A controversial topic to get my little blog up and started (and to also avoid any current English coursework which I owe to my lecturer).
I for one, only really discovered my taste of music a year ago. You may be thinking, geez, that's a little late for a 17 year old to find out what they enjoy listening to on a daily basis? And well, you're right my friends! Music is a huge part of my life - with a family completely and utterly absorbed in the stuff, I was a little late to jump on the bandwagon. Up until last year, I was quite happy listening to Reggie Yeates on a Sunday evening, telling me who the rest of the UK were downloading that week. I was partial to a bit of The Script and Nicki Minaj, (although I always questioned the lyrics, "you a stupid hoe"). And then I was introduced, by a new friend at the time, to Nirvana.
Oh yes, I was thrown right in there into this massive black hole of lyrics about sex, drugs and women - and it began to grow on me. Now don't get me wrong, it wasn't that I had never heard of Kurt Cobain before, my brothers used to belt out the tunes from Nevermind every evening after school, its just that I was never that interested in that time of my life. And I think, looking back, it was because I never thought outside of the box. I was used to living my perfectly normal life in Cornwall, with my normal friends, my normal clothes that I bought from the 2 shops I have in my local town (meaning everyone wore the same clothes) and my normal radio 1 music...Normal? I am speaking in the sense that to me, this was what I was absorbed in and how I thought I should be.
I listened to the album Bleach, I can hand on heart say that I actually think it changed my life. Lets quickly move away from the deep, soppy, over the top moment I was having there - rare for me. The lyrics spoke to me, alongside the melody and the whole story behind Cobain and why he made music. I quickly became obsessed with the band, to the point that I shut myself off from everything just to listen to them. I would turn my phone onto aeroplane mode so that nobody could contact me, I would come home from college at lunch times to listen to music in the calm of my own bedroom, I bleached the back - yes, just the back, of my hair blonde, I threw out all my old clothes and replaced them with black jeans, flannel shirts and converse. My appearance also took a beating as I transformed from a girl who never wore any make up, to a semi-emo wearing thick black eye make up and a permanent red lip. While I was there, I thought why not go the whole hog, and got my nose pierced and may I say, WITHOUT my parents permission (ooo, rebel).
You may be reading this thinking "wow, extreme impact from listening to one CD", and yes, but this whole new transformation was the version of 'me' that I wanted to be. I was fed of us conforming to the social norms of what society said I should look like and what I should listen to - at the age of 17, I had put my foot down and said NO MORE, all because of the way I had interpreted an album.
After realising that all my friends were drifting away from me as I voluntarily shut my self off, I explained to them that this is who I wanted to be from now on- not that my personality had changed, just the way I saw life. Being good friends, they seemed to accept it...well, I assume they did as we are still friends now. To this day they dont know who Kurt Cobain is though, and make remarks when I insist on playing Unplugged Live from New York in my car, but that's rock and roll...right?
I sort of "faded" out of this phase, the word faded being highlighted as Nirvana are still my favourite band and I refuse to listen to pop-culture music or shop in New Look. My appearance is also a more mellow version of what I changed it too, but I found my own style and way I like to present myself and now I just go with that.
Wow...this seems to have changed from a post about music to a post about how music changed my life, same thing though really isn't it? Music does change lives, and I think that if I hadn't listened to that one guy who handed me that Bleach album and insisted that I gave Nirvana a chance, I would still be living my mundane life inside the controlled body of somebody, that I didn't actually want to be.
So to that person, thank you.
And to Nirvana, thank you too - you beautiful people.
