TBT: Music roundup

My last few TBT Music posts have been published on Thursdays but this write-up has been sitting as a draft for far too long. Decided to just break out of my comfort zone and publish this on a Tuesday. Gasp.

During my recent chill time, I’ve recently wandered back over to absolutepunk.net, where I spent the majority of my high school years looking for new music and artists. Like I might’ve mentioned before, I definitely fell off the music bandwagon during college and am trying to get back into it but it’s a few miles ahead of me at this point. Back in high school, I think I tried to absorb too much (is that even a thing?) music as possible in a span of 2-3 years and just seriously over did it and looking for new music became a chore, so I stopped.

Of course I would occasionally stumble upon a new album/band that I liked during college mainly due to friends, media, etc. But I wasn’t actually going out into the Internet world looking for music that I would want to look for. This isn’t to say I haven’t enjoyed the music that I’ve discovered during my so-called “music dark ages,” but those bands were on the ends of the spectrum of my tastes. For instance, I absolutely love Florence + the Machine, but I seriously can’t imagine listening to her and similar bands/artists for eternity. It’s just not something I naturally gravitate toward and seek out.

So I started back to the place that had the best collection of information about the music I liked the most: absolutepunk.net.

The staff have an End of the Year (EOTY) post every year since I can remember, anyway, where they compile their (staff as whole and individual staff member’s) favorite albums as well as the site user’s favorite albums and more. They also “recently” released their Middle of the Year (MOTY) lists so I thought that’d be a good place to start.

I’ve found a couple of new artists that I’ve never heard about as well as discovered a love for certain bands that I heard about in the past but never really looked up and got into. So here’s a list of a variety of stuff you might also want to check out:

TBT: Music (classical)

A TBT post of my favorite classical music pieces from my past just seems like the most accurate TBT music post I could possibly post. I mean, it’s throwing back in two different ways!

I grew up listening to only classical music and Taiwanese folk songs/oldies. Also, I used to play piano and viola and by extension, played in a youth symphony. Of the many songs I’ve heard/played in the past, there are a couple that really stood out (I managed to narrow it down to ten pieces). The videos are the versions that I prefer listening to.

TBT: Music (the teenage years)

I’m typing this up on Microsoft Word as I’m on a train on Taiwan’s High Speed Rail (clearly without internet) on the way to visit my grandma for Mother’s Day. I was in a bad mood earlier and was sitting in the waiting area for the train when I decided to listen to some music from my teen angst days (mainly high school). I discovered music relatively late in life (summer before seventh grade), but like many people, music was, and still is, my main emotional outlet.

I pretty much had similar music preferences as someone part of the “scene”, but you’d never know, as I was (and still am) a short Asian girl who dressed like a 40-year-old lady (as my aunt kindly describes my style),

While my music tastes have evolved and I’ve slowly gravitated to more “mellow” music (for lack of a better encompassing term, see: “hipster/indie minus the Mumford”) in recent years, on particularly crappy days or shitty moments, putting on an old playlist seriously puts a smile on my face. Most of these songs were on constant rotation for a couple of years, but WOW has it been a while since I’ve visited some of these songs. There’s a variety of stuff posted below the cut.

So, teen-angst me, this post’s for you.