by Brett Warner
“I don’t really like this song.” She achieves in six offhand words what took Robert Smith most of the last two decades to accomplish: I realize that I’ve made a terrible mistake.
This girl – working as a waitress… not in a cocktail bar, but at the local IHOP – is short, blonde, cute. Nice, fun to talk to. I buy her a scone at Panera Bread. She brings her laptop, shows me pictures of her dog. We trade in gossip, forgotten secrets, and YouTube videos. She is a mystery as yet unfolded and I am a meek sojourner just looking for a friend.
But then, as always, comes the painful truth… She doesn’t like “Just Like Heaven” by The Cure.
[Jaie Suicide in Solitude]
There comes a time for every young rock and roll wallflower when you start meeting girls with the same (or better) tastes in music you do. This is a very crucial period, because it’s very easy to dive-bomb from spectacular heights with these girls if you don’t accept a few universal facts. For instance, you will never capture her heart or imagination the way Conor Oberst does. Just take a few deep breaths and repeat to yourself, “It doesn’t mean she doesn’t like me, it’s just that she will always unfairly compare our relationship to a strangely idealized fantasy in which getting drunk and vomiting on the subway is a thousand times more romantic than any Valentine’s Day plans I could ever possibly come up with.” She’ll comment that it’s been a lifelong dream to make love to Jimmy Eat World’s Clarity, which means you’ve already lost $14.99 at Tower Records without really even being offered a choice. (You’re more of a Bleed American person, but don’t dare say such a thing when she’s around.)
If you can learn to navigate these musicological twists and turns, you discover that there are some time-honored shared experiences that will help define this and all future geek-on-geek relationships you may find yourself in. When you invite her back to your room and play “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out” on your almost-in-tune acoustic guitar, you’ve created a bond stronger than any marriage. Sharing music with a girl is the most intimate thing you will ever do in your life. It’s not something to be taken lightly. Sex will end awkwardly and you’ll argue about random, pointless shit, but at the end of the day, she is the only other person who knows how you’d secretly prefer to die: driving in her car, never going back home again.
So to invest all your hopes, dreams, and fears in somebody, only to discover she doesn’t like that song, the one that eloquently summarizes your entire viewpoint on life and love… well, she may as well hate movies, chocolate, flowers, and eating dinner, too. Where can you go from there, really? You may think it’s pretentious to judge somebody by their choice of music, but I argue that it’s the most personal thing we can learn about each other. No two iTunes libraries are identical and no song means the exact same thing to different people. We pick out the music that moves us, that stirs us up and gets us all fizzy inside. Music lives in deep down emotional pockets where boyfriends fear to tread. It’s the wallpaper inside that room where love lives… and we all know wallpaper can make or break a room.
So yeah, it’s gotta be rock & rock music if you wanna dance with me.
(Somewhere, she’s saying all these same things about Daniel Powter’s “Bad Day”.)
