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September 03, 2008
Dare to be different
I try to do some form of exercise almost every day of the week. I love to go running, and other days I go to the gym. Failing that, I'll try to ride my bike somewhere. If anything, it allows me to look down haughtily upon the un-fit masses.
Yesterday, I was riding the elevator at the gym when another guy stepped into the elevator, and he was blasting Katy Perry's "I Kissed A Girl" on his iPod.
This highlighted quite a conundrum for me: I love to rock out to, shall we say, songs you might not expect a normal 28-year-old guy to listen to. I'm talking stuff like I Will Survive, It's Raining Men, and a good deal of the Rihanna, Britney Spears and Shakira catalogs. These aren't bad songs, per se, but I feel slightly embarrassed when I'm running down the street and everyone can hear me listening to Since U Been Gone.
However, the other part of me says this: don't be embarrassed. Be proud of your love for teen pop, female empowerment, and satires about dolls. And I tend to agree - it might look weird that The Go-Gos help me run fast, but I don't care. I like Kelly Clarkson. And judging by her album sales, lots of other people do too. Having Avril Lavigne on my playlist might call my sexuality into question, but am I ashamed? No!
So to my fellow humans, who change the station when Abba comes on, and who lower the volume when others can hear you enjoying a Nelly Furtado track, I say embrace it! Let the cheese blare!
Conversely, there are also songs that are so cliche, they might also lead to embarrassment: Eye of the Tiger. Don't Stop Believing. Living on a Prayer. I call these "training montage" songs, and they are embarrassing because they are exactly what you're supposed to be listening to when working out. These also do not deserve to be shunned: they are merely victims of their own popularity. Clearly the goal here is that if Eye of the Tiger is too cliche, you need to find a substitute that sounds very much like it, and produces similar motivating results.
Why not, then, just use the original? I have over 300 songs on my running playlist - some of them are bound to be ones people have heard before. Don't want me emulating Rocky Balboa? Tough luck - now get off the sidewalk, fatty.
entry no. 1205
Posted at September 3, 2008 04:59 PM