June 29, 2010

I Love Love Love That We Don't Listen To The The Exact Same Music

Replace the maps with iPhones. That's more like it.
My girlfriend and I just completed our first ever roadtrip together. We've done some small day trips before, but this was a straight-up full-day-of-driving-pack-some-sandwiches-in-the-cooler ROAD TRIP. We were crossin' state lines, y'all.

In order to circumvent some of my previously stated car stereo control issues, we agreed to switch off albums for the entirety of the 25+ hours of driving.

Let's just say I learned a lot. For instance, I learned that there's a TON more Oasis songs than the ones I heard on the radio back when I was a teenager. Also, for every obscure American band that I've never heard of, there's an equally obscure British band that I've DEFINITELY never heard of. What can I say? She likes Britpop.

That, of course, is exactly what made it awesome. Over the course of the whole trip, I think she only played two or three albums I'd previously heard. Our musical interests, while similar, overlap ever so perfectly in a way that I get to listen to a lot of new music but don't necessarily have to worry about her non-ironically breaking out a Nickelback record or anything.

In the past, I've dated girls where the pendulum swung way too far in either direction. In one relationship, the act of sharing a new musical discovery was totally lost because she'd usually already heard the band before; my mixtapes were rendered completely useless. Another past fling was totally the "I love everything but rap and country" type, which meant that she just listened to whatever came on the radio at any given moment. Girls like her make up for 97% of all Black Eyed Peas album sales.

I'm into the give and the take. Our musical Venn diagram leaves plenty of room for discovery and that's the best. Discovering somebody's favorite albums and sharing your own is all part of the fun.

So, tell me again: which one is Liam and which one is Noel?

5 comments:

Scott said...

Liam is the British one...

Phil said...

Ahh yes!! Of course!

al said...

I fully support this concept, but it's definitely a fine balance.

Too often things are going so well until she has you over and puts in some Nu Metal for makeout music.

I think the Caulfields said it best in 1994, "It's never good, to be understood, by a girl in Acid Wash."

Anonymous said...

I'm more of a Dirty Projectors fan, but she likes Arcade Fire. It's like we're from two different worlds!

roboconcept said...

eh, maybe. Still on the epic quest for someone who likes roughly the exact same things as me. And a girl who will get down to Burzum.

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