Two Slashes

Listen to emo?  Perhaps you’re an emotionally-sensitive wrist-slitter.  How about rap?  Well, the bets are on that you’ve been having boatloads of sex and been drunk enough to make Lindsay Lohan look like a model citizen.  And jazz?  Oh, you’re probably hiding in the closet, too much of a loner to do anything social (like comment?).

I don’t mean to offend anyone there, as it’s not actually me saying any of that.  Nope, those would be (more or less) the words of Felicity Baker, who has all but attached every genre of music with some insane mental or social health diagnosis.  No offense to her, but I find it extremely ridiculous that any person who so much as turns on a radio could be diagnosed as suicidal or a drug addict.

I also say that none of this is revolutionary due to the fact that all of the “diagnoses” seem to be common themes in that genre.  For example, in a genre that (at this point in time) prides itself on “banging dem hoes” and getting “crunk,” it’s a miracle at all that someone could suggest that people who listen to rap are following along without someone having already noticed the obvious similarity. And while I can’t call H.I.M. “heavy metal”, there are enough mentions of drug use throughout metal and rock to give me credit when I point out one of the (pardon me) “documented types” of groupie.  I am, however, having a hard time picturing the corellation between techno and suicide.

The point I’m trying to make here is that this “research” isn’t really research so much as a “medically-relevant” way to stereotype people based upon the genres of music they listen to.  Think about it:  I know quite a few people who listen to those types of music, and I think the worst habit any of them have is a cigarette habit, hardly self-destructive nature at the level Baker (and the according article there) seem to imply.

Not every genre has been accounted for (at least judging by the article I linked to), but enough are mentioned to account for almost every person I’ve ever met.  And with the multifaceted nature of music, most music may actually end up classified at least partially under a genre that this article ties with “bad connotations,” or (to what probably would be a mixture of horror and ridicule) multiple “bad” genres.

I guess I’ll go back to listening to my vast library, and quit putting fuel on the fire.  Call me a depressed, drug-addicted loner with suicidal tendencies and questionable sexuality if you want, but I’m in perfectly good health and I’m not going to let something as harebrained as an amateur diagnosis of my social and mental capacities ruin my listening pleasure.  So go on then.  Ensure your path to drug addiction, wrist-cutting, and wallflower behavior today.

Side note:  I’d love to know the researcher’s medical opinion to songs like this one.  Aside from the flagrant disregard for authority, of course.