How I Came To Hate Music

I’ve made a pact to myself to tidy this room by the end of the day. I didn’t do anything yesterday and if I’m not productive today then I’ll go to bed smelling of shame and guilt, and I don’t want that, it’ll manifest into a strange dream where I’m attacked by the mess that I didn’t clean up. So I really have to do something. There are several CD’s stacked on a desk, many are missing their cases and don’t even match the empty cases next to them, and as I spend the next half hour dusting the once shiny discs and putting them away I realise something, most of the CD’s I own are shit.

When I was sixteen I owned about five albums, South Park: Chef Aid being one of them. At twenty four I have over 8000 songs on my hard drive and I cannot like more than a thousand of them. The South Park album isn’t even on there, nor are several other albums I regrettably own. Not so long ago I tried to make a CD of all my favourite songs, songs that I love, songs that I never get bored of, songs that get better with every listen, and I couldn’t fill the 120 minute CD, not even close. Out of 8000 songs I own there were only eight that met my criteria. If I press the shuffle button on iTunes there’s a 0.1% chance that I’m going to love the song that comes on. I don’t like those odds.

Since my ipod broke I put some music on my iPhone (last time I mention an Apple product), I couldn’t put my entire collection on it, so I put 300 songs I knew I liked onto it. This didn’t cure my obsessive shuffling disorder though. Despite having only 300 songs which I knew I liked, I still shuffled through most of them because apparently I didn’t like them as much as I thought I did.

The problem is that my collection of over 8000 songs mostly reflects my adolescence and early adulthood when I thought music was supposed to be loud and brash or Snow Patrol. Half of my collection must consist of pop punk and hip hop, and I don’t really like pop punk or hip hop these days. It would be embarrassing to admit that I own three All-American Rejects albums, and if I listen to any of them I can only think of how embarrassing it would be if people found out. “HA HA HA, you’re listening to shit that girls listen to, what next? Avril Lavigne? HA HA HA”.

So even if I like a song it comes with baggage, heavy embarrassing baggage. You might say that you shouldn’t be embarrassed, that it’s your right to listen to anything you want, but to that I say to you that you don’t own two Limp Biscuit albums, you don’t know what it’s like to own two Limp Biscuit albums. To have Fred Durst shout at you all of his vacuous lyrics like “fuck you” and “fuck this”, and not just listen to him but to be fine with it all. I didn’t care, and I carry that around with me, like a cross on my shoulder. Two fucking Limp Biscuit albums. I have two 50 Cent albums, you don’t know what it’s like to own two 50 Cent albums. To have “Fiddy” shout at you all of his vacuous lyrics like “fuck you” and “fuck this”, and not just listen to him but to be fine with it all. I didn’t care, and I carry that around with me, like a cross on my shoulder. You don’t know what it’s like to own two Pitbull albums…and neither do I.

I look back and what was I thinking? Why did I buy this album and how did I ever think this was good? So what happens to the music that I didn’t buy? The music that I already dislike? What will come of Pitbull, Coldplay, and Cheryl Cole? Are they going to get worse with age? Or is this what good music sounds like? Maybe I’m doing this whole music thing wrong, after all I have a success rate of 0.1%, maybe the likes of Pitbull, Coldplay, and Cheryl Cole are brilliant, and I’ve been blinded to the fact by my seething hatred.

Obviously they’re not brilliant, but I can’t prove it. There is no way to criticise music, it’s impossible. Pitbull is an abomination, dressed like a high class rapist in his white suit and sunglasses, like a Puerto Rican Jay Gatsby, rhyming “picture that with a Kodak” with “take a picture of me with a Kodak” (THIS IS NOT HOW RHYMING FUCKING WORKS!), and he’s only ever in a club or on a boat. Pitbull is a moron for morons. And you Sean Paul. I think Pitbull is worse than Sean Paul but I’m not sure, how can you tell? What’s worse? Horseshit or cowshit? I have nightmares that they’ll combine like Station in Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey and they’ll become the all powerful PitPaul.

I can’t prove that Pitbull’s music is bad though, to say so is essentially calling anyone who’s bought it an idiot, and I’m just not like that. All I can do is find people who share my opinion and get them to sign a petition. But they probably like Coldplay, or worse, metal. We might not be able to objectively critique an artist’s music, but what about their actions? I’m sure we can all agree that people like Chris Brown and Chris Brown sympathiser Dappy are complete cunts. We can’t stop them making music but perhaps we can put a warning sticker on front of the album, “WARNING: ARTIST IS A CUNT”.

I hear that music is supposed to bring people together, and it does in an all too literal sense, but all it really does is cause arguments. Yeah you might connect with someone because you like the same band, but it won’t end well. Yeah, you both like…Franz Ferdinand(?), and you’re talking and having fun and sharing memories of how you went to see them and you really wanted to hear that song and they went off stage and you were disappointed that they didn’t play it and suddenly they came back on and they played it and it was the best night of your life until you saw them again where the exact same thing happened, and then they say, “but they’re not as good as The Kooks”. You hate The Kooks, you’re fucking livid, how can this person like The Kooks? That naïve song is fucking shit, I don’t want to talk to this person! And meanwhile they’re thinking how can this person not like The Kooks? That naïve song is fucking brilliant, I don’t want to talk to this person! And not only do you not want to talk to each other, you resent each other.

I’ve had people call my favourite bands “shit” and I’ve taken it personally. I don’t think it’s irrational, if you introduced me to you partner and I came out with “Him? He’s shit!” you’d be offended, and it’s the same with anything, if someone insults something you like, you’re going to be somewhat hurt, and if everyone knows this then they know that when they call your favourite band shit, they’re going to offend you. Music does bring us together, but to fight and squabble about it.

As I’ve grown up I’ve acquired this bitter outlook on pretty much everything and it’s probably why I have so much disdain for my 8000 songs. I don’t share the same fervour for pop punk as my younger self, I can’t go on living with a soundtrack that’s come straight out of a Tony Hawk game. I can’t even play Tony Hawk games anymore. I haven’t played a skate game since one asked me to knock over a security guard and I just felt sorry for him, I was an obnoxious jobless dick on wheels and he was trying to feed his family.

I’ve been in denial for too long, I’ve tried to convince myself that I like every one of these 8000 songs and that they deserve to stay on my hard drive, but they don’t serve any purpose (like Pitbull), they need to go because they’ve destroyed my faith in music (like Pitbull). I’ve become disillusioned, I thought I loved music, but it turns out that I hate it*.

*Not all of it:






   

Grand Theft Pandemonium

If you’ve stumbled upon any games website this week you’d be forgiven for thinking that Grand Theft Auto V is the only game in existence, all other games have been taken round the back and shot. Not only is GTA V not out yet, it hasn’t even got a release date, but what it has got is a whole load of pandemonium over a trailer.

A trailer? People love trailers these days, they can’t get enough of them, more excitement is generated over a trailer than the final product it’s promoting. Perhaps people are too busy to watch a film or play a game and watching a trailer is not only a viable substitute but a more preferable one, who wants to sit down and watch a film for two hours anyway? A trailer can be anything from twenty seconds to four minutes and that’s enough time to formulate some deep opinions without stopping what you’re doing (masturbating probably).

Film trailers are undoubtedly useful, if a trailer can bore you in sixty seconds then chances are you’re not going to want to see the film. You are able to produce a list of suitable reasons to why it‘s not for you, I don‘t like the actors, the plot is ludicrous, the “jokes” aren’t funny, Robert Pattinson is in it.

Game trailers however are far from useful, in recent times we’ve seen totally distorted depictions of games in their trailers, promising something that can never be delivered. Far more interested in achieving a cinematic appeal, very little of the game is shown, we’re treated to a pretty looking sequence which while impressive tells us nothing about the game. We can’t make any judgements like we can with a film trailer because we haven’t seen what the game really looks like.

So why all the hysteria over GTA V? It may have revealed a few details about the game (none of them revelatory), but it hasn’t showed what playing the game will be like. It’s admittedly quite exciting to see glimpses of the city but is this really enough to warrant multiple articles on one website? Have we been shown enough to be able to concoct accurate judgements? Looking at the comments section of said articles, apparently so. If we are to take these comments as gospel then GTA V will either be TOTALLY GNARLY! Or a sleight against god and all humanity.

It’s fine to speculate (in moderation) what GTA V might be like but to make such dogmatic judgements after seeing just over a minute of footage is moronic, as is criticising the trailer. Apparently looking at a screen for a minute is too much for some people as one commenter shared his anger of having to watch an advert before watching the trailer, seemingly failing to see the irony behind his stupidity. If you can’t spend a minute of your time keeping your eyes open then how are you supposed to play the damn game? Do you have a tantrum whenever you come across a loading screen? Do you throw the controller whenever there’s some more reading to do in Final Fantasy? What happened when he sat through the credits of Iron Man? “I WAITED TEN MINUTES FOR THAT? ARGH!”.

…Anyway, GTA V isn’t out for a long time, let’s just be content that we know where it’s set and PATIENTLY wait for Rockstar to reveal more details or, and I’m just putting this out there, just wait until the game is released. While you wait, read the #grandtheftautomemories hash tag on twitter and be thankful you’re not one of those people.