continuing adventures in the search for the perfect song

So, music angst is not like, a new thing for me; see the music tag for the various ways I make music into this life-ending issue of issues. And yes, it's an Issue, because in my thirty-three years on this planet, I still don't know what makes a song click.

For a while, I was sure that I didn't really like hip-hop or rock all that much. I was sure of this, up until the Great Ipod Organization of August 2009 where I went through 1907 songs in my active library and started adding notes to the ones that I associated with vids and correcting for genre, then adding a note--no, still not kidding--to indicate which songs I'd written fic to and what fic and in some cases the time period so you know, what the fuck. It seemed like a good idea at the time

At which time, I realized I had three playlists worth of hip-hop that I listened to pretty regularly. I just didn't write to it. I took it to work or when I was exercising or when I took walks because it was energetic. Because no one sane puts on goddamn Pucifer or Elegia to take a walk; I used to have Korn and A Perfect Circle and Muse for that and I always ended up not so much relaxed as vaguely destructive and hostile. Also, as it turns out, half my music is technically rock or alt-rock so whatever. So what I like to write to is that moody stuff I put on the playlists Atlantis Project and Cut Your Wrists and End of the World (no, I really named them this. I'll screenshot my iTunes to prove it. I'm pretty much always about one good break with reality from liquid black eyeliner and black hair dye, you see. Why hide it?).

This is my epiphany. Apparently the only thing I don't have a chunk of library attached to is indie rock, because I live in Austin and listening to Indie in Austin is totes selling out. Or maybe I'm just tired of music where the primary instrument is a guitar in minor while people with strangely shaped facial hair have existential crises on stage. Trust me, if you had to live your entire life within thirty miles of South by Southwest and every place with electricity shows a band every night, it starts to wear on you. I've been tempted to get a Britney Spears concert t-shirt next time I go downtown to express my solidarity with mainstream. I don't care if it's hollow and plastic and soulless--it does not induce the desire to get high, smoke cloves, and read Ayn Rand and embrace quasi-anarchism, and honestly, I am way too busy for a real try at anarchism.

( most recent music acquisitions, or, how Genius runs my life )

I think if anyone ever asked me to characterize myself by my music, it would be "Embraces Mainstream Like a Religion" with a side of "Has Problems Admitting Love of Rock" and "Power Ballads Are My Life". I don't understand how I could go to a liberal arts college, be forced to attend more indy bands in tiny, smelly bars, be inundated with Kurt Cobain and the entire Seattle subgenre and end up like this.