I think I was twelve years old when I discovered the Beatles.
There was a kid at my school who was the absolute coolest. He was tall, good-looking, and had the uncanny ability to grow facial hair in 7th grade. All the girls swooned over him and all the boys wanted to be him.
He was too cool to listen to the radio. All he ever played on his boombox was vintage classic rock, and you couldn't catch him anywhere without his faded denim jacket covered in Beatles pins. Suddenly, it seemed like our whole school became Beatles fans overnight. I was no exception -- except I wasn't cool. I was obnoxious.
I quickly procured all the Beatles albums. I went to the library and checked out all the Beatles books. I wore a pair of round Lennon specs. Within a week, I fancied myself an expert on the Fab Four, and every day when my parents would pick me up from school, I'd spend the drive home explaining the Beatles to them as if they hadn't lived through it.
"Did you know Ringo's real name is Richard? Did you know if you abbreviate 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,' it spells LSD? Did you know Paul is probably dead and they replaced him with a look-alike?" It's a wonder my parents didn't throw me out the car to be raised by raccoons (and raccoons that likely didn't care about George Harrison's middle name.)
I just got a taste of what my parents had to endure.
Someone once said there's no music better than whatever you listened to in college, and that's absolute truth for me. But I'm honestly convinced that the best music of all time just happened to get released between 1988 and 1992.
My tastes in college were all over the board. I was learning to properly DJ, so I listened to a ton of dance music. But I also worked at the college radio station and developed an ear for esoteric, left-of-center indie rock -- especially the underappreciated bands that critics dubbed "shoegaze." It's still my favorite music to this day.
The dictionary defines shoegaze as "a subgenre of indie rock characterized by ethereal vocals, guitar distortion and effects, feedback, and overwhelming volume." Shoegaze originators like Ride, Slowdive, and My Bloody Valentine would famously spend months in the studio layering simple guitar chords with enough reverb and effects to punch holes through speakers. When I saw Slowdive play Chicago in '92, I remember having to grab the railing after every song, because when they'd stop playing, I'd be dizzy from the change in equilibrium. It's like if your favorite musician was, in fact, a jet engine.
It's definitely not the music for everyone. I don't know many people on the fence about shoegaze. You either really get it or you really DON'T. I read a review once that said shoegaze was like listening to a mermaid fall into a black hole. My mom told me it sounded like a vacuum cleaner. Even the term "shoegaze" was originally an insult hurled by a music critic, aghast that people were paying money to watch musicians stare stoically at a bank of effect pedals on the ground.
But shoegaze was MY music, and being a fan felt like membership into a secret club. You'd see the same people at shows. You'd nod respectfully at anyone you spotted wearing a Ride t-shirt. For once, I finally felt like the coolest kid in school, hip to something no one else understood.
That is, until this week -- when I saw an article on Vice entitled, "Gen Z are Resurrecting Shoegaze for their Bleak Post-COVID World." Unbeknownst to me, today's cool kids have rediscovered those esoteric little bands from my youth, and those hard-to-find albums are now in heavy rotation on Spotify.
I went to TikTok and it's eleventy times cringier than me trying to teach my parents about the Beatles. There's kids making viral dances to Slowdive songs. There's shoegaze make-up tutorials. Girls are posting videos where they burn incense and fondle crystals to "manifest a shoegaze boyfriend." There's blog articles entitled, "What your favorite shoegaze band says about you."
Worst of all, it seems like the overwhelming consensus among the new generation is that shoegaze is supposed to be the soundtrack to mopey depression, sadness, and pandemic isolation. I guess it's now supposed to be the music you listen to when you need a good cry. It was never that way for us back in the day. If anything, the layered guitar effects and sonic maelstrom of shoegaze made me feel happy, alive, and blissed out. Not once did I listen in order to mourn my own existence. That's why God invented goth music, you sillies.
I'm not sure whether to be appalled by these new fans getting it all wrong, or if I should feel like a golden god for being a card-carrying member of the original shoegaze fanbase. Part of me wants to find these teenagers and lecture them on proper music appreciation. The other part wants them to think I'm a cool kid, too.
Except I'm not a cool kid. I'm a 50-year-old dude who happens to like the same music as a bunch of pretentious trendy kids right now. Maybe some of them are telling their parents interesting facts about Slowdive as I speak. I think I'll just stay off TikTok and let the kids have their mopey shoegaze moment. Their misappreciation and misappropriation of my favorite music is appalling, but if it results in Slowdive going on another reunion tour, we all win (except the people who think they sound like a vacuum cleaner.)
I'll be the blissed-out 50-year-old sore thumb in the back row and I won't care one bit.
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