Who had you first?

I recently have been visiting a food blog entitled Pioneer Woman. I love her because she loves butter. People who love butter, even if they are creepy, unkempt, or murderers of 21 year old women, are a-okay in my book. At least until they pull out a weapon. One of the phrases this fine butter lady uses for exclamation and happiness is "ugh." I find this hilarious and super duper entertaining, because I usually associate "ugh" with frustration.

Ugh! So much new music lately. I'm pretty much on a musical overload right now. Blaine took it upon himself to be my musical educator. I, at one point in my life, thought I had pretty fantastic musical taste. But apparently I was wrong. Or actually, I wasn't wrong, I was just not as far along as some people would have hoped. Some people meaning Blaine. Punk. Blaine has dumped about a million new songs onto my computer. Every week or so we'll start talking about music this or band that or blah blah blah and he'll ask me a series of rapid-fire questions that go as follows:

Blaine: Have you listened to the Editors yet? Me: Not yet.
Blaine: Have you listened to Yeasayer yet? Me: I listened to a couple of songs but then got distracted.
Blaine: Have you listened to Kasabian yet? Me: No. Blaine: [disappointed face]
Blaine: Have you listened to MEW at all? Me: A little, the first few songs or so. Blaine: You have to listen to MEW. I want you to like them.

Thank you sir, but my brain can only handle so much in so little time. I have listened to so much of his music in fact, that I have forgotten that there is other music I used to listen to that I very much enjoyed. All those beautiful, fond-memory inducing songs are sitting in my iTunes library all dusty and sad. I don't know when I'll have time to listen to them again.

Not that all this new music is simply a horrible experience. It's not, there is actually a lot of it that I've fallen in love with. When I get tired of exposing my poor self to new music that doesn't make sense to me yet I will grab my iPod (Music Midget) glance around to make sure no one is looking, and scroll to the artist and songs that I really enjoy. These artists I have learned to enjoy. Sometimes their songs get stuck in my head.

The problem with new music is not that it is new. Sometimes new music isn't welcome simply because it is a change to the usual. There are days when change is acceptable and days when it is not. On No Change Days we just simply cannot listen to new music and feel good about ourselves (that's a royal we by the way). Some days scream sappy old country songs that bring back my childhood. Other days call for some of my sweet high school tunes. In those days I wasn't adventurous enough to actually delve into interesting music, but I did feel rebellious when I listened to non-Christian music (heaven forbid!). That rebellion, even if it shouldn't have, felt so good.

But on some days change is good, welcome even. Those days need new music. Maybe a new album from a beloved artist (although that may not sit well at first. New albums are almost like hearing completely different artists, because usually the sound is different. This always happens to me when I listen to new albums by Death Cab for Cutie. I hate the new music at first, then grow to adore it.). Perhaps a completely new artist. But it's usually on a small scale. And there's a reason for this--at least for me.

You see learning to love new music is like learning to sing a new song. The first step you take is to simply listen to the song. When I first listen to song I don't listen to the lyrics. I can only sit down and take the song in as a whole: singer's voice, instruments used, beat, etc. After this first listen--during which I usually judge the song by its cover--I have to hear it again. Usually the lyrics will pop out to me more this time around, although usually only in snippets. It takes me a while to memorize whole songs quickly. My old roommate Molly could do this and it used to drive me crazy. I don't understand how people memorize song lyrics so quickly. It takes me a while. When I was a kid I didn't understand much of anything I listened to because I never learned all the lyrics. There are a lot of songs that I listen to now that I'm older and I'm shocked at what they're about. (This happens to me with Disney movies too.) If I listen to a song enough times I can usually grow to appreciate it. I usually don't grow to love songs over long periods of time (although this has been known to happen). What usually happens is that during the "judge the song by its cover" stage I'll decide if I absolutely love a song or just think it's okay. If I love the song first off then I will adore it for a really long time. If it is only a like-r then it may take a while to sink in and become something I really like. Radiohead is a good example of a band that took me a while to like. I had to listen to OK Computer for weeks before I decided that I could listen to it on my own without being prompted by someone else. I haven't braved their other albums yet. I'm afraid of what I might find--and of how long it will take me to like what I find. On the other hand, the first time I listened to The Bird and the Bee I loved it immediately and wouldn't stop listening to it for at least a week.

Isn't this super in depth look into my musical taste fun?! Yeah!

One of the most interesting things to me about music is how two different people react to the same artist. And I'm not necessarily interested in the fact that one person likes this artist and the other person hates that artist. What's interesting is when two people like the same artist but gravitate toward different songs. This happened to me and my brother when I was little. He used to drive me around everwhere when I was younger. The bands we most often listened to were Five Iron Frenzy and the O.C. Supertones, my favorite and his favorite, respectively, although both bands were keepers. We'd listen to the Supertones and he'd say "I love this song" and I'd think "Can we fast forward through this one?" (We were at the tail-end of the cassette tape generation. That and his truck didn't have a CD player yet). After that another song would come on that I would adore and he would be apathetic about. I can never understand this. My musical taste was genius, why didn't he agree?

I've encountered this same conundrum with Blaine and I find it hilarious. I've grown to like most of what he has given me. His music isn't bad, a lot of it is amazingly good. I just don't LOVE all of it. There are a lot of keepers for me, but there are just as many albums, artists and songs that I say "eh......" to. Blaine always absolutely, 100% loves and endorses all this music. He knows that I like most of it, but I don't know yet if he's disappointed that I don't love more of it. I have a theory as to why we don't always see eye to eye on music and it involves my big confession. I love, love, love, LOVE poppy music. Always have and always will. I'm not a big fan of ambient music because it makes me fall asleep when I drive and when I drive is pretty much the only time I have to listen to music uninterrupted. So I've grown to be very fond to peppy, hook-y music that keeps me awake. I don't know if he's really figured this out yet. I've told him, but this hasn't narrowed his giving at all. I suppose my preferences don't really need to. Any new album or artist is a new experience after all. And, if I really think about it, I have come to really love some more ambient, mellow music. I just have to listen to it at home when I'm getting ready for bed.

There is another difference in our musical tastes that I also find amusing. Let me use a real-world analogy to make sense of it:

It is 1950. Blaine is the United States. I am Russia. Blaine's music is cutting edge and modern and fancy. My music is old-school, folky and traditional.

Now the analogy breaks down here because in my version of the story America goes to Russia and dumps all of its cutting edge music into the countryside. It's a revolution! But it's also too much at once. Russia can't listen to it all! Russia can't get that modern that quickly! It's too hard! Whine, whine, whine.

And that's what I do with Blaine. I whine. He dumps more music into my library. I whine. He asks me if I've listened to it all in a week. I whine. He plays something in his car that I really like. I ask him who it is. He tells me. I can't find the song on my iPod. I whine.

But despite all my whining and teasing of Blaine's exuberant giving, I'm actually enjoying myself. I feel so cultured and cutting edge. I'm on top of the musical game--sort of--and my horizons are so broad! Win.

Holy cow it's 12:41am. What am I doing? I have to work in the morning. Yikes. Goodnight.