If You Keep Losing Sleep

I want to talk about individualism and change in humans. However, I want to start with mentioning an interview discussion between one of my favourite artists and another incredibly talented artist talking about the future of music. The future of music is something that I can't say I have given alot of thought to - I have always kind of lived in the past with music, in the way that I see it progress and change, but I don't really have much of a history of going along with it. It's a shame really, I do wish that I was more progressive with my musical tastes and interests, but I do find it difficult to sway too far from the "genres" of music that I grew up with and resonate with most.
In the conversation between these two artists, they discussed the "old days", so to speak, of when if you had a particular interest in a band, the way people would know about it would basically be only if you spoke to them about it, or if they came to your house and saw the posters on your wall. These days, if you like a band or an artist or a group of any kind, then it kind of becomes your personality, and you can delare that to the world if you so please, via social media. Social media has allowed us to be individuals in a way that nothing ever has before - all the algorithms that are created from what we watch and click, and suddenly we have this app on our phones that is feeding us advertisements and content that we are, as an individual, interested in. If you handed your phone to somebody else, and they scrolled through your Shorts, it would not be as captivating to them as it is for you, because it was created for you and by you.
Only 20 years ago, we all sat around in the living room and we all watched one screen, and we were all encouraged to be individuals back then too, but we were also forced to just watch one screen. We all either had to take turns to choose what the whole family had to watch, or we just simply didn't get a choice because Dad had the remote - or whatever it was in your family dynamic. Computers too - if you were lucky enough to have a computer in 2004, it was a family desktop computer and everyone in the house shared it. Suddenly, and I mean suddenly because 20 years really isn't a very long time in the grand scheme of things, we all started having our own screens. And I remember writing a post on here back in maybe... I want to say it was 2009 or 2010, and I was sitting in my room and I had my desktop computer, a small TV and DVD player, and my flip phone. And I remember thinking that I was just truly so, so bored. I was bored because I had such a number of options to choose from - did I want to call a friend? Watch a movie? Go on Twitter? Tumblr? MySpace? MSN Messenger? Chatrooms? - so many options, leading me into some kind of decision overload that I ended up just feeling completely bored. The concept of that really got to me back then. Imagine it now. We don't really get bored anymore, we just get numb.
Moving on to individualism in the relm of music, my favourite band of all time is an Australian band called Silverchair. I love Silverchair for many reasons, but one of the main reasons is because Silverchair is absolutely not your regular band that allowed themselves to be pigeon-holed into a specific genre or style. Silverchair released five studio albums between 1995 - 2007 and every single one of their albums is different. I would like to believe that other bands have done this too, but none that I can actually think of - not to this degree anyway. Not as progressively as Silverchair. Maybe the 1975 however they never really pigeon-holed themselves in the first place.
Silverchair were 17 years old when they released their first album, Frogstomp (1995), and they were well into adulthood by the time Young Modern (2007) came out. They matured and grew up over that time, and their music changed with them. The fact that they allowed their music to grow and change as they grew and changed as individuals and as a band is truly inspirational.
Their first album, Frogstomp (1995), was a grunge-Nirvana-inspired-alternative-metal kind of masterpeice really. Everyone in Australia at least has definately heard "Tomorrow" but I do encourage you to listen to "Israel's Son" or "Pure Massacre". Their second album, Freak Show (1997) they started to become a little more refined however still had that grunge or perhaps post-grunge style to their music as they reached adulthood. By the time Neon Ballroom (1999) came out, we had some much more artsy and emotion-filled songs from Daniel Johns as he publicly struggled with his mental health. This album is (quietly) my favourite of theirs. Daniel Johns' lyrics by 1999 were incredibly heart-breaking and devestating - see "Do You Feel the Same?" - "Would I be read, if I was see-through, or would you just read my spine?"
Diorama (2002) came out three years after the previous album, breaking their habit of bringing out an album every two years. This album was really their first step into a more pop-inspired style to their sound, but still with a grittiness to their lyrics - see "The Greatest View" - "You're the analyst, the fungus in my milk, when you want no one, and you got someone. Through the wind you crawl, and laugh and burning dunes."
By the time Young Modern (2007) finally came out, five long years after Diorama (2002), their sound had entirely shifted. Their music by this time really was more about catchy hooks and very polished, and a very far cry from the three boys from Newcastle that brought out their first grunge album in the mid-90's. But you know what? That's perfectly fine. They changed as they grew, they changed with the times, and they somehow - somehow! - remained relevent when so many bands that they toured alongside back then are simply considered one-hit-wonders.
Interesting that this rant of mine started talking about a conversation between Matty Healy and Josh Citarella and turned into some kind of argument with myself about how fantastic and relevent Silverchair still are today even though they went on an indefinate hiatus in 2011.

Anyhow. I hope that the younger generation today start to take some of the individualism that their apps are spewing at them, and see it change over the years, and realise that it is OK to change and grow as a human. And I hope that they learn to be curious about other peoples interests and not just their own FYP because although we are all encouraged to be our own person, sometimes we are not always right. Sometimes it's okay to learn from others. Sometimes it's okay to still allow somebody else to choose the channel and watch it together as a family or a couple or a bunch of friends, because connection is dying due to the birth of something that is actually built on connection - social media.
And above all else - stop pigeon-holing yourself. Who you were when you were 17 won't be who you are when you're 27 - I promise. See: Silverchair. And me.