There Is Something About You

In this post, I'm going to talk about music. Mostly because it's Friday, and I want to. Specifically, I want to talk about what makes music resonate with us. Why do we love one song so hard, and want to spork our ears out when we hear another?

My boyfriend hates Train with the white-hot heat of a thousand suns. It's a violent, visceral reaction that defies description. I feel the same way about Sheryl Crow. I'm sure she's a terribly nice person and all, but the opening notes of All I Wanna Do have nearly caused me to fracture my finger, so violent was my attempt to push the button to change the radio station.

I often wonder if there is something deeper behind our intense love or intense hatred for songs or musicians. Were the All American Rejects playing faintly in the background the last time they put lettuce on my friggin' hamburger, again, after I'd asked them not to, again? Did I make a subconscious connection between Gives You Hell and my desire to rub my open-faced burger all over the drive-thru window in protest? Is that why I hate it so much?

For the best example of the complete polarization music can create in people, I have only to mention one name. Lady Gaga. I find it interesting that there seems to be no middle ground where she is concerned. You don't hear folks say "That Lady Gaga....she's not half bad!" People either love her so much they want to take her behind the bleachers and have her freaky, besequined, human hair hatted babies, or they hate her so much they'd happily toss her into the nearest wood chipper. (As for me? She won my eternal love with her Cremaster 3-meets- Michael-Jackson's-Thriller video for Bad Romance.)

It makes sense that someone like Lady Gaga, who is as much performance art as music, would create such strong reactions in people. But why, say, Justin Bieber? He's a pretty harmless little dude, right? And yet, I have heard more people than I can count wish horrible, everlasting cases of laryngitis upon him. (Yes, his hair is annoying. I will freely admit that.)

My favorite thing about music is its ability to transport me. To this day, I can't hear Level 42 without being instantly taken back to an old red Ford pickup truck and a portable cassette player, and the excitement of a first crush. Music is so closely tied to memory, that I suppose it only makes sense we feel very strongly about the songs we love, and those we hate.

I will allow your everlasting love for N'Sync, if you'll never argue with me when I say that Licensed to Ill is the best album ever created. Because it is.