I grew up listening to the sounds of the 60s, The Beatles and a bit of Motown, two things I still enjoy. But since I was a little kid, there were a few songs that really opened my ears to something completely new. This doesn’t necessarily mean these songs or artists are the best their respective genres have to offer, they were enough to get me to check out new things.
In chronological order, songs that changed the way I thought about music:
Dr. Dre “Nuthin’ But a G Thang” – I was in fourth grade at a friend’s house when I saw Dr. Dre come across the screen in his droptop on hydraulics. I think my draw dropped to the floor. I’d heard rap before, but never anything like THIS. This started a life long love affair with hip-hop. These days I listen to more of the underground stuff – Aesop Rock, Little Brother, and the Cunninlynguists.
I picked up Snoop Doggy Dogg’s Doggystyle, Dre’s protege’s first album, a short while after hearing G Thang. My parents found this cassette and were NOT happy. I wasn’t able to buy albums with parental advisory stickers after that whole incident. Grunge and punk rock, for some reason, were acceptable. About a decade later, my parents would let me take my little brother to see Snoop in concert for his 16th birthday.
Nirvana “Heart Shaped Box” – I actually like Nirvana’s earlier albums better, but this is where I started listening to grunge music. This lead to other things, but Nirvana is pretty much the epitome of grunge.
In college I worked at a CD store and thought it was strange when the little kids came in with Kurt Cobain t-shirts. While I think grunge defined the late 1980s/early 1990s, I don’t feel like this genre transcends that period in time. I can’t really see younger generations getting into Stone Temple Pilots or Soundgarden. Maybe I’m naive, but this stuff doesn’t seem to fit in with post 9/11 thinking. Most of grunge was about suffering from addiction, feeling alone, and the crappy state of society. I mean, we have Obama now! What do we have to be depressed about?
For me, grunge paved the way to garage and punk rock.
Nine Inch Nails “Closer” – Post Industrial music. I feel this song exposed me to a bit of electronica, without moving me too far away from the distorted guitars of grunge. I know I’ve said this before, but you should really see NIN in concert.
NoFX “Philty Phil Philanthropist” - In seventh grade I started listening to a lot of bands on the Epitaph label, sort of by chance. Someone I hesitate to call a friend had one of their CDs and I decided to it check it out. I didn’t like it on my first listen – it has a really raw sound. The album actually talks a bit about capitalism and a few other moderately “political” things, so I was intrigued. I started listening to Rancid and a few other punk acts shortly thereafter.
Since Epitaph was an independent label, I started picking up samplers for other indie rock acts. This eventually led me to The Impossibles – a band that today would likely be classified as emo. I was emo before there was a word for it. And if someone did mention “emo” in those days, it wasn’t an insult.
The term originated from emotional hardcore punk. None of those guys wore eyeliner. If anything, you would have thought there were a bunch of beer swilling frat boys (unless they were straight edge, and then you would just assume they were just a bunch of asshole frat boys – there is a difference). Nowadays emo is associated with tight-jean wearing, eye-lined teenagers that hang out at Hot Topic. I’m pretty convinced that AFI is at fault for starting all that, but I’m not really sure who labeled this “emo.”
Daft Punk “Around the World” – Electronica! Like “Heart Shaped Box,” this song was my first exposure to Daft Punk. And like In Utero, my first exposure to Daft Punk isn’t what I considered their best work. As far as I’m concerned, Discovery is their masterpiece. Daft Punk lead me to Orbital and Bjork – both acts that I would fit under the electronica/house umbrella, but each with a very different sound.
And sort of like a color wheel, musical genres blend together to form new sounds. The blending of electronica and punk/indie rock brought us acts like Minus the Bear and Cut Copy. You can see how each group is a blend of my “primary” genres. Same goes for Kid Cudi and M.I.A. – both blend elements of hip-hop and electronica (I’d even say there is a bit of indie rock in there). And this is pretty cool.
