What’s on your ipod?
When I was getting into music, really from the 9th grade through the end of high school, it was incredibly important to know what music someone listened to. In gauging friend compatibility I needed to know something about the other person’s taste in music. In the world I remember (this would have been form about 1987 to 1991) young people were split into groups by music. The words we used to describe different groups corresponded to the types of music they listened to. People with long hair and jeans were stoners, their Iron Maiden t-shirt told you all you needed to know. Top 40 listeners could be identified by certain mainstream markers. There was always punk, and that was complemented by new wave—a certain “look” came with the music. Music more or less aligned with an identity.. or sub-culture.
These days during the school year when the weekly Lawrentian comes out I like to browse the “What’s on your ipod section.” I’m curious, but also hoping I discover an artist. Often I am flummoxed by the mixture of choices. The one I copied above is a case in point. What I see is this totally eclectic grouping that moves from Notorious B.I.G. to Cheap Trick to the Beatles to Blues Traveler. Whoa! That’s like four ways of dressing and acting as far as I’m concerned. But it doesn’t mean that for students today. In terms of music there’s no way to pigeon hole students or set them in the kind of groups that I knew growing up.
Why is this? I am going to go out on a limb and dismiss the idea that they are more sophisticated than my generation. I would instead guess that music and identity are being de-coupled.. and therefore the question “what music do you listen to” no longer has the same urgency. It doesn’t tell me much about the person, it just tells me if this person is interested in music. Students still mark themselves and have identities, but those are no longer strongly based on musical styles. Just what those identities are would take me another post.. and some more thought.. but the shift in identity markers has left music free to be appreciated for itself.
Just to get the ball rolling, I wonder if what kind of phone a person is carrying is now more important than the music on their ipod.. in terms of marking an identity.
I think we’re cycling back to music selection/collection as identity or, alternatively, haven’t lost that equivalence. Many of the high school kids I’m familiar with listen to indie rock (Vampire Weekend, Passion Pit, She & Him) and dress in similar “ironic hipster” fashion. And they wouldn’t be caught dead listening to Drake or Gaga.
I think the ala-carte-ness of being able to buy single tracks has fragmented what used to be a “bonding” experience with a larger work (an album, a series of albums, etc.). Being able to just buy the cool track from an album has made it harder for listeners to understand and appreciate the music of an artist. Instead, identify is forged with a collection of songs (of course we did this too when making mix tapes). Needless to say, the ala-carte purchase model has also had a huge impact on the way some arists approach making music, so the whole process feeds back into itself.
Also, the “click and listen” opportunities of today create an amazing ability to sample a huge range of music. It used to be so much harder which might have led to it being a deeper experience. I have very fond memories of visiting a small used record store called “The Record Exchange” when I was growing up. I would love to browse the store’s eclectic collection, ask to hear part of the album, and then decide whether or not to buy. I would probably never have discovered Jan Hammer & Jerry Goodman’s “Like Children” or The Mahavishnu Orchestra without “The Record Exchange” (thanks, Franklin!). The process of discovery was slow but very rewarding.