Before going on stage to perform, I would always get nervous and excited. It was a feeling that I could only achieve by performing in front of a crowd, and it was a feeling that would never get old. I loved the whole process of setting up my gear, tuning my guitar, doing a mic check, and waiting for the lights to dim. The lights would lower, and the drummer would start the count, and like a cannon, we would explode into our loud brand of Hardcore Punk that would hit the audience like a freight train. I loved to create as much noise and ambiance from my guitar as possible while screaming into the mic with every ounce of energy I had. Months of hard work culminated into a 20-minute set of adrenaline and passion. The more energetic the crowd would get, the more energetic we would get, making it the most simple and honest relationship I have ever had. Our fans were incredible, and it was always a compliment to see how much they identified with the music. However, the majority of people that heard our music had a different take on it altogether. They didn’t hear passion within all the chaos; what they heard could be summed up with a phrase I heard all too often: “That’s just noise.”

Art has always been a major part of my life, and I have always been an avid fan of music and film. It has always fascinated me how two people can hear the same song or watch the same movie and have completely different opinions about what they just experienced. One person can hear a song and think it is a masterpiece, while the person next to them hears a noise. Since we live in a time where practically everything is a click away, it makes it easy to find exactly what you are looking for. Some people search for music that they deem 'artistic,' while others love the formulaic sound of top 40 songs. Neither form of music is necessarily better than the other, but both sides tend to argue that what they like is 'real' music. I think most music falls into two categories, art, and entertainment.

Now, just because something is created to be entertainment doesn’t mean it lacks all artistic merit or talent. It just means that it was created to be sold as a product. When Katy Perry goes to the studio to record music that was written by a team of writers, they aren’t thinking, “Let’s expand the minds of young listeners,” they are thinking, “Will this sell? And will this sell a lot?” whereas some bands write music as a creative outlet for whatever feeling they are having at the time. They hope it sells, of course, but it is not the entire reason for creating the song.

Now, at this point I realize I sound like the type of hipster you would expect to see wearing a fedora outside of a vegan coffee shop in Little Five Points vaping an E-cig, but that’s only partially true. Everyone tries to find something that they are interested in, and while a lot of people were partying and going to football games in high school, I was devoting all my time to playing music. When you find something you are passionate about, you tend to delve into it deeper than someone who is just casually interested in the subject. If I try to talk about football with a super fan, I can only relate up to a certain point, because they have analyzed the game in such detail that they surpass my level of knowledge on the subject. I may watch a game and think it was good, while they saw all the errors and bad plays and think it was terrible. Some avid music fans are the same way, constantly analyzing and searching for the next unique artist to catch their attention.

So, does that mean that someone who gets inspired by a Katy Perry song is any less of a music fan? No, because music is so subjective, and the ability to feel inspiration from a song is an incredible thing. People should never feel the need to apologize for loving a song or band. I always hear the term 'guilty pleasure' when someone is describing a song they enjoy that they feel is a mindless indulgence as if enjoying the song is such an embarrassing thing to admit, that they actually feel guilty for liking it. I used to have songs that I considered guilty pleasures, but in recent years I have realized that there is no reason to feel this way. I can enjoy the most extreme forms of expression, and I can enjoy music that was created to sell Versace clothing or Bugatti vehicles. Regardless of the motives for a song’s creation, I like what I like, and I’m just happy that I can enjoy different forms of music. So never apologize for what you like, if the radio makes you want to dance, then go ahead and dance. If hardcore music makes you want to stomp and do spin kicks, kick away. Life is too short to care about what others think of your interests, there is nothing wrong with only listening to the radio, and there is nothing wrong with only listening to underground music. At the end of the day, we are all just searching for things that make us happy, and luckily there is more than enough music to go around.