On Music

I recently got into a bit of an argument with my mom and sister about songs and lyrics, which got me thinking about how being ace affects my music tastes. The answer, it seems, is surprisingly a lot.

My family listens to "Top 40" stations, for the most part, which are filled with Taylor Swift and Hannah Montana and Lady Gaga and other similar people. I started explaining how Taylor Swift's songs seemed very boring, because the lyrics to her songs were very uncreative and repetitive. "Love Story," for instance, references several famous pieces of literature such as Romeo and Juliet and The Scarlet Letter, but it doesn't seem like she really understood what those stories were about.

One of my main points was that I have decreasing tolerance for the generic feel-good no-personality love songs. While I'll still listen to songs if they have a good tune and silly lyrics, I find myself more and more irritated to hear songs about sugarsweet conventional love all the time. Because, really, is that all that's going on in singers' lives that they have to write about?

Interestingly, though I've only recently come to be annoyed by all of the love songs on the radio, I seem to have been subconsciously aware of it. My favorite artists include Regina Spektor, Neutral Milk Hotel, and the Decemberists, plus the rock music my dad raised me on. Most of the songs by these people have non-romantic or non-sexual topics and are instead focused on a type of storytelling through music. Even when listening to singers whose songs are mostly romantic, I tend to like the non-romantic songs the best.

What I learned from this conversation was that I probably shouldn't bring it up again, as my family assumed I was being some kind of music elitist who hates "normal music." I don't hate it for being normal, I dislike it because it doesn't pertain to my life. I'm not actually sure what my romantic orientation is (though I personally think that human emotion is more complex than a simple sexual/romantic/platonic axis), having never been romantically attracted to someone. On the other hand, I have a feeling that's still fairly normal for someone my age. Regardless, I imagine I'm not the only person out there who is sick of hearing the same romantic song themes over and over again. I think this falls into a list of things another asexual girl made up: "Reasons I should have figured out I was asexual much sooner."