We all have our own unique musical tastes, oftentimes laden with so-called guilty pleasures, which we either unabashedly fess up to, or hope no one ever finds on our iPods (I, for one, totally own my love for Justin Bieber). We have all also had a wide variety of beloved bands throughout the years, and I find it particularly embarrassing and enjoyable to revisit some of my favourites.
In my profile, I’ve made it sound like I always had awesome taste, writing about my early love for Third Eye Blind and The Wallflowers as if I were some sort of young musical genius (wait, that didn’t make me cool?). But I also went through some other phases, a couple of which I’ve written about previously (Mary Chapin Carpenter ringing any bells?). While my junior high years were typically spent memorizing the lyrics to Backstreet Boys songs, high school was a different story. High school, in the early 2000s, was when I discovered a passion for angry music, and really, is there any better time to undergo this phase?
Yes, I was on board the emo train, listening to Dashboard Confessional’s screechy and depressing “Screaming Infidelities” on repeat, most likely while thinking of all the people who were disappointing me in my life. But emo was a little on the whiny side, so I quickly tired of this and forged into the territory of bands like Brand New and Something Corporate.
When I listen to Brand New’s Your Favourite Weapon or Something Corporate’s Leaving Through the Window now, I’m not shocked and appalled that I’d once considered this music as the gospel truth. It’s actually kind of catchy stuff. What I do remember, though, is that I thrived off those lyrics, happy that there were angrier people in the world, ones who were even applauded for bringing this anger to public attention. Now, admittedly, I think some of these lyrics may be a bit harsh, but I don’t deny that pretty much everyone can relate to them, or was able to at some point in their lives.
Here are some examples, if you can pretend you weren’t listening to “I Woke Up in a Car” or “Jude Law and a Semester Abroad.” Brand New was always pushing the limits, with lines filled with a very personal kind of hatred, like “and even if her plane crashes tonight, she’ll find some way to disappoint me by not burning in the wreckage or drowning at the bottom of the sea.” That’s pretty heavy, but I think the fact that it’s so terrible makes most other thoughts you might have had seem all the less terrible.
Something Corporate was more about the typical questioning of your place in the world. Lines like “I’ve never felt so lost, I’ve never felt so much at home” and “you always said destiny would blow me away, and nothing’s gonna blow me away” are probably taken most seriously by 17-year-olds, and I sure knew what they were getting at. Their songs were also also a touch evil, with “If You C Jordan” as a prime example (“I don’t care if you dye your hair, you’ll always be a little redhead bitch”).
Sure, there was lots of other, way angrier music out there at the time, stuff like Korn and Limp Bizkit, but that never seemed much like music to me, and I think what I liked best about a band like Brand New was that the songs were pretty catchy, so an appreciation for the lyrics could be kept secret. Because even when I was 17, I knew being so blatantly angry simply wasn’t cool.
Disclaimer: I did kind of like that Limp Bizkit “Rearranged” song. You know the one. The video involved milk and a prison.
Dance to the Radio 