The Cutprice Guignol

Every time I’m at a party, a gathering, a meeting of minds, the conversation will, at some point, turn to what music we’re going to listen to. Which bitingly modern EP will make the cut? Which classic album should we dissect once more? Only one question hangs between us, unspoken, because the answer needs not be heard. Because there’s no way in hell that anyone is letting me pick the band. Hi, I’m Louise, I’m twenty-four, and I never fucking learned how to listen to music!

When I say I have a bad taste in music, I mean it not as a self-deprecating slight: I mean it as the only explanation I can give for the fact that pretty much every single person I’ve ever met, regardless of their own musical predilections, has stared at my music taste in outright horror more than once in our acquaintance. Several people have gone out of their way to plead with me not to put on Oingo Boingo albums while we’re just trying to have a good time. I’m not playing here. This isn’t for fun. My taste in music is exceptional garbage, and I feel like it’s time to come clean about it. How can I sit here, the arbiter of what is good and what is not, without letting you know that the stuff I pipe into my listening-holes is such unrelenting swill that it would probably cause your ears to wither off and die in protest?

My very first proper gig was Dragonforce, and it’s all been downhill from there in terms of having a music taste palatable to anyone else. And this isn’t some sort of removed, ironic enjoyment – no, no, that would be to easy. Would you like me to show you have many times I’ve listened to this absurd funk remix of the Star Wars soundtrack?

It’s fifteen minutes long, and my boyfriend walked in on me dancing to it through headphones two days ago and I was forced to tell him that it was power metal, because that seemed less awful, somehow. I live in utter fear of my headphones being tugged out of my phone on a bus or something, and everyone around me being subjected to the Scissor Sister’s swing cover of Franz Ferdinand, and then they’d know, they’d all know. 

The specifics of the actual bands I listen to are unimportant; all that matters is that there are at least a half-dozen on my running playlist that you would turn off the radio to avoid. My favourite band is Fall Out Boy, and no, not in an ironic, nostalgic fashion; I had an argument earlier today about while Folie A Deux is a legitimately great piece of music. Yes, that’s right, Folie A Deux: the Fall Out Boy album even Fall Out Boy fans somewhat loathe. Even when it comes to ridiculous bands, I can’t even pick the right albums to listen to. Hell, even the smattering of socially-acceptable bands I listen to, I still manage to pick the wrong releases – I’m a big My Chemical Romance fan, and I will fight you to first blood over Danger Days being their finest album. Yes, I know I’m quantifiably wrong, and no, I don’t care. My favourite Muse album? Resistance. I love the Exogenesis Symphony. I fucking love it. I fuck with The Fratellis second album. I don’t know what I’m doing.

You know that one song on your playlist, that one guilty pleasure that you kind of hate, but can’t help but listen to once in a while? That’s my entire taste in music. In fact, you know what – everyone has one of those songs, and I’m sure I would just love to hear yours. Drop it on the comments below, or throw it at me on Twitter or Tumblr. Give me your bad music. Repent, and let me take on your sins and give me something to listen to while I’m cleaning the bathroom. Oh, and never ask me to pick an album if we run into each other at a party. Because I’m putting on Jim Steinman’s Bad for Good, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.