Whenever I find myself in a conversation with friends about music and middle school, I always sit back and listen in awe. While I hear my bestie talk about how All Time Low is to this day her top artist on Spotify after her middle school obsession with them, all I can claim is that the only music I listened to in middle school was the Christmas music on the radio in December. Staring out the window on the school bus and listening to music that understood your preteen struggles is a rite of passage I missed out on.
It wasn’t until one of my besties took me to the Hella Mega Tour last September that I finally got it. The lineup was Weezer, Fall Out Boy, and Green Day. Although we missed Weezer while navigating the SF parking scene, we made it just in time for the start of Fall Out Boy’s set. And it was incredible. Because of Fall Out Boy’s gigantic popularity in the 2000s, there were classics that I immediately recognized. But it wasn’t until that I realized how incredibly good their music was. I was hooked.
It was then, at 21 years old, that my Fall Out Boy phase began. In the fall of 2021, I basically listened exclusively to them. It wasn’t just that their music was incredibly catchy, but it was that there was emotion behind it. It was a surprisingly refreshing departure from the surf rock and hyper-pop that I was used to. I could actually scream-sing to this music. It helped me feel my own emotions.
I think about how I wish I had had this emotional outlet in high school. In high school, my priorities with music were different. At that stage in my life, I was trying to differentiate myself from my peers, and I so wanted to be unique in terms of the music I liked. I found validation in my peers not knowing the bands I listened to. I remember when I was 15 or 16, and I found out my cousin knew a song by my favorite band at the time. I was sincerely devastated that I wasn’t the only person who liked that band. It is funny to look back on, and I don’t fault my teen self for feeling this way. I see it as an important part of my development into an individual, secure adult. Now that I am older, I don’t let popularity determine whether or not I’m going to listen to certain music, because I know that regardless of what I listen to, I am a unique individual. In fact, I now see an artist’s popularity as a good indicator that they make good music. Now, I can let myself listen to artists who headline festivals and sell out arenas. I can listen let myself to the music that got my peers through middle school.
I just recently started getting into Panic! At the Disco, and I suspect my My Chemical Romance phase will start in the next few months. I love that I currently only listen to the music that my friends bumped when they were 13. And although I won’t experience being 13 on the school bus listening to the holy trinity of emo, I can still bop to Fall Out Boy while I’m biking to campus. Just because this music wasn’t for me back then, that doesn’t mean it can’t be for me now.