I was blessed to come of age at a time in which both physical media and streaming were prevalent. One of my friends/neighbors got sent away to a boarding school run by monks in alaska and gave me his crate of CD‘s for safekeeping. this led to a lot of classic hipster /mu albums like in the aeroplane over the sea, oracular spectacular, hospice, gorillaz/demon days/plastic beach (i got rise of the ogre from the library and asked my mom what cunt meant bc it was in the book), the suburbs, the reminder, and bands like TMBG, james blake, eels, sleighbells, etc. I also was one of the only people in my school who loved lana del ray, even after her SNL performance. I had a good friend who i bonded with over born to die and after her death, i further deepened my relationship with lana’s music. She also really liked WHY? and alopecia was a big grief album for me.
I also listened to a lot of rap like the first odd future album, XXX, down from the 36 chambers, ex military (found takyon on youtube and it changed something in me) and most of all good kid MAAD city which i had on CD and blasted in the minivan on the drive to school daily.
The most cringe aspects were my deep love of ska punk and folk punk like defiance ohio, AJJ, reel big fish, but especially streetlight manifesto, who I quoted in my senior yearbook. I don’t listen to ska anymore so that’s why I consider it cringe, it’s so far from who I am now, but if i hear a streetlight song i’ll still know all the words.
Mix CD’s also had a huge impact on my music taste. The cool older hipster kids (these are all people who were unimaginably tumblr famous, especially being from a small town) who got together and created the Royal Mixtape Society. It only happened once, but we all created a mix CD and got a copy of everyone else’s in return. This lead to a lot of incredible discoveries, most of all the “Butts“ mixtape which has been the soundtrack to core memories of me and my best friends.
