when music becomes optional
I did not think I would become my mother at the tender age of 33. My life could not be more different than hers when she was my age, but what binds us together is the lack of music in our adult lives. My mom has never plugged in to listen to anything for as long as I knew her (until last year when she habitually turned on abundance frequency "music" on Youtube, which doesn't count). I knew she was a Sting fangirl in her past life, much like I was during my kpop phase. The only way she listens to music these days is when my dad turns on the car stereo or his Bluetooth speaker to play some Spotify. I always thought it odd that she can go about her day without the need for tunes, yet here I am caught in the same predicament. Music has dissipated from my everyday life.
Every year I look in envy at my peers and their prolific Spotify Wrapped. Mine would have been the same songs in the Top 10 for two, three years in a row. My total minutes spent listening for the entire year is laughable. Genres have never wavered from kpop or anything pop-adjacent. And the thing is, it didn’t use to be like this. I lived in a world where Spotify did not exist, where I sought and listened to entire albums of different genres instead of single tracks or playlists. I was suki1 of iTunes, Youtube to MP3 converter, Soundcloud, k2nblog, and thee Russian torrent site. I managed my music files with the same fervor as a gardener tending her plants. I made sure everything I listened to was scrobbled to my last.fm2. I bought cassette tapes and CDs, and at one point asked my parents to buy me Daft Punk and SebastiAn vinyl records. I went to concerts! I was a 13-year-old obsessed with The Beatles!
Music was once a major part of my life. What happened?
A few hypotheses:
Working from home = no commute = no alone time for me and my tunes
Music to me is an activity in and of itself. I can hardly do anything with music in the background – it commands my full attention. My mind drifts when music plays much like a rat following the Pied Piper. There needs to be a time and place for me to enjoy music and for the longest time it was my work commute. Now that I work from home, it seems impossible to set aside time for music, what with the plethora of distractions from work, chores, dogs, and family (not in that particular order). Besides, I prefer silence in the little pockets of time I have to myself.
Spotify sucks
Since when did listening to music = playing Spotify? We used to be a proper country. I don’t doubt that there are still people who download or buy physical instead of stream, but I'm no longer one of them. It’s simply more convenient to download an app with a library of music than to build that library yourself. However there will always be something decidedly unchic about using Spotify. The entire model sucks. And I can’t be bothered to build my own music library again ever since I lost all the MP3 files I’ve culled over my formative years.
Fangirl or music lover?
My gender is fangirl. I’m convinced I came out of the womb as one. I tried to list all the bands and artists I got obsessed with throughout my existence, but decided against it out of sheer embarrassment. Which leads me to ask, could I ever enjoy music without stanning the artist? Did I stop listening to music as much because there was no one to stan anymore? Did I simply grow up? Could I possibly have outgrown music?
My overconsumption of kpop diminished my curiosity and dulled my music taste
I equate kpop to junk food, much like cable TV and the dumb reality shows I watch on a daily basis. I’m not saying it’s trash but that it’s a guilty pleasure. Bored? Play Supernova by Aespa for an instant dopamine hit. Kpop is an umbrella term for a wide variety of music genres performed by Korean idols. Why look elsewhere when I can listen to my kpop bias perform different genres in a single album, all while looking sexy AF? Listening to kpop is a quick boost of serotonin. Low-risk with high returns. And it totally ruined my relationship with music. Every time I put a kpop earworm on repeat, my interest in other music shrinks.
Life sucks and listening to music is a luxury
Much like a lot of things in life, I simply don't derive joy from listening to music anymore. It descended to the bottom rung of my entertainment ladder while film photography, watching TV or Youtube, and playing video games ascended on the list. I dare say doomscrolling is right up there as well. Somehow I learned to live without music and I’m not sure if it’s a boon or a bane. One thing's for sure though, I should get checked for depression.
My haters will say it's a skill issue and that I could easily plug and listen instead of writing a thousand-word blog post. As of writing, I charged my iPod Touch in the hopes of reconnecting with music I once loved. It has since become a time capsule of songs from college and my early 20s (it doesn't sync anymore on iTunes with its decrepit iOS). I’m still not sure if I could get used to this but I think making a habit of it helps. I should actively sort my life out as well so I could carve space for music again. After all, things come and go but music lasts forever.
A ‘regular customer or client' in Tagalog↩
I checked out my dormant last.fm for this post and found scrobbles of mysterious origin from January. Hacking last.fm? In the year 2025? I have no idea who Peso Pluma and the rest of the artists are. Needless to say I can't log in anymore, and therefore I declare my last.fm officially dead.↩