The craze of electronic dance music has swept the nation and is being blared out of laptops, stereos, and iPods everywhere. Electronic dance music, or EDM, as it is most commonly referred to, is a combination of bass and percussive electronic sounds, sometimes remixed with another song and sometimes on their own. Growing up, I obviously was not sure yet of what kinds of music I liked or disliked, so I just listened to whatever was on the radio. If I was in the car with my parents, they would play classic sixties, seventies and eighties music without hesitation. Elton John, Billy Joel, Paul Simon, and The Allman Brothers were all a part of my music library before I even knew what I was listening to.
As I got older, I became more and more engaged in the world of music, and started discovering what I liked and disliked and the reasons behind it. I knew that I liked the mainstream music because it was catchy, though I will always want to gauge my eyes out before actually admitting that I like Taylor Swift's music. I knew that I liked rap because it sounded like a flowing work of art with perfectly rhymed lyrics, and I didn't care whether the song was about The Real Slim Shady or if it was about 'driving low street in a Range Rover.' As I got more into my years as a rebellious teenager, I started listening to the music that my parents grew up listening to, and my playlists were filled with The Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and more of the same.
Now, I am not going to sit here and bash an entire genre of music, which half of my friends listen to anyway. When I started listening to EDM, the one thing I thought about it was that it was noise; a bunch of different noises put together into one song. But when I listened to the music that I liked to listen to, ranging from Alternative to Classic Rock, I didn't hear noise, I heard words. I heard the lyrics, and it sounded like art. I heard magical lyrical lines from "Blue jean baby, LA lady, seamstress for the band" to “And when the brokenhearted people / Living in the world agree / There will be an answer, let it be." I didn't just hear sound, I heard actual lyrics, which spoke and speak to people of so many different generations.
It's so funny to me, because more people my age would rather listen to Nikki MInaj or Drake or Skrillex than go anywhere near an Allman Brothers record. Now, don't get me wrong, I will still always be open to putting on a Miley Cyrus song any time of day. I am not saying that I refuse to ever listen to EDM. I went to a music festival where I started liking DJs and vibing to the music that they produced.
I retract my earlier statement of saying that EDM is just noise; it's not just noise. It is a work of sounds that are mixed together to produce a lively, upbeat, bass-heavy jam. I appreciate EDM as a genre of music, of course, I would just rather listen to classic or alternative rock over bass-heavy remixes at any times of the day.
One of the main things that I love about listening to rock music is that I can relate to my parents through it. I consider myself a pretty old soul, and listening to rock gives me insight on what the world was like when my parents were growing up. I'm sure my parents are much happier with my music choices now when we're in the car together than when I was younger and would insist on listening to either hardcore rap music that my mother would not understand, or Hilary Duff, which I'm sure my father was just thrilled to listen to every time I put it on. In the end, as a person who adores the art of music, I can appreciate almost every kind of music. I just prefer my playlists being filled with CCR, Elton John, and Beatles rather than Skrillex, Diplo, and Tiesto.
