The Importance of Opening Up To New Music

If there is something I've come to realize in my life insofar, it's that opening up to new experiences is absolutely crucial to enjoying a wide range of interests and opportunities.  To try new things, to step outside of your comfort zone.  It's when we proceed to do the things we would've never considered, that we mature in our personality.  Music, more specifically, is something I've begun to understand as a gateway to exposing yourself to different worlds you might have never even given two thoughts before.  Take me as a youngster, for example.  All I remember listening to was the soundtrack to That Thing You Do!

The soundtrack to the 1996 film.

 
As I grew older, so did my musical tastes.  I eventually conformed to the mainstream music and inevitably listened to the usual: rap, hip-hop, dance, the top hits.  It was at a time when I imagined all music to be either Nelly, Eminem, or Britney Spears.  That illusion of music was quickly shattered one day when I was riding in the car with my mother.  Metallica's Enter Sandman came onto the radio and I totally took to the song.  It was the beginning to what I can consider my long journey in music.

Metallica became one of favorite bands. Ok, scratch that. My favorite band.  I got a signed bass by Rob Trujillo (still hanging in a case downstairs, at this very moment), I developed a fascination with Cliff Burton, and in seventh grade, I wore Metallica shirts for sixty-some days straight.  In regards to that last statement, it may seem like a pre-teen trying to define his individuality for--no. It wasn't.  It was simply a personal contest I made with myself in order to relieve the mundane routine of school.

I digress.

That love for Metallica quickly transpired into death metal.  I was turned onto the more popular bands in melodic death, more specifically.  I began to trash conformists for listening to mainstream radio and considered myself an 'outcast'.  I grew out my hair and I began to act like I was above others, purely on the notion that I listened to a music that wasn't necessarily popular within my school.  That phase quickly faded into an obsession with much more obscure bands within the wide genre of death metal.  Black, melodic, tech death, slam, thrash, speed/power, and the like.  I was infactuated with 235 (it's a message board and if you know where it is, good on you) and the users browsing it forced me to try to listen to all I could to gain a sense of the entire genre as a whole.  I created a last.fm and tried to jack up my Plays, just so I could compete with my fellow metal enthusiasts. 

The Shrouded Divine, an album by In Mourning, one of the bands I was lucky enough to find.

This phase came almost full circle as I began to listen to old pop and old rap.  It came to country and (some) opera.  It involved trance and classical. And it still involved metal.  It's the phase I'm currently in as this very moment.  I've come to realize something when I begin to reflect on my past musical tastes and how they have matured (for either the better or worse, you tell me).  When I listened to a country song this evening, on repeat for about ten times, I knew I was a different person than I was just a mere three years ago.

The country song I listened to tonight.  I know, his voice does not fit his body.

It's amazing how musical tastes change as you mature.  They affect your personality, your experiences, and quite literally, your life.  The point of this post wasn't to fully display my musical interests' past, but rather, demonstrate how my life has changed so much with different kinds of music.  So that's what I want to stress to you, whoever you are, wherever you are.  Try new music. Try new things in life.  Be open.  Through the willingness to try something you haven't done before, comes a new experience.  Through a new experience, comes knowledge. 

Through knowledge... comes happiness.