When I was 10, I went to my neighbor’s house every day to play Tomb Raider III. On the PlayStation One. In between sick cheating runs and blowing up Croft Manor, we went to the grocery store to stock up on sweets. And Pepsi, of course.
Until, one day, the clerk at the store gave us this cardboard sleeve with a CD alongside our six pack:
After we managed to close our mouths and put our socks back on — I mean, how would you react to Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft when you’re 10 — we popped the CD into a PC. It had screensavers, videos, game demos, free internet minutes (yeah, I’m old) and some catchy music.
One of the songs was F-F-F-Falling by The Rasmus. The day I first listened to that song was the day I began developing a taste for music. From that moment on, I would excessively listen to one band’s albums or one genre’s most popular acts, over and over again. Until I had soaked up, understood, and lived that genre.
But with each new style, I would inevitably reach a point where I enjoyed it so much, I thought:
“How can anyone NOT like this music?!”
And yet, I have blasted through classic rock, German hip-hop, dancehall, heavy metal, punk, grunge, R&B, jazz, J-Pop, K-Pop, electronic dance music, dubstep, underground rap, epic orchestra music, and any other genre you can imagine.
Eventually, I realized that while for every genre, I could find someone who likes it, I have yet to find the person who enjoys all of them equally as much as I do.
There are two types of people in this world: those who divide the world into two types of people, and those who don’t.
It took me 17 years of loving music to realize that the sooner you step out of the former mindset, the better. Only then can we learn to appreciate how unique we all are. And, unlike tastes in music, it’s not up for debate that that’s a good thing.