The Record Crate

It’s a funny thing; musical taste. I was at a staff training event for my summer job and one of our ice breaker exercises was to tell our partners what kind of music we liked the least. My answer-which echoed just about everyone else’s answer-was country music. I’m not here today to preach to you about why I dislike country. I have neither the time nor the patience to wax philisophical about that ideology. Instead I’m here today to talk about trends in popular music. Namely, the popular music that consumes anyone who has ever been to a Vans Warped Tour, shopped in a Hot Topic or stopped liking a band as soon as they got popular.

I used to be that kid. I bled punk-pop music. The only kind of music I hated more than country music back then was electronic music. The reason? It has so many AKA’s it was hard to tell what you were listening to. House. Techno. Progressive House. Drum ‘N’ Bass. It made no sense to me and I wasn’t really into raves. Although I still pass on glowstick twirling, I have taken a liking to electrohousetechprogno music. This topic is also something I could talk for hours on.

It seemed as though everyone in my “musical circle” shunned any kind of music that has thumping 4-on-the-floor bass knocks and spacey synths. It was the antichrist of all that was music to me and my fellow music lovers. As pop-punk evolved in to straight up pop-rock, something happened. All of a sudden dance remixes of my favorite pop-punk songs became commonplace and crowd favorites during set changes at shows. And now, thanks to bands like 3OH!3, The Secret Handshake, Owl City and others, the element of techno music has officially claimed it’s spot in the “emo” world. I’m not talking down about this at all. I love Owl City. I think the music made by that guy is phenomenal. I just find it fascinating how certain styles of music can be hated widespread by an entire population and then all of a sudden cherished because of a few dance remixes. This begs an entirely new question: Are there really taste makers behind the scenes?