Placebo

I found this in my vault of private stuff. It was written in May of 2013. There was a reason to keep it private back then, not anymore. Enjoy.

I always had a strange relationship with music. Unlike most people, I don't feel a need for music. I like it, but I don't care about it. Music feels a lot like watching football (soccer) to me: if there's a game going on and I'm watching it with friends, I'll watch it and enjoy it, but I wouldn't go out of my way to go watch a football match by myself. The main difference is that while I can share my non-interest in football with a lot of my friends, the same doesn't happen to music. I feel a lot of pressure from friends and society to like music, to pick my genre, to have my personality defined by the music I hear. I think I wouldn't hear music at all if I weren't being asked all the time what kind of music I like.

In the past months I listened to a lot of different genre radios and ultimately picked Alternative Rock as my genre. I think it suits me, it's innovative enough without entering metal region, and fits my preferences for strange, alternative movies, which are natural and not pressured, by the way. I found Foo Fighters and 30 Seconds to Mars out of the blue and became a fan, and that's how I found out I liked the genre. Of course, it helps that it's a good genre to tell people about, it's not completely shallow like pop, old-fashioned like rock, or way too specific like latin or country. When you tell people that you like alternative rock, you are pretty sure you're not making a fool out of yourself. It's a safe choice.

In spite of that, there's still a lot to learn about my music genre. And I feel compelled to learn about it. There's a lot of groups out there I never heard about, there's a lot of songs I heard in alt-rock radios without knowing whom they're from, there's a lot of songs which I like but to which I never really paid attention, and couldn't remember again even if my life depended on it. All the other alt-rock fans are much better informed than me, and that will definitely show when I talk to them about music. So I have to learn. When my best friend who I'm trying really hard not to see as more than just a friend asked me if I liked Placebo and subsequently invited me to one of their concerts, I immediately said yes. I know it's a good and talented band, alt-rock genre, it came very natural to me. I knew I liked it. I conveniently forgot to tell her that I really only knew and recognized one of Placebo's songs, Every You Every Me, which I knew by heart from the Cruel Intentions soundtrack to which I had listened to exhaustion in the past.

Does it make any sense to know you like a band even though you haven't listened to any of their songs except one? I don't know. I guess it made sense for me. And it's not like that I really don't know it, I was pretty sure I knew some of their songs but haven't realized they were theirs yet. So after I accepted that invitation, I knew what I had to do. I had to learn. I started today. Pulled up a group of Placebo songs and started listening. I felt relieved when I recognized another song, Special Needs. I later recognized three more songs of them from the group of songs that I liked. And I wasn't wrong. I liked them, for sure. It would take me a few more weeks of learning, but I knew I won't be disappointed when I go to the concert.

But as I listened to the previously unknown Song to Say Goodbye, I started to feel bad about myself. Placebo has a bit of a melancholic tone, as I gladly discovered then, and that also helped me set the mood. I felt the pressure of society, I felt used for listening to music not to enjoy it, but to be able to tell other people I know it. And then I looked at my past and asked myself what had I been doing with my life to reach this point without knowing this already. It's a lot like travelling. which is also not my biggest interest, but then makes me jealous of all the people that have already been everywhere in the world. The not being able to respond to people that say they will gladly live in a poor African country, despite every bad thing everyone else says about it. How could I have reached this point in my life and know so little about the world, the music, the life itself?

I don't know the answer to these questions, and probably never will. But at least I know I know Placebo now. I discovered it's actually a bit sadder, much more calm, introspective and melancholic that I expected. I like it.