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.

Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

Directed: James Gunn

Produced: Kevin Feige

Screenplay: James Gunn, Nicole Perlman

Starring: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Vin Diesel, Bradley Cooper, Lee Pace

When I saw the trailer of Guardians I wasn’t too excited. When Marvel resurrected its big players by the form of massive Hollywood franchises, I had at least heard of them; The Avengers, Spider-Man, and X-Men. DC chose to go with big-players Batman and Superman. However, pre-trailer, Guardians of the Galaxy was unknown to me. On top of this, it looked a bit, well, daft. Is that a talking racoon? Is that a talking tree?

Boy, I was wrong, and you are too, if you are considering giving it a miss. Marvel has made its funniest summer blockbuster yet. Guardians of the Galaxy doesn't take itself seriously, and the result being it’s hilarious. It’s funnier than many self-professed “comedies”, and by switching between gags and out-of-this-world action, every moment is thoroughly entertaining.

So what’s it all about? Meet our misfits of the galaxy, the most unlikely band of heroes you will ever meet. Ex-criminals thrown together by mishaps and coincidence to become a thoroughly unwilling group, trying to protect the galaxy from a mysterious orb getting into the hands of Ronan the Accuser.

Chris Pratt stars as Peter Quill, also known as Star Lord (but no-one calls him that). Quill was abducted from Earth as a child in the 80’s, meaning he is perpetually stuck in the 80’s (leading to one of the best soundtracks to have ever featured in a superhero movie). Quill’s moral code is a bit dodgy, but his heart is in the right place, a refreshing change from all recent self-sacrificing superheroes who are concerned with the greater good. Pratt is purely funny, all quips and dancing around the screen (most of the time literally), moving through physical and verbal comedy with ease.

Quill is joined by Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper), the aforementioned genetically-engineered racoon, who is obsessed by weapons and money; Groot, who is Rocket’s muscle and has three words during the whole film, which I’m sure was a challenging role for someone as notable as Vin Diesel; Drax, a blue alien caught up with righting the wrongs against him, and more importantly, does not get metaphors; and Zoe Saldana’s kick-ass Gamora, who provides the necessary voice of sanity.

Marvel may have not invested as much into Guardian’s as it has done with its bigger brothers, but that doesn’t detract from the usual Marvel antics, with explosion and colour. This film took you on a trip around the Galaxy that Marvel brags about it in its other films, but we have yet to witness, and it’s just as wonderful and inventive as the hints we’ve previously had.

Just as the film doesn’t take itself seriously, it’s important that you don’t either. Yes it’s a bit crazy, it’s totally silly, highly irrelevant, but mostly incredibly fun.

Rating: 10/10

The Telling Error by Sophie Hannah

Age Group: Adult

Genre: Psychological Thriller/ Crime

Pub Date: April 2014

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

The first few pages of The Telling Error described a grisly murder. A man has been killed, with a knife taped to him, except there he wasn’t killed by the knife. Bang in some mysterious writing on the wall, a few bizarre photographs on the computer, and the victim being a celebrity, and we’ve got ourselves an unusual case. What makes it more unusual is the murder has been described as an ad on a dating website seeking the murderer. So a puzzle within a puzzle for the reader.

This is a proper psychological “who-dunnit” thriller. Lots of twisted characters, blurred lines, and suspense. The plot was great; each character was properly fleshed out with interesting motives and lots of twists. Just when I thought I knew who did it, I was immediately proved wrong.

Before we go any further, I would like to point out I had no idea that this was the 9th book in the series. I had never read or heard of the series before, otherwise I probably wouldn’t have requested this from NetGalley. Only now discovering the series, I’m pleased to find that I followed the book pretty well, and it does account for my slight gripes with it.

I found it hard to follow the detectives, but on reflection, this is because I didn’t know their previous stories, and the author probably took it for granted that I did. To be fair, if I was on my ninth book, I probably would have expected a reader to have read a couple of the others. I found their relationships confusing, and some points lost track of which one was which, but that didn’t detract from the overall brilliance of the book.

This book was primarily about Nikki though, a woman who has been having a string of emotional online affairs for kicks. Nikki was a brilliant and complex character, a woman who has been betrayed by her family, and is overly protective of hers, despite betraying them with her affair. She gets entangled in the murder investigation, due to one of her online dalliances implicating her. Nikki was easy to like and dislike at the same time, you couldn’t help but feel sorry for her, yet be annoyed at her actions. Her family and past was another thread to unravel, making Nikki become more and more complex as the story continued.

The Telling Error was surprisingly easy to read as a stand-alone, but I found myself being more interested in the side characters than the main detective, Simon. If you like a good psychological thriller, I definitely recommend this; however you may want to start with something earlier in the series, unlike me!

Rating: 8/10

I received this copy from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Don't Even Think About It

Age Group: YA

Genre: Contemporary 

Pub Date: May 2014

Publisher: Orchard Books

                                                                                                          

Don’t Even Think About It has one of the most interesting premises in contemporary YA, but the problem is that it sets your expectations too high. Set in a New York high school, a class of students are given a tainted flu shot and all mysteriously develop telepathy. Now the idea of having twenty students with ESP is a great one. The execution of it wasn’t.

If you don’t go into this book thinking that the teens are going to use their new found powers for good and to save the world, then you’ll be fine. This book was a lot less X-Men, and more The Princess Diaries. Ultimately this is a teen contemporary with a twist.

Unfortunately the twist gave it too many complications to work well as a contemporary.

We have twenty-two kids with ESP. The book is written as a collective, using “we”, but then jumps around to different characters, with their points of views. We follow about 8 characters, which are too many for a book this short. Spreading out the book between so many characters meant none of them were fully developed past their vague stereotype: the cheating popular girl, the girl in love with her best friend, the pervy teenage boy, the smart girl who goes by “Pi”…  Did I mention how clichéd it was? It was easy to get confused between several characters when you were following so many stories at once.

Then we had the ESP itself. Soon this book went from “oooh that’s an interesting thought”, to “I really don’t care about everyone’s every single thought”. It really captured the headache you would get being a teenager with ESP. Don’t get me wrong, teenagers having teenage thoughts is fine, everyone has really mundane thoughts. But I have no desire to hear or read about everyone’s mundane thoughts.

The main problem I had is that I just didn’t care. I couldn’t care about most of the characters because the plot was spread too thinly between all of them. I couldn’t care about the plot because it wasn’t explained well enough, and I didn’t care about any of the drama that was going on. This book read like it was written by someone who thought how teenagers thought, but I give teens a lot more credit to be more intelligent than they are portrayed in this novel.

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

Rating: 4/10

Revamp

So you may have noticed that this blog has been abandoned for a while. Four months to be exact. You may have also noticed that that it’s been given a makeover. Or you may not have noticed either of those things, but just keep with me.

When I first started this blog, over a year ago, it was a bit of a mess. It was a combination of disjointed science articles and book posts, and then evolved into a book and film blog. Don’t get me wrong, I want to keep it like that. To an extent.

The reason this blog has started to decay was because I had a moment of writers block. And I realised why. I love books, I do, and I love talking about them on my YouTube channel. I find it far easier to talk about books than I do with writing about them, not to say I don’t enjoy reading book blogs. I’ve seen a few book bloggers start YouTube channels and make “personal” videos, where they discuss things that matter to them aside from books, and I’m going to do the reverse here.

So this blog is getting a revamp look-wise and content-wise.

I called myself “Rachael Reviews All” for a few reasons. One I read and review all genres of things, that’s something I stand by. But also because I am interested in lots of things. I study science, I’ve studied art, I like to keep up with current affairs. And so I want to review the world we live in. Not literally, I’m not going to be posting a rating system of politicians (although that may be useful).

If you watch my channel, you would see I like to do discussions. So you can expect a lot more of that on here. But what else? Honestly, I don’t know. Science posts, social commentary, fashion, books and arts, anything. Although it does sound like I’m running my own newspaper…

In the sixteenth century there was a group of people called the Renaissance men, a group of individuals who were interested in a variety of subjects, the most famous of them being Leonardo di Vinci, who made advances in everything from science to art. I love the idea of living in a time where people aren’t segregated into categories, you’re either an artist or a mathematician. I want to write about everything that interests me, and I hope you’ll find bits of it interesting too.

I hope you stick around.