Alternative Angst

During my high school days teenagers liked clearly defined categories and placing people in them. In a world where you were either popular or you weren’t, you could be a metalhead or a hip hop head but not both I was a 'blerd' ahead of my time. I had friends from different backgrounds and I didn’t easily fit into one category. My musical tastes were as eclectic as I was and because people couldn’t pigeonhole me I became “that weird black guy”. It wasn’t long before the teasing and ostracising took its toll, causing me to be withdrawn and depressed. With a divorced and overworked mother and shouting siblings, home wasn’t exactly a safe haven either.

Of course, it wasn’t all doom and gloom. Sure, I listened to hip hop and R&B dance music and pop, all of which I associate with happier memories. I owe a debt of gratitude to Dee-lite and De La Soul for their happy hippy vibes which kept me jumping and dancing in the living room until I got yelled at for making too much noise. But in my quiet moments, when I was away from my friends, I found myself listening to and liking songs with deeper meaning as I tried to make sense of my broken family and non-existent social life. By my mid-teens, more often than not I was enveloped in sadness. My depression made me spend entire weekends sprawled across our lumpy living room sofa in my black baja hoodie, head completely covered, shutting the world out. On the days when I wasn’t feeling so great and just wanted to curl up into a ball in the middle of my bed instead of sitting in a classroom surrounded by my peers and feeling genuinely invisible, when I wanted to settle into my melancholy and infinite sadness these are some of the songs that I would listen to.

1. Air of December - Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians

Shooting Rubberbands at the Stars was an album that came out around my second year of high school. Perfect timing as it coincided with the start of my belief that I could write and express myself through words. Even though Edie Brickell was singing, it was as if she were talking to someone and every word of every lyric sounded lived and emotionally honest. To me the songs always seemed like personal poems set to melodic music and the words made me stop, reflect and imagine. I could write about any song on that album since each song had a different effect on me, but the lyrics in ‘Circle’ made me the saddest. They made me think about how much I missed the friends I had in elementary school who no longer “come around” while at the same time confirming “being alone is the best way to be [because] nobody else can say goodbye”.

2. Radiohead - Creep

In my first year at college I had a hard time making friends. I felt lost in a sea of new faces and everyone seemed to be in a relationship except me. While I didn’t feel like a creep, I definitely felt like a weirdo, wondered what I was doing with my life and that I didn’t belong anywhere. A guy in my English class who used to wear holey second-hand grandpa sweaters (an homage to Kurt Cobain no doubt) introduced me to this song and I was instantly hooked.

3. Cranberries - Twenty-One

It was hard to escape Dolores O'Riordan haunting voice from The Cranberries in the 90s - not that you’d want to. MTV, radio, and every college and university campus seemed to have them on repeat. While ‘Zombie’ was the song played the most at parties, I used to listen to Twenty One when I was around 18 thinking the song was about someone who’d found the answers to life’s questions or at least the solution to their problems and hoped I would be able to do the same when I hit that age.

4.Today - Smashing Pumpkins

Another song that helped me wallow in my misery. I had no idea what the song was about at the time (though I’ve since discovered it’s about how shitty Billy Corgan’s parents were to him) but that didn’t matter. Corgan’s voice told me he was angry about something and the violins and cello instantly amplified how sad I felt inside about my home life.

5. Bang and Blame - R.E.M.

Bang and Blame reminds me of a friendship that would now be described as toxic. He would use me to get invited to parties, borrow my clothes and ruin them and generally treat me like crap. But one of the worst things he did was go after the same girl I liked when he found out I liked her and they ended up dating for a while which at the time felt like the betrayal to end all betrayals. I stopped talking to both of them for months and went through a long depression. This was one of the many albums we both liked and Bang and Blame came to represent that time for me. Listening to it now, the dark lyrics kind of parallel how I felt at the time. Used and emotionally manipulated.

I listen to these songs every now and then not to feel depressed but because they remind me of who I was and who I’m not anymore. Writing about them brought back feelings and memories I had long since forgotten and made me realize how much good music there was in the 90s. Now I appreciate them as emotionally self-indulgent pieces of pop perfection and smile.