly empty words are, it seems to me, a fitting break from medieval Italian sonnets.
Maybe my music isn’t enlightening or soul-searching, but if it distracts me from all the world’s travesties and tragedies even for just three minutes and 40 seconds, does that really matter?
On top of this, in pop music’s defence, it only becomes pop(ular) because so many people listen to it. In 50 years’ time I guarantee there will be teenagers with vintage iPods listening to Katy Perry’s back catalogue and wondering why they don’t make music so artistically anymore.
In all honesty, although I would still place One Direction albums face down on the counter in HMV for fear of judgement, I have for the most part come to terms with my music taste. My issue, however, is with those who cannot tolerate my choice.
We are a more accepting society than ever and, for example, if I were to go outside wearing nothing but an old piece of stained carpet I would be considered “edgy,” “so brave” or “like, totally indie.” And yet I still get disparaging comments when I use the Official Top 40 as my revision music, whilst my messenger is clogged up with links to obscure neo-punk bands that will convert me to the indie agenda. Please, go back to your record shops and intimate gigs and let me listen to Beyoncé in peace.
To everyone else, in the words of Oscar Wilde: be yourself – everyone else is already secretly nodding along to that new Pitbull song. Okay, maybe I paraphrased a bit – but you get my point.
