"Love can sometimes be magic. But magic can sometimes just be an illusion..."
~ Javan
***
"I know I can treat you better than he can,
And any girl like you deserves a gentleman,
Tell me why are we wasting time on all your wasted crimes when you should be with me instead-?"
I click to another radio station, annoyed with the amount of pure idiocy in the words of so many songs lately. It's only people like me who take the time to listen to the words and see through them, noticing what lies they are.
"-All you sinners stand up sing hallelujah,
And if you can't stop shaking lean back let it move right through ya,
Say your prayers, say your prayers, say your prayers."
I find myself bobbing my head to the beat of the old song, remembering the first time my friends and I listened to it. While they preferred Colbie Calleit and Lady Gaga, I was the one listening to things like Green Day, Panic! At The Disco and even the occasional Kansas. Though I loved the popular, older version of today's music and I wasn't as obsessed with those bands (which are now accompanied by Twenty-One Pilots and Fall Out Boy) as much as I am now, I just wasn't into that kind of stuff as much as any other kid I knew. At least the stuff I like isn't the modern "baby lets do the deed while I show off my voice which needs to be technologically altered for this song to actually sound good". My music is real "baby I hate you get the hell out of my life before I knock your teeth down your throat" kind of stuff. It's the kind of music that makes you want to scream and yell and punch things and then ten minutes later you're completely fine and listening to people singing about wanting to be kids again.
I guess I just like how purely real these songs were. How they immaculately describe the complicated emotions of hating but loving somebody or regretting choices you make that end up making you feel so hopelessly empty. Then there's the fact that I can only listen to my angry songs when I'm in my car alone or when I can find my headphones. My parents would have fits if they found out the kind of stuff I listen to, so my times in the car and with my headphones are special. With my parents being pastors and basically being born in church, my early favorite songs were things like "Jesus Loves Me" and anything Chris Tomlin. One word of profanity in any song they decided to listen to, bam, the song was off and we were stuck to learning how to harmonize to the song Amazing Grace.
As I grew up, my parents let down their walls a little bit with the curse words in songs, being fine with the little words like damn and hell. Though they rarely bought songs with even those words in them, it wasn't as if my dad was switching the station to listen to a random sermon every time he heard a bad word or a suggestive comment on the radio.
I'm singing at the top of my lungs to the song now, banging on the steering wheel as I stop at a red light in traffic, my head bobbing and my voice mimicking Brendon Urie's as he belts out,
"I was drunk and it didn't mean a thing,
Stop thinking about the words from my mouth,
I love the things you hate about yourself,
Just finish the daydream, who were you tryna be?"
The light turns green and I step on the gas, taking a right and finishing the last part of the verse after missing a line,
"And being blue is better than being over it over it!"
My hands smack on the steering wheel to the beat, not unlike my dad's annoying habit, except my drumming is the less complex and more of the impulsive "oh hell yes" type.
