I used to be an average gay man, with average gay man musical tastes, i.e. I used to swear by the Madonna-Kylie-Eurovision Holy Trinity as the pinnacle of musical achievement.
I mean, people, I went to three gigs during the last twelve months: Kylie in January, Madonna last July… and The Eurovision Song Contest Live All The Way To Athens Greece last May. Ahem.
Now, My last.fm page is nothing to go by if you want long-term stats, because up until two months ago I mainly used a tiny old laptop, kept all my music on Dr B.’s desktop and streamed it to the stereo, or listened to it on my iRiver which was not supported by Audioscrobbler.
However, if you look at my last.fm stats by artist for the week ending 28 Jan 2007, when I engaged in a week-long experiment streaming music from other computers through to Windows Media Player on my laptop (making the wireless network keel over and various computers crash several times in the process), you’ll encounter the following screeching aural landscape:
- Kylie Minogue (23 tracks listened)
- Annie Lennox (22)
- Alcazar (10)
- Shakespear’s Sister (9)
- Girls Aloud (8)
- Imogen Heap (8)
- Mariah Carey (5)
- Sharam (4)
- Alexia (3), Sugababes (3), reel people feat angela johnson (3), Mighty Dub Katz (3)
Then on 11 February I got a nice big computer from Dr B for my birthday.
And then, one week later, it was loaded up with all my music and last.fm was scrobbling away.
And then I saw a trailer for Skins on Channel 4. I liked the song and Shazamed it. It turned out to be Standing in the Way of Control by The Gossip. I got the album and loved it. And, thanks to Twitter, I happen to know the exact watershed moment when I realised that that kind of music was sending electric charges down my spine and pumping my blood faster, because it was such a revelation that I decided it was worth twittering it to the world:
Walking to the tube listening to The Gossip. So not like me. It’s great.
08:15 AM February 23, 2007 from web
From that moment on, nothing has been the same. Week after week, my last.fm stats have been progressively cleansed of anything silly, empty, bubble-gummy, cheesy, glittery or – dare I say it? – camp. Divas, princesses and drama queens have all been exiled. Euro-pop, Euro-trash and Euro-vision now safely kept out of hearing distance on the other side of the Channel.
Today, I look at my last.fm stats for last week and this is what I see:
- The Strokes (116)
- Enter Shikari (78)
- Maxïmo Park (71)
- Kasabian (55)
- Bloc Party (54)
- Junior Boys (44)
- Plan B (43)
- The Feeling (36)
- Muse (32)
- Leftfield (30)
I feel this is something I should have done at the age of seventeen but did not know better then. And, because of that, there is still a chance that this is just a phase I am going through; let’s call it my ‘I am a rebel, an enemy of society and all I want to do is sulk in my basement wearing black lippy and listening to Marilyn Manson’ (note to self: acquire some Marilyn Manson tracks).
Who knows, perhaps I’ll manage to snap out of it just in time for next month’s Eurovision Song Contest. Because right now, frankly, I could not care less if the wind machines they use for the show got jammed and blew everyone and their comedy costumes far, far away.
