Music is a litmus test for cool.

Sometimes I think about music, and what it means to me, and contrast it with what it seems to mean to other people.

I have a reasonably wide variety of music on any given playlist. Acapella, ambient, post rock, post metal, big band, jazz, blues-rock, bossa nova, dream pop, alt rock, pop punk, Christian rock, ska, drum and bass, dubstep, industrial, doom jazz, screamo, showtunes, sludge metal, swamp rock, symphonic metal, synthpop, trip-hop, New Romantic, psychobilly, folk, post-hardcore, prog rock, goth rock, gospel, grunge, gypsy punk, hard trance, indie pop, indie rock, J-Pop, jazz metal, minimalist pop, the list goes on.

I’ve had plenty of people express surprise or even disgust at the fact that I can and frequently do swing from Copeland to Pelican to Glenn Miller to Fall Out Boy to Regina Spektor. I don’t quite follow the logic behind it; don’t most people find themselves listening to things they ‘shouldn’t’ like at some point? And beyond the age of 16, don’t most people find themselves maturing past the point of moralizing something as open to interpretation and completely subjective as music? I still feel a strong urge to smack anyone who asks, “What’s your guilty-pleasure music?” Are you fucking serious? Are you still in high school? Are you gearing up to make a call about my personality based on whether I listen to Tool or not?

And the stupidest part is, they usually are. Maybe I'm just lucky, but most of the people I seem to bump into in a social setting seem to have quite a lot invested in the idea that everyone they're friends with must have similar or exactly the same taste in music, and more importantly, we must all dislike the same music. I’ve started intentionally throwing out the most widely hated bands in my repertoire whenever people ask what music I’m into, just to watch them pull faces and make disapproving or disappointed sounds over something so petty. “My Chemical Romance.” It’s always followed up by a silent fuck you.