Lately I've been 'digging' all these old albums and artists from the 90's. I don't know why, but its' like I'm rediscovering them all over again.
New for the second time.
I only recently started listening to song lyrics. The words that I could never hear before seem to be jumping out at me, and even more scarily, making some sense. This is a big thing for me. It's odd, but a lot of what I like it probably considered 'emo', or something similarly dismissive. But is all the music I listen to like that, or does it just seems that way because those are the tunes that I'm listening to now?
But when I say that I 'get' the lyrics, I don't mean that I'm all morose and mopey or anything like that, but that perhaps having come through some shit in life and been able to look back on it objectively, analyse it, I can understand where they're coming from. I think the 'looking back and analysing' part is the key. While music is many things, one of them is that it's a reflection of the musician, or at least a window into part of their mindscape. But to get some sort of meaning from it, you need to see how it relates to yourself. Who can hope to try and understand what another person is telling you if you can't try and understand or accept the things that make up yourself? Your view of other people is always from the perspective of yourself, and in this way music can mean different things to different people. At least, that's how I'm starting to view things.
I think that the iPod has a lot to do with it. The listening to music bit. But at the same time it's a Catch 22: You can be some old hipster listening and discovering the meaning in all the old shit in the world, but as nice as it is, you risk missing out on listening to and discovering the meaning in all the new shit coming out. Sure, I listen to Triple J as well, but it seems that you get a fairly narrow view of the offerings, and an increasingly crap view at that.
I should 'diversify my music portfolio', if you know what I'm saying (and you do know what I'm saying, right?)