Humanity Is Already Extinct.

PHOTO CREDIT: Jacob Sierra, Pexels, Marisa04, Pixabay.

APPARENTLY, I HAVE “the world’s worst taste in music” (yeah, if you can believe that). People really, really hate the shit I listen to.

Yeah, and? I’m neither proud nor ashamed as I have enough sense not to give the slightest shit. And, honestly, why would anyone else? But they do. And I am fucked if I know why.

It is beyond bullshit that the mere act of hitting play on a song is controversial enough that instead of going about the business of simply chilling, I have to either nut up and be ready to stand on business like William Wallace (which would defeat the whole purpose of trying to chill in the first place) or capitulate and just turn down the volume anytime some insufferable, douchey pop cop is within earshot and surrender my balls in exchange for a moment’s peace.

Normally, this difference in opinion would amount to nothing more than a reenactment of that car radio scene from Rush Hour, and we’d all have a good laugh about it. But no, some people have to turn it into the Hatfields and the McCoys.

I’m a walking garbage disposal when it comes to music. I have zero standards. I’ll listen to anything. 80s music? Sure! Power ballads? Why not? Mr Methane? Don’t mind if I do. You name it, I’ll give it a listen. And that goes for the cool stuff, too (Soundgarden, Nirvana, The Doors, etc.). Whatever it is, if it’s catchy and the MF’er has talent, I’ll give it a spin. Fuckin’ aye. If you’re routinely laughed off stage, your music is panned by critics and listeners alike, and you’re wondering just who the hell your one and only Spotify follower is – wonder no more. I’m like Ron Burgundy. I don’t give a shit. Why should I? Who cares? I didn’t write the damn songs, so why am I the one who has to take accountability if everyone thinks they suck? Besides, music is about the most subjective thing there is, other than food.

Come to think of it, why do we have music critics? Or food critics, for that matter? Who exactly is the market for their advice? People with a phobia of thinking for themselves? And who actually goes to restaurants or listens to bands on the basis of their recommendations? Some delusional person out there who thinks they’ve found their “identical taste bud twin?” Do you really need someone to hold your hand through the process of ordering a steak or buying a record? You’ve got your own damn ears, don’t you? What do I care if someone else likes something? Some people like to tattoo their eyeballs and will crack a fat from an ass whooping. What possible impact could someone else’s likes and/or dislikes have on my purchasing decisions? And suppose some trendy food truck serving up deep-fried nutsacks received a five-star review – what then? I’ve never read a music or restaurant review in my life.

I don’t need anyone’s permission to listen to a damn thing. Mariah Carey has a five-octave range, for God’s sake. I don’t care how cool and cerebral you are, there’s just no stepping to that level of talent. Tom Waits may be more serious and highfalutin, but to say he’s “better” just because he’s cool enough to inhale eight cartons of Winnie Reds a day is just straight-up delusional. Face it, Mariah Carey shits on Tom Waits.

I could not be less impressed by your musical taste. If you want to impress me, at least have the integrity to recommend some hip-hop music that isn’t just some condescending, pseudo-intellectual cornball pointing at their head and desperately trying to fill their quota of the words “consciousness” and “knowledge” for four boring minutes. Or, better yet, try liking a musical act without expecting a knighthood.

The amount of heavy lifting that one’s music taste does in constructing the so-called “human” personality demonstrates, at least to me, that the average person today is nothing more than a walking consignment of anthropomorphic junk mail. More living, breathing catalogues of the latest bands, films, fads, and slang conjured in a boardroom by our corporate overlords than actual human beings. Just a collection of behaviours, beliefs, preferences, and neuroses, most of them pointless, block-headed, cringe, and annoying. The sum of their aggregated personal data wrapped in a meat suit.

One Born Every Minute.

Back in my day, being cool was still an innate, understated charisma with which one was just naturally blessed. Yeah, we had this bullshit back then too, but now it’s gotten way out of hand. All you have to do these days is just buy stuff or like stuff, and that’s it. Gone are the days when you would have to be either born cool or play the endless game of ensuring that you’re never caught in 4K farting, crying or being bothered by anything. At least it didn’t cost anything other than the inconvenience of it all. Either you were born cool, or you’d have to shell out for a permit from a committee of your peers who would retain the right to terminate it for any (or no) reason. In which case you’d be fucked if it was something you’d invested all of your life’s capital into. Option one was phased out years ago due to lack of interest.

Really, can you remember the last time you saw somebody who was legitimately cool and who didn’t just go out and purchase the accoutrements or who just insisted on how cool they were and had someone cooler vouch for them? I’ve seen Wham! videos cooler than these hypebeasts.

Tyler Durden was onto something. You didn’t go down to the shops the other day and buy Supreme; Supreme bought you. You wear their brand like cattle to indicate just whose property you are. Your dumb ass went there thinking you were just scoring some “dank” threads when really you were applying for a job and were to stupid to notice. You thought you were buying when really you were selling. Ad space, of all things. On your person, no less. Now, you’ve been put to work as a glorified sign twirler, leveraging social proof to recruit even more rubes to what is, let’s be honest, a glorified pyramid scheme. And, to add insult to injury, you’re paying them. And I’m the goof?

That shit is so Machiavellian that even I have to admit that it moved a bit. If you want people to go along with some shitty agenda, just tell everyone it’s “cool.” If someone told you to jump off a cliff, would you?

Trick question – just say it’s “cool”, and you’d “yeet” yourself right off the thing while they’re at home playing “Fortnights,” oblivious to your demise. Works every time.

The trendier you are, the greater the likelihood that you’re sucking the devil’s dick. Think about it, it’s always the “coolest” members of your group who ditch you at a music festival to bang your date behind a Denny’s, leaving you to hitch a ride home with some deranged donkey fucker. It’s never the Mormons or the math geeks (in a parallel universe where they’re invited). How could one simultaneously be in harmonious lockstep with evil corporate tycoons and be a good person? Last I checked, they’re not investing a whole lot of time and money into nunneries.

Slow Jams? More Like Bro Jams.

And don’t get me started on the generally agreed-upon standard of what guys are supposed to listen to. Not that it even matters at my age; everyone eventually ends up listening to adult contemporary music anyway. It’s biological. (Although I’m man enough to admit that I am pushing it a bit.) At a certain age, you pretty much just gravitate towards it. There’s a reason your dad listens to it, as does your mum, your aunts and your uncles – even though that wasn’t always the case. You’re old, tired, cranky, and can no longer be fucked with anything more than 50 to 80 beats per minute.

Whatever, all those ketamine heads who listened to that “dubbed step” shit back in the day are now listening to Michael Bolton. Fuckin’ right they are. Men’s music. A round of golf on a Sunday with some frosty Arnold Palmers, blasting some Michael Bolton in a good, sturdy pair of double-pleated trousers. That’s living. All that aggressive shit is for boys with too much aggression, not for men with aggressive prostates.

What the hell else are you supposed to listen to while you’re riding down the highway in a top-down convertible, feeling the wind through your bald bonce? “Break-beat junglecore dub-drop?” Get the fuck outta here. You’ve got three options: adult contemporary, classic rock, or fail the warrant of fitness. Real talk. Any other genre and you’d be wasting a perfectly good automobile. You might as well drive the thing into a fuckin’ brick wall, bail out the front seat right before impact, and collect the insurance.

Editor’s note: Michael Bolton was mostly* a victim of “Peter Andre Syndrome,” whereby the music videos were so shit that he could have written Bohemian Rhapsody and all anyone would have noticed was him looking like a knob. #JusticeForMichaelBolton

Trust me, unless you happen to mature slower than normal, it’ll happen. You’d have to be clinging to your youth pretty badly to be this old and listening to Little Uzi Verts. It’s time to face the music (no pun intended): easy listening is your destiny.

like a bit of everything, but what people really take offence to is that I’m partial to the slow jams: All 4 One, Luther Vandross, K-Ci & JoJo, and the like. Yeah, fuckin’ aye. Always have been.

Seriously, which is the bigger bitch move? Listening to Luther Vandross or being pushed around by some hipster? Good luck living that down.

Back when I was in high school, the kids who were hardcore into music would get a hiding. The jocks in my class would listen to the Spice Girls just to prove their manhood. One of them admitted to liking Soundgarden one day during music class, and he almost got a hiding. No bullshit. I put it to you that if you and the bros aren’t standing ten toes down and listening to Endless Love after a game of rugby then you’re all weak shit.

The Heart Is A Muscle, Bro. 💪😥

It shits me no end that I’m about to further undermine my street cred by venturing (further) into wuss territory, but I guess I’ll just have to make do with having brass balls. I know exactly why people hate the slow stuff. Even when the artists were reasonable and accommodating enough to stay within the acceptable limits of sappiness. You’re all dead inside. 

In a nutshell, humanity got together one day and hatched a plot to assassinate one another, and, because somebody forgot to factor in population growth, it’s been going on ever since with no end in sight. No doubt, we need our norms, but some of the more arbitrary, bullshit ones tend to criminalize expressions of humanity to the point where vulnerability is ruthlessly ridiculed, emotion is suppressed, and the climate becomes too inhospitable to sustain authentic human life.

A lot of these norms are just a set of protocols that enable people to tolerate one another’s company for extended periods. If people had genuine human connections, maybe they’d actually like one another. They wouldn’t have to make shit work, it just would. The emotional bureaucracy under which we currently live is predicated on the cynical notion that we’re all inveterate dickbags and only serves to complicate matters, undermine human connection, bury it in red tape and sabotage the very relationships they were meant to regulate.

Experience is no doubt valuable in relationships but may wind up hindering it in some instances when most of these lessons are learned from dating fuckwits, and may not even apply in relationships with those less jaded and would only wind up making you look like the fuckwit should you apply those lessons to them. When past experience has you entering into a potential relationship under the presumption that they’re a fuckwit then I predict a close encounter with a flying saucer.

It would probably be best for all of us if we didn’t internalize these experiences so rigidly, especially if they’ve traumatized us shitless and just went in with an open mind, a pinch of salt and the right amount of decorum to keep things grounded.

In the immortal words of Feargal Sharkey:

Good song. Fuck off if you disagree.

That’s because the human “heart” went the way of pogs. Everyone boasts about how well they function and thrive in society as if that’s a flex. Society is inhuman – if you can take to such a thing like a duck to water, then you should check yourself for a pulse, a reflection, and a garlic allergy.

Much like how club bangers are made for party animals, the love songs are an outlet for lovers, shaggers and those who still have a soul. If you don’t wish to “release the romance valve” (inside or outside), then you’re probably not currently in the market for them. They’re like jack-o’-lanterns in June. However, not being in the market for them is not the same as packing a shit in the pumpkin aisle, which, unfortunately for society, is the majority opinion.

If they have neither love nor libido to express through a suitable musical outlet then, I dunno, maybe they’re just fuckless? Perhaps lack of “you know what” is bumming them out and they’re taking it out on me. We’ve all seen these people, they don’t exactly come across as raging poontanks.

A beautiful painting uses some dark colours. A shit one uses all darks. It’s all about balance. I am of the opinion, however superstitious, that your record collection is a reflection of your inner state. If it’s all heavy shit then there’s a non-zero chance you need a shrink. Discordant music, however awesome, expresses and reflects some amount of discord within (in my humble opinion). If the record collection contains at least some upbeat, harmonious music, then, to me at least, that’s a sign that the individual has a fair amount of pep in their step. If it’s love songs, they possess a fairly romantic disposition. If it’s materialistic rap music, then they may be filled with ambition. If it’s acid techno, then it’s probably acid. But that’s just me.

Hey, if you want to listen to that shit, do you, but don’t come and shatter my eardrums with your rancorous, nerve-jangling Dalek music.

The same people to whom love songs are anathema are the same people who wonder, either overtly or covertly, why they keep ending up with idiots, why they can’t trust their spouse, their friends, or society at large, why they can’t find their “soulmate” or even if such a thing exists. They’re only bullshit if souls aren’t a thing. You need a soul to have a soulmate, and just because everyone seems to be missing theirs doesn’t mean they altogether don’t exist. It’s just that most of the things that people value in society are incompatible with the transcendent.

And how the hell are you supposed to form a connection beyond the superficial when both of you are doing your best to obfuscate anything worth connecting with? What is it you think you’re going to connect with when the MF’er can’t shut the fuck up about how much they love Echo And The Bunnymen long enough to breathe, let alone share anything meaningful? The signal is being blocked – or rather, you’re being cock-blocked by a post-punk, neo-psychedelia, new-wave band from the 80s. Well, if they love Echo And The Bunnymen so much, why don’t they just go ahead and marry them?

Seriously, I’ve had enough backtalk from these pretentious little shits. Just listen to the Bee Gees like a normal person. As far as I’m concerned, you can all take your dull, soulless, shitty music, and fuck off.

G. Billington Evans is a satirical writer, visual artist, and owner of THEARTOFGEVANS.COM.