30 Day Blog Challenge: Day 16

Your views on mainstream music.

If you're looking for a hipster's perspective, move along.

I like what I like. Some of it's embarrassingly mainstream. A lot of it's not.

Here are my most-played artists, according to Last FM:

• Tracy Chapman
• Adele
• Michael Franti & Spearhead
• Tori Amos
• Cat Power
• The Beatles
• Chantal Kreviazuk
• Regina Spektor
  

Sarah and I had a conversation about this a couple of years ago. We both really liked Regina Spektor's album Begin to Hope. But a lot of our friends weren't too fond of it for a number of reasons: it was a lot less raw than her previous releases, for one (it did sound quite different than her earlier work, but I didn't necessarily think of that as a bad thing). And all of a sudden her music was being played on the radio, so tickets to see her in concert went up in price. (I saw her at St. Andrew's Hall in 2006 for $13. A year later, she came to the Fillmore, and tickets cost about $40.)

But the way Sarah and I see it, as long as you're being true to yourself and doing what you really want to do, then it's fine. As someone who's a huge fan of socially conscious lyrics, I think it's really great when stuff like that reaches a bigger audience.

This might seem like an odd connection to make, but my feelings about music are similar to my views on/approach to convincing people that war is stupid. I get really ticked off at people who talk about the monetary cost of war without ever talking about the human cost of it. But I make sure to keep the financial facts in my head when I argue with people who support wars. Because that is a way to appeal to their interests. And if I can convince them that we're spending too much money on war, then maybe I'm one step closer to convincing them that killing people senselessly is EVEN STUPIDER.

So basically, music is meant to be shared. So share it, you greedy, selfish hipsters. Feel the luv.