On Enjoying Various Kinds of Music

It’s hard to describe music that I like. On one hand, I’m the old sort of sap who will happily listen to Crowded House for hours and hours on end. On the other hand, I’ll also happily listen to Disturbed for hours and hours on end. I also enjoy somewhat mainstream music like Queens of the Stone Age and Radiohead, both of whom have featured in reviews here on the Daily SPUF. Heck, I also saw Radiohead live, on the day that “2 + 2 = 5” was recorded live for the Com Lag EP.Seriously. If you have Com Lag and listen to track 1, I’m in that audience. This was when I was like 11. Apparently I was too exhausted to see Muse the next day.

Then at the same time, I’ll happily sit and listen to the Binding of Isaac: Re/Afterbirth soundtrack, sped up. Or the heavy vocals of things like the Skyrim soundtrack or the God of War soundtrack. Or the jazzy, bouncy, 60’s spy spoof soundtrack of Team Fortress 2. Or the Borderlands soundtrack, which is actually pretty cool but more something to have in the background than anything else.

Simply put, I listen to a weird mixture of things.

The older members of my family though, they are pretty… average in terms of music. Both my parents have an almost encyclopedic knowledge of music from the 80’s and 90’s. They’re both fans of a wide range of things, from the aforementioned Radiohead to Neil Young to Pink Floyd to Led Zeppelin to Incubus to Manic Street Preachers all the way back to the also aforementioned Queens of the Stone Age.

Brother’s music tastes are similar, but like me, there’s a lot of video game music in there too. He is also a fan of the Star Wars soundtrack. And honestly I don’t blame him, some of the fight pieces are amazing. He IS a massive Star Wars nerd though, so really his enjoyment of the soundtrack doesn’t surprise me.

Sister’s musical tastes are also similar. Except she also happens to like K-Pop. As in, Korean pop music. Of course, this makes her the butt of the majority of musical jokes in the family, because she’s the only one who likes it.

I’ll be honest, I’m not a fan of K-Pop. It’s your standard bog standard pop music, a bunch of pretty girls or boys, or a young, attractive solo artist, singing along to chirpy tunes, generally talking about something like love or breakups or whatever. Generally the band consists mainly of singers, all wearing cute outfits and having weird, kooky videos. The singers tend to take it in turns and there’s often someone who does a weird little rapping bit because why not? I dunno, the way sister has described it at times, the K-Pop industry sounds a little bit like a horrible, corrupt oligopoly. Probably better than ISPs in the US though.

The only real differences between K-Pop and anywhere else pop is that they’re all younger and they’re all singing in Korean with the odd English word thrown in. Greek pop music is similar, it’s just the voices tend to be older and there’s almost always some sort of bouzouki instrument in there somewhere.

But sometimes the mockery gets a little bit over the top. Yes, sister gets it, not everyone likes K-Pop, stop acting like she’s some sort of hideous freak. Going to a K-Pop party is no different from going to a bar where someone’s playing live pop music. And honestly K-Pop is a billion times better than the hundreds of ‘tribute’ acts that flood my local city.

If anything, the blatant murder of music by so-called ‘talented’ people who somehow actually make money from these things is a worse crime against humanity than any K-Pop song. Yes, I know I can’t sing and have the musical talent of a drunk donkey, but at least I’m not inflicting my pain on other people in public. I just sing in the car.

Here I am though, being a tad hypocritical. Listen to what you like, I don’t care. Enjoy yourself. Sing along if you want. Just try not to make others suffer.

You do you, girl. You do you.