Pop Confessional: A Brief History of My Music Taste

I like pop music. There I’ve said it. Call the hipster-army-brigade and get them to arrest me. I admit to surfing the mainstream.

And this is something that has taken me a while to come to terms with. The reason it took me so long to come to terms with it, is because I was acting far more pretentiously than I had any right to be.

There’s nothing wrong with liking or disliking anything. Everyone is entitled to have their own opinions. Something I’ve ranted about previously is when people start to enforce their opinions onto someone else to make them feel lesser. In the video it’s about preferring YA to classic fiction, in this it’s about preferring mainstream pop to whatever’s “cooler”.

I’m not saying pop music has more artistic merit, or is cleverer, or is better than any other type of music. I’m saying I get a personal pleasure from it, which shouldn’t be taken away from me by someone saying what I feel is “stupid”.

I say this as a person who previously scorned pop, choosing to plug in my headphones instead of giving it a chance.

My story starts in the 90’s and early 00’s, the decade of my birth, and the years of Backstreet Boys, S Club 7, and Britney Spears. At a child who’s age was yet to enter double-digits, I had no problem with my jam being “Reach For the Stars”. I grew up on cotton-candy pop and loved it.

The dark ages appeared in the form of my teenage years. I thought I was getting more angsty and grungier in music taste, but only in my head. For my thirteenth birthday I got a mini stereo-system and my love with music was sealed. As I went through my teen years, my music taste rapidly changed from bubblegum pop, to more pop-rock, to just rock. A good indicator is the first albums I got with my stereo system: Avril Lavigne, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Razorlight, and Green Day. (I know, it's a strange selection).

I went hardcore with my music taste. I wanted to like “good” music. Except I had no idea what good music was. Since everyone I knew was listening to rock, I assumed that was it. I bought Linkin Park, Blink 182, and Sum 41. I felt proud of myself. This was what is good, right?

In 2009 I heard a musician who was initially was a guilty pleasure, and then became a proud love of mine. Taylor Swift released “Love Story”. There was something sincere in what she sang, something catchy, and a country-twang that brought me to my childhood when my parents blasted out Shania Twain (if anyone taught me not to care about my music taste, it was them).

I was ashamed. But I couldn’t work out why. Taylor Swift wrote all her songs, like the rest of the artists I listened too. Her songs had a story and meaningful lyrics, which I could relate too. I found her music fun to listen to. And then I realised that I had no reason to be ashamed, I was allowed to like whatever I wanted to, other people’s opinions be damned.

And then I had a country music phase, but we won’t go into that.

My music taste currently is a combination of a lot of things from my musical past. You can find everything from Mumford and Sons, to Katy Perry, to 30 Second to Mars on my iPod. And if anyone tells you that you shouldn’t like something, to quote T-Swift, “haters gonna hate, hate, hate… Shake it off”.

P.S. If anyone wants to try something new, here’s The Pierces, an amazing folk-rock band.

Gove Away

Michael Gove is the Secretary of Education in the UK, and is one a one-man mission to reform the British education system; his latest idea being to scrap all American Literature from the English Literature GCSE syllabus, including works like To Kill a Mockingbird, and Of Mice of Men. Gove’s reasoning is that he wants British students to study more works by English authors, preferably 19th Century, like Dickens.

Before we get into the main issues, I would like to point out that the furthest qualification I have in English Literature is a GCSE, much unlike Gove’s Oxford degree in the subject. However, as you may tell by this blog, I am an avid reader, and off my own back I have read Shakespeare to Austen to Orwell.

I didn’t study any American Literature during GCSE English GCSE, living out Gove’s dream. I read Romeo and Juliette, An Inspector Calls, Jane Eyre, and Lord of the Flies. I did not enjoy any of them, yet this is the proposed syllabus Gove is insisting upon. Meanwhile, I watched other classes study Of Mice and Men and To Kill a Mockingbird and discuss how interesting they found the story, which resulted me in picking up the books myself.

To Kill a Mockingbird was an extremely important book for me personally. It was the first book I had read which really tackled race in a real world setting, and although it wasn’t a true story, I knew it reflected the attitudes of the time. I remember having to Google the significance and symbolism of the novel because I knew it had so much more to offer, and I really wish I had an opportunity to study it at school. Most importantly, I can’t think of a single British classic that deals with race in the same way. And that’s why a variety of books is important, as great as British Literature is, not everything is covered in the same way.

Michael Gove is out of touch with the current situation that the average student lives in. Not everyone is a privately-educated, Oxford-bound student. The vast majority of students need to be engaged with literature by letting teachers having a variety of choice to make the decision of what is the best book for their class to study. I knew people at school who didn’t even read the books at GCSE, getting grades off a mix of Sparknotes and highlighted quotes. Instead of talking about the 19th century, we need to be engaging teenagers with familiar themes that they can relate to, whether it be the inequality of the Deep South, or the financial turmoil faced in Steinback’s novel. A mad wife in the attic is the least of anyone’s concerns.