The Spice Girls vs Nirvana

Strawberry Jam Is The Best Jam

Chapter 2 - The Spice Girls vs Nirvana

Fast forward. Another anecdote. This time I'm about twenty years old, and I'm at college studying music. There was a guy on the same course as me. A very nice guy, liked his music, played guitar, alternative, acoustic/rock type. We kind of bonded over liking some of the same music. Again, nothing gay. This was two straight males ..albeit with long hair, that didn't talk to women that much ..but still, purely platonic. As things used to be before the Internet.

Anyway, the music was generally 60s guitar bands, along with the odd "underrated" album by some unknown, underappreciated artist. I'm saying "unknown", but it was the sort of stuff that would've been known to every alternative type on a music course, or anyone who's ever read Q Magazine, but to us this was the niche, "Have you heard of this album.. !?" Aren't we the experts on music face.

So a mutual respect kind of developed, and it was good to know someone who was interested in music the same way you were.

But then, one day, he asked me what I'd been listening to..

Normally a question like this would garner a response of some indie band or other. However, the previous day I'd been harbouring some nostalgia for the days of 2 Become 1, Super Nintendo and me pretending to hate the Spice Girls. So I'd had that pop classic on. Now, by this point it must be said, thanks to my earlier revelation, I'd really thrown off the shackles in regards what I allowed myself to like or not like. I basically just listened to whatever I felt like listening to, regardless of how cool or uncool it was, or what listening to it said to others about me as a person. Though if it was something particularly stigmatising I didn't always shout from the rooftops that I was listening to it. Either way, I listened to all sorts. From my much-loved bands like The Beatles, The Smiths, Blur, Oasis, and so on (if I had to be pigeonholed it was definitely indie) to stuff I just listened to when I was in the mood for something different, be it pop, dance, hip-hop, whatever. I just listened to what I genuinely liked, and in my own personal space I was more than happy to have the Spice Girls next to Radiohead and Nirvana in my CD rack. I'd really expunged any sort of snobbish bias by that point. Good music was just good music to me.

(Though, as another anecdote later on will show - yes, there are more anecdotes (!) - I still had a lot of cultural bias when it came to music. As, like with food, our tastes are partly shaped by the culture we grow up in. So my honest opinions were nevertheless biased by that factor.)

Anyhow, when I mentioned that the Spice Girls had been my most recent soundtrack the response I got was, "WHAT?! .. are you joking?" The guy genuinely thought I was joking. And he was genuinely disappointed in me when he found out that I wasn't, like I'd let him down in some deeply tragic way. Like he'd found out I was secretly a member of the Church of Satan or something. Though, saying that, with all the moshers and alternative types on that course that probably would've went down fairly well. It probably would've nabbed me a goth girlfriend even.

I remember feeling a little guilty when I saw his response. I knew the rules. I knew I was crossing the streams. In fact, by that point I was so free from social constraints when it came to my tastes in music that I kind of enjoyed publicly breaking the taboos. Saying the 'wrong thing' was always like a little social experiment to me. I knew what the response would be, but I wanted to see it in real time. To see how strong the contortions would be. It really is a little bit like having a superpower, you can walk through social boundaries that other people have a strict mental block against.

Conversely, there is a price to using it though.

Ultimately, that guy was a nice guy. He certainly wasn't mean enough to completely disown me for liking a Spice Girls album. However, he did lose some respect for me. His worldview naturally had a hierarchy, where people that listened to the Spice Girls and other 'manufactured' music were lower down and less credible than people that listened to Nirvana. It was a view I would've shared just five or six years earlier as I sat playing F-Zero and Super Mario Kart. So honesty, even over something as simple as music, can come at a cost to your social circle and reputation. Something most of us intuitively understand, even as children.

Overall I feel blessed to have been freed from the cognitive dissonance and compromised tastes I once had as a teenager. I think I've enjoyed music much more than most other people, who are partly hemmed in by music being their social badge. So I'd definitely recommend the self-reflection and self-awareness - hence why I'm writing this. Once you understand how your desire for social status affects what you assume are your natural tastes you really do become a better pilot of your own mind. A much freer bird.

However, socially it's also probably wise to temper that honesty in public when you do acquire that freedom of mind. When my original teenage self somehow decided to publicly hate the Spice Girls, semi-subconscious though that decision was, it was actually quite logical ..from a social point of view. As it spared me potential ridicule and alienation. Later on, in my more aware state, joining the Church of Satan might have helped me get a spooky girlfriend, but telling people I listened to the Spice Girls most certainly didn't. So breaking the subconscious social programming can have its downsides, and you do need to be mindful of that.