I cannot relate to pop music. Even if the song is catchy, and I even gain pleasure from it, I cannot listen to it. It is almost a sort of moral stance that I have. It seems immature now, but I just do not cross that boundary -- that is annoying to some extent.
But what is most annoying?
Meeting people that I like, truly like, and who are smart, strong willed people, but just having no musical bridge between us.
Sometimes we play music for each other on YouTube, or get into a request war at a bar... 9 times out of 10, if they aren't from my "scene," I am just shocked & appalled. I am thinking, "I just played a classic & golden anthem of Awesome, and you didn't even tap your foot, and now you're requesting [i]UTTER FILTH,[/i] and entranced by it..."
One of my best friends is incredibly smart, intelligent, great company; I treasure his company and whenever we meet we are excited... He is a music nut, but his music is all electronic; my music is all rock... He DJs, I play in bands. We go to each other's events and we do not enjoy ourselves but put on a mask of enjoyment, and then we confess we dislike one another's performance, but 'admire the energy and display! and oh, that one part of that one song, it was good!' (meaning: for 35 seconds I was not appalled)... Yeck.
"But no, seriously, I admire what you do -- it's really good," he says. And I say "Y'know, it takes a lot of talent to... Do those things, with the arrangement, and put it together... It's excellent work... You saw me dancing!" (by dancing I mean: drunkenly bobbing the entirety of my body in sync with a beat, making sure to hold two different drinks in my hands to have an excuse for not doing more.)
The only thing more annoying than being subjected to loud music you do not like is being subjected to loud music you do not like being performed by a person you like and getting just enough joy out of it through association to be... Ashamed that you are annoyed, and within this, seeking out 'the pleasure' that you do not understand.
I remember I was at a party when I was 14 or 15, and they were playing some 'awesome hard rock music' and a bunch of the guys were like, 'Yeah, cool!' and this girl I liked was 'into it.' Suddenly, they changed it to some dance music and I was like, "Bah, humbug," and she looked at me and said, "I pretended to enjoy your music now you have to pretend to enjoy mine!" I did not think of this as justice but rather as a mutual injustice...
(Luckily, as a midwest American, at all school dances they would do the 30-40 minutes of Top 20 trash, but would always then go into a good 30-40 minutes of classic rock & metal ballads mixed with random Nu-Metal and MTV punk. You could go to the dance and drink pop (soda) and talk for the Top 20s, and then you'd go out and white-person dance to the rock. We always hoped that someone would spike the drinks... It never happened. But when I was 16 I knew enough to show up to the dance drunk and stand away from the monitors while Derrick McFarland or Pat George spiked my drinks for me in the boy's bathroom to maintain the buzz... the next Monday all the kids would be like, "You were drunk?!" [because at this time people were still unsure of such things] and I'd be like, "Yeah, haha, I was drinking Vodka the WHOLE TIME (!!!), and I NEVER GOT CAUGHT (!!!)..." and they'd 'LOL OMG how did you do it?' as if it was a magic trick to bring a back pack and not breath down the neck of a teacher.)
(At this time in my life we'd have other people KNOW which groups of guys 'had the BOOZE' and we looked so cool and mature, so I'd be the cool dude and offer free booze to some girl; I thought that I'd 'get some' -- to midwest white guys in high school, we used the term lightly; there was 'getting some' and 'getting [i]some,[/i]; getting some was awkward making out and maybe you'd [i]touch her boobs,[/i] and she might [i]touch your dick,[/i] and you'd always be embarrassed admitting later it was [i]through the clothes[/i] ( ) but sometimes you could say [i]and it was in the pants/under the bra (!!!)[/i] and everyone was excited to hear that you touched boobs. I remember when someone finally got [i]some,[/i] like real 'sex,' there was this mixture of feeling -- "You're a man, and thus, by association, we are men!" and "OMG disease, pregnancy, eternal damnation, actual adulthood... Our coming of age is at an end!" It was a sobering feeling that this innocence would not last forever.)
... And I insist... This is the aspect that music is annoying.
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