Being a teenager at the early 2000's... A music experience
Love the spontaneity that came to me after being inspired by a playlist of songs from the 2000's that I was lucky enough to stumble upon a few days ago. In fact, I've been putting this post off for far too long. I think today is precisely the right time to be able to express myself and also, in a way, relive some moments that marked not only my life but also the most convulsive days of my existence. And it is not an exaggeration to say that the days of adolescence are lived with a different intensity?
‘I'm feeling this’ is a song by Blink 182, which I listened to again not long ago and it really left an impact on me. It's not particularly outstanding from a strictly musical point of view. I mean, it's not a masterpiece of composition either. But it did represent a pop-punk anthem of the year 2004/2005. For those of you who don't know, I was born in 1992...., so do your own maths. In the early 2000's I stopped being a kid and started to listen more to my rebelliousness.
Bands like Korn, Blink 182, System of a Down, Linkin Park (with Chester, may he rest in peace), Daft Punk, Drum and Bass (I mean the electronic music genre) and many more bands were on my MP3 player at the time. Do you remember that device? Small, like something revolutionary, and which allowed you to download music directly from your computer to the device and listen at the touch of a button. Those were my days, months and years during my teenage years. I still remember what my body felt when I saw Green Day or The Offspring songs on MTV.
It's funny, you know? As a teenager I disowned Avril Lavigne, calling her a ‘poser’ and a couple of days ago I cried watching the YouTube music video of her song ‘Losing my grip’, from her debut album. It's not that the lyrics of the song were particularly sad, nothing to see.... It's just that I still miss the 14, 15, 16, 17 year old girl I once knew myself to be. I always thought my weirdness was something of a curse but now that I can see the big picture with a bit more perspective, I honestly only have words of gratitude to the music that developed my character and cultural preferences but also polished my taste for an art form, that maybe in the 2000's was as mainstream as Taylor Swift is today but that allowed me to experience a special youth.
Three Days Grace, Box Car Racer, Weezer, Foo Fighters, Queen of the stone age, Arctic Monkeys, Kittie.... Oh God, the list is getting longer and longer as I write. Wait a minute, A.F.I, UFF, what spectacular bands. I feel that this going back in time through music is something that beyond making us feel ‘old’, we should actually applaud and be grateful for. We can relive a thousand times what the riffs produce in our hides and minds. Move our heads to the rhythm of the hits that marked, literally, our lives. We can revisit moments with people who, for different reasons, are either no longer by our side, or we are gone; and everything connects again just by going to Spotify or better yet, YouTube and going back to being that girl born in the 90's, sitting in front of the TV, waiting for her favourite song or band. Music was always attached to my life, it shaped it, gave it meaning. Today, at 32, I look back on my adolescence and smile kindly and nostalgically.