Okay if I'm making a playlist of my life, I gotta start with Maroon 5.
I have a distant memory of touring Grand Canyons and other Canyons with my family, my dad blasting some random music and me and my brother being generally bored. The Canyons were cool, yes, but for my nine or ten year old self, the scenery got tiring after a while.
After a long day of touring, we stopped at -surprise-another Canyon, and I decided, no, I was not going to walk around again. The sights were all the same. I was tired, and it smelt like rotten eggs, and nope I was not getting out of the car.
So my mom and my brother left the car, got around to tour whatever place that was, and my dad continued his playlist without speaking, and I stared out of the windshield with a calm sense of not doing anything. It was amazing, because the day had been filled with doing everything, and sitting there with my dad, the car surrounded by tourists, I felt, for once, like an adult. (I'm guessing this period was when my introverted self began developing.)
The playlist played Maroon 5's Just a feeling. When it ended, the quiet serenity continued.
I stole the phone away from dad, played the song again, trying to hold onto that peacefulness. I played it the third time. Fourth time. Again and again, until my mom and brother got back, and then I had almost memorized all the song.
So that was the start of my music life.
I have to admit, a large part of my music style in the start was derived from my dad, who, like mentioned above, introduced me to Maroon 5 and other K-Pop songs I had casually listened to. My mom was too much of a Classic music person type-I hated Classical music- so my dad's playlists were what we listened to in the car.
But from Just a feeling, I was hooked to pop songs, and started to establish my own style of music.
And then we watched Moneyball.
Yes, again, we watched it because of dad. Dad loved baseball. He also loved movies.
So he really really loved Moneyball.
He had been so psyched to watch it, ranting about Oakland every time we passed the nearby area, even buying the Oakland A's cap. He had gone on about how we had to know the team's history and stuff like that before we watched the movie, and then we finally watched it, buying a DVD from the local Target store.
I hardly remember anything about baseball. What I remember is the song Brad Pitt's daughter sang for him playing from a tape in his car radio, and Brad Pitt's face as he listened.
The song really left an impact on me, the story of the movie and the actor's acting all blending together to make that song so emotional, and after we watched it I immediately searched it up.
Lenka's The Show.
I cannot remember how many times I listened to it. What I know, is that that song was always in the background for me in the remaining year that we spent in America.
And of course, Taylor Swift.
Taylor Swift's 1989 had been released around the time we had been getting ready to leave US, and her songs were playing everywhere. But ironically, the first but not last song of Taylor Swift that I loved wasn't from that album, but was Love Story.
The tragic story of Romeo and Juliet turned not-so-tragic in her song, and I can clearly remember watching the music video and singing along, sitting on a sofa in the apartment in Davis. I played the song repeatedly, never getting tired of it.
So after an year and half in US, where I was exposed to pop songs, I got back to Korea. By then, I knew most of Maroon 5's songs, and was a fan of Taylor Swift.
Korea was harsh on me. The first two years after I got back, the memories aren't really good, music not withstanding. All the friends I had had were strangers now, and they loved K-Pop idols like SNSD and EXO, while I was horribly confused. Every idol looked the same to me. All their casual love songs and bop-y hits sounded fake. I wondered why they would ever like them.
And the bad part was that I wasn't hesitant to voice these opinions. So I lost friends, I felt alone, and listened over and over to Taylor Swift and Maroon 5 and Akdong Musician.
Then 6th grade hit. I had a friend, the first close friend I've ever had-though I wouldn't admit it to her- and everything felt so much better.
My brother, at that stage, loved rap and hip-hop, starting from Eminem to Drake. So since I had always sort of wanted his approval, I listened to Eminem and all his rebellious and arrogant raps. Love the way you lie was the song that sparked in my eyes.
I have the embarrassing memory of practicing rapping in my mom's car, going to a cathedral-I had been a very defiant child. I loved Rihanna's voice, although I never listened to any more of her's songs, and I loved the story that Eminem was conveying, of a tortured love and consequences.
In that time, I didn't know Eminem was a misogynist or homophobic. I just listened to his rapping, a proud twelve year old who felt different from other peers because our music, our style, everything was different.
And I always had though different meant better.
My music taste was expanding, slowly but surely, from famous and obvious pop to Indie, learning artists like Kodaline, The Chainsmokers, Clean Bandit, Halsey and Dua Lipa.
In my 6th grade, I'm delighted to say that I had a wide spectrum of knowledge, and if somebody asked me about the most recent pop hits, I would almost always know who they were and what song they were famous for.
Then...middle school. The scariest change since I came back from US.
I had a horrible year. I went to an all girl's school, and since I hadn't really connected to girls in elementary school, I was loud, hotheaded, and very much...strange, to other kids.
And to top it off, my crush didn't like me. Yeah. Sad.
Which was probably why I fell so hard for the song Crush, by Tessa Violet. I listened to that song constantly, mostly around my cathedral which I hated going to but went because of the college students that tutored us. The guys were...enticing, to a thirteen year old me, and I remember one summer cathedral camp, I had this spectacular playlist filled with Troye Sivan, 21 pilots, Hayley Kiyoko, Harry Styles to Post Malone, and absolutely preened when a guy said he liked that song too.
Crushes meant everything to me. The lyrics- And yeah it's true that I'm a little bit intense, right. But can you blame me when you keep me on the fence, like?- were incredibly relatable, and I felt like I wasn't alone. Other people had horrible crushes too, and so it was normal for me to like people as intensely as I did, right?
I was a hormonal teenager, a very hormonal teenager, and the days were wasted away daydreaming, earphones plugged in my air.
Reputation was also around that period, and while everybody hated the album I absolutely adored it, loving Swift's new style and her badass-ness. And yes, like everyone else, some part of me was ashamed to admit I was a Swiftie, but that part of me was easily overruled by how much I loved her new album.
Every song had a story. And I loved stories.
7th grade ended roughly. 8th grade came.
And it was totally awesome.
There was a kid in my class, who loved pop songs as much as I did, and as much as I hate to admit, knew more than me. I could talk about Post Malone, Hayley Kiyoko, all the singers that weren't popular in Korea with her, and she introduced me to so many artists, that 8th grade was like the epitome of all the music I had loved before.
That was around the time I realized that friends were unfortunately a necessity to my life.
The first artist she told me about was King Princess. And oh, my, god, she was bloody amazing. Pussy is God drew me in with the explicit title, and 1950, oh, 1950 was the one that kept me on my toes.
I knew by then I was bi-I had realized that when I was startlingly turned on by Sabrina Carpenter's Almost Love music video-, and King Princess made me feel proud to be queer, her music rocking my world. Her voice was intoxicating, and I could probably write a million love poems about how much I loved her style and sense of music.
I also stumbled across Jessie Reyez and 6Black's Imported, and immediately fell in love with Jessie Reyez's raw voice. Imported was the most emotional-carrying song I had ever heard, and I almost always cry when I hear it. Jessie Reyez was such a good singer, almost one of my favorite if going by voice-only.
Billie Eilish had been becoming famous by that point too, my ex-crush putting up Ocean Eyes in her profile and me inevitably listening and falling. Bad Guy was amazing, my boy also, but what really left a mark was listen before i go. I knew she got hate for romanticizing suicide, but that song was pure emotion, one remarkable occasion where I was listening to it in bed and then started to cry, out of nowhere.
Anyway, 8th grade taught me about Conan Gray, Lolo Zouai, Doja Cat, Julia Michaels, and finally...Lana Del Rey.
Lana Del Rey, is a God.
I cannot stress enough how much her songs have changed my life.
She was so different from the usual pop songs that I had listened to before. She was completely unique in her lyrics, tempo, voice. Her themes of tragic romance and glamour made me feel like I was living in America in the 70's, giving me nostalgia for an era that I didn't even know.
Her lyrics speak of unforgettable and eternal love, the kind that I wish to have, a love that leaves a mark on my life and overwhelming in passion.
She was everything I wanted to be, everything I couldn't be.
Off to the races made me want to have a sugar daddy, despite how horrible that sounds. Happiness is a butterfly wants me to find my one true love and make him break my heart, just so I can revel in its sorrow, Hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have - but I have it lead me to Sylvia Plath, my now-favorite poet, opening up a whole genre of poetry that I couldn't help but fall for. National Anthem, Fuck it I love you, Venice Bitch, Brooklyn Baby, the list goes on and on.
I love Lana Del Rey. I don't care what saying that makes me look like. I just love her music so much. Finding her was like a piece of a puzzle sliding into my life of music, completing it for the time being.
I have no idea where my tastes will evolve to from here.
And now I'm in 9th grade, stuck at home because of the coronavirus, facing a load of math homework I should be working on.
A girl who loves writing, reading, listening, and watching. A girl who loves love.
Well, so, I should be going. I'll turn on my bluetooth speaker, pull up my music app, and tap on a song.
Hmm, and ah-ha! How to disappear looks good.