A musical year: Don’t be a pretentious music snob

In the three weeks since my last blog, I surprisingly have not attended any concerts, but that doesn’t mean the musical part of my life has been lacking. In fact, it’s been quite the opposite.

On Sept. 30, a kind of musical Christmas happened for me, with the release of Justin Timberlake’s “The 20/20 Experience Part 2 of 2” and the re-release of All Time Low’s “Don’t Panic: It’s Longer Now.”

While these are two drastically different albums — one throwback pop, the other pop punk — it’s the perfect representation of the music I listen to. While most of my musical taste centers around alternative bands you would find on the Vans Warped Tour, like All Time Low, Mayday Parade, Yellowcard and Fall Out Boy, there’s a part of me that also loves mainstream chart-toppers, like Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, Justin Timberlake and Eminem.

There was about two years of my life, my senior year of high school and first year of college, where I completely shunned — for the most part anyway — all mainstream music. And then I realized something — I had become one of those self-righteous, pretentious music listeners that I hated.

All along, I had never actually hated listening to Lady Gaga or John Mayer, I just wanted people to think I was so cool for listening to music by bands they had never heard of. Since I’ve gotten over that, my experience as a music listener has been so much more enjoyable.

To continue my trend of enjoying a more diverse group of musicians, this year I’ve started going to concerts for mainstream artists. While I’ve seen Keith Urban in concert three times, Rascal Flatts twice and Rihanna on a whim one summer, that was about it for my experience of attending mainstream arena concerts, until this year.

Thus far I’ve already seen Taylor Swift and have tickets purchased to see Keith Urban and Justin Timberlake. While I love seeing bands in clubs, there is something to be said about seeing a show in an arena with a huge speaker. As much as I love seeing my favorite bands live, sometimes it’s even more exciting to see what they can put together production-wise.

What have I learned as an avid music fan? Don’t be ashamed of the music you listen to, it’s OK to genuinely like a wide array of artists and see as many of those bands in concert as possible because live music will always be the best way to listen to your favorite songs.