question

Might one's relationship to pop music (in the popular sense) be related to how you defined yourself vis a vis your peers in your youth? Well, if you're the sort of person who is enough of a music dork to be reading this right now, and thus, likely a regular dork (to some degree) in high school. Personally, I came into my own as a music listener at a point when "alternative" was becoming mainstream. Music with transgressive trappings (most of which was actually painfully dull and unoriginal) was big business then and the popular kids at school grew out their hair and bought Doc Martens. I liked my share of "alternative" stuff (I watched 120 Minutes religiously with my sister) but increasingly I employed a couple of strategies to differentiate myself from the alternateen crowd. One--being more alternative than alternative. Getting into stuff that was weirder, more abrasive, or just plain obscure. Two--the twee backlash method. Just as the whole C-86 movement originally happened as a reaction to mandatory pseudo-rebelliousness, I reacted to mainstream music posing as the underground by getting into obscure music that was aggressively poppy, more "mainstream" than the mainstream. Sometimes to the point of sappy excess, saccharine sweetness.

This two-pronged approach still shows in the way I listen to music now. I tend to like things that are poppy or a bit on the inaccessible side, and if something is both, it will probably appeal to me even more. I've changed since high school, certainly. But that was a formative time for me and the context I found myself in, including the pop chart at the time and the particular high school I attended and all the reasons that I felt like a misfit among my peers and grew to embrace that through my music fandom, it all contributed to the direction I took at that formative time. It makes me wonder about other people's experiences and how they might have sent them in different directions.