How much influence would you say music has had on your life? Would you say that the person you are at your core has played a role in how you found the music you love, or do you think it’s more likely that the music you love has played a role in you being the person you are, and are still becoming? Maybe some of both? Why are there so many people who claim to enjoy “any type of music, except country,” when others live and die by country music alone? How are there people who have memorized not just individual show tunes but can recite every song from musicals upon musicals? What makes someone live by thrash metal bands instead of obscure alternative artists, or the other way around?
I think, at least to a degree, any music fandom we have is initially the product of our immediate influences. Growing up in our house, most of what was played was Barry Manilow, the Carpenters, old Broadway soundtracks, and folk music heavily featuring the banjo. While I enjoyed some of that at the time, and wouldn’t take away anything from people who enjoy it now, none of those were things that stuck with me as I grew up. I started regularly listening to Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 weekly radio show when I was in 2nd or 3rd grade, mostly because my older cousins did and they were my most immediate guides as far as what I was supposed to be like as I grew older. Since a lot of my cousins were hardcore Top 40 music snobs by the time their ages reached double digits, those songs became important to me very quickly. Occasionally my mother’s interest would intersect with the top 40 hits: “Oh, that song ‘The Best of Times’ by that Styx group is so pretty’ or ‘I really like that nice song ‘Open Arms.’” Then she’d buy the album, and I’d have access to the the deeper tracks on “Paradise Theater” and “Escape.” I usually found songs I liked more than those initial radio hits.
But where does the passion come from? Why did I have favorite songs I followed, week after week, on Casey’s countdown? What brought on the change years later when top 40 music didn’t mean that much to me anymore?
The more I think on this, the more I believe that the music people eventually adopt as their own, whether it would be specific songs or artists or genres, becomes important because we seek out the music we hope represents a reflection of ourselves. Maybe I became such a Bruce Springsteen fan in high school because I wanted to believe that I understood him when he wrote and sang about the virtue of a broken heart: Imagine first encountering a lyric like “I’m no hero, that’s understood / All the redemption I can offer is beneath this dirty hood / with a chance to make it good somehow” when you’re a typically confused sixteen years old. How could that not affect you? Even if my girlfriends were few and my dating sporadic, he allowed me to believe that I still could have something to offer, even if the girls at my high school weren’t exactly lining up to give me the chance to prove it.
How did modern progressive rock become so important to me in adulthood? If anyone were to ask what I value about it, I’d readily say it’s the virtuosity in the performance and the songwriting, and in a musical genre (rock music) I grew up loving. But why? There are so many people who love so many songs just because they have a catchy hook they can dance to, or a recognizable lyric they can sing along with. I can like that too, but I’d much rather listen to a Dream Theater song filled with Olympic-level time signature gymnastics than chant along with the “na na nas” in “Centerfold” by the J. Geils Band for the 87,000th time in my life.
In that example, I think it’s aspirational. Instead of just enjoying the music coming from ridiculously talented musicians and songwriters, I believe a part of me wants to identify with it. Maybe if I can spot a quality that not everyone else will recognize or appreciate, that will feed the idea that as someone working to be creative myself, there could be a quality to what I do that still escapes the notice or appreciation I hope it will find someday.
If I ever consider the idea of trying to write a song with my friend Dax, it starts with what kind of a song it would be. Since I’m the writer and he’s the musician, our contributions seem practically predetermined, so I think about lyrics. Almost every time I play with an idea, I start thinking about someone like Bruce Hornsby in the later, post-top 40 part of his career. Most of his songs play out like cinematic storytelling, and they make me stop what I’m doing to listen, even if I know them by heart. If I ever do really try to write a song, I at least know what bar I’ll be reaching for.
It feels like I could go on for a few thousand more words on this topic, but I know I have to pace myself since the month is only half over. I think this will be something I pay more attention to, at least in the coming months — not just what music and songs and artists I enjoy, but why I value them as much as I do, and where that comes from. I think it could be an interesting exercise in self-reflection. Maybe if, or when, I do ever take the plunge into songwriting, or even just continue with my own fiction writing, it could give me some perspectives on the choices I make.
However, it still goes without saying that I’ll turn up the radio in my car every single time Def Leppard’s “Photograph” comes on. Because that song rocks just as hard as it did thirty-eight years ago when people played it loud on their boom boxes in the junior high cafeteria at lunchtime. Sometimes a catchy hook is all you need to say whatever you need it to.
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