A friend was looking through my playlist once and made a joke about how it looks like it hadn’t been changed since middle school. Slightly offended, I responded that the reason was because a lot of it was from when I was younger. She felt a bit guilty, but I knew she didn’t mean it maliciously.
My friend’s comment got me thinking about the music I have on my phone. When we’re playing music in my suite, mine is often toward the bottom of the must-play list because of the strange songs that may pop up. I have music ranging from country to classic rock. I have pop from years ago and current chart-topping hits. I also wouldn’t be surprised if a High School Musical 2 song came on followed by Broadway hit. Even though my music has songs that many people do love, many of them might be songs a person doesn’t want to hear because it takes them back to their awkward teen years. If people don’t like the song, I’ll turn it off, even my favorite One Direction songs that will most likely appear next on shuffle. I would occasionally get offended when people dissed artists and songs that I love, but I realized that I just need to brush it off. My playlist is for my ears only, and if other people want to listen they can certainly tell me to put on my jams. Although I advocate for older songs and not as popular artists, I also don’t mind adding new songs to my music. Every morning in one of my communication classes, my professor plays a song from a country around the world. A lot of these songs will eventually end up on my ever-growing list. “Diamond Duck” by Maraaya, a song from Slovenia, was one the songs that was quickly added. It may sound like a meaningless song with a good beat, but if you watch the video and look at the lyrics there’s a lot to it. Although “Diamond Duck” is in English, many of the songs played are in a different language. I will be adding all the songs that I enjoyed, despite the language, by the end of the year. Listening to new music, especially songs that can teach you more about the world, is something I hope people take away from this article. Other than learning about the world, I hope that I have proven that there is nothing wrong with having an eccentric taste in music. What you listen to can reveal a lot about your personality and your tastes, but you shouldn’t let that deter you from jamming to what you love. You can care about what other people think, but I am going to simply enjoy listening to my favorite songs whether they are old, new, in a different language, representative of different genres, from old shows and movies or just plain top 100. After all, headphones were invented for a reason.
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