This jump in styles is going to sound lousy in the February playlist.

I tend to listen to music that no one else I know listens to. Sometimes I'll admit it's on purpose, that I purposefully seek out artists no one knows about, but other times I'll say that I just seem to be naturally drawn to music that I have never heard of before from anyone. I didn't think about it too deeply until I stumbled back onto this song in my playlist and it dawned on me.

Popular music is used so often in other mediums that it's almost impossible to not have your memory of the song co-opted in some way. There was a time that listening to Jacksonville made me think of sunny days driving around with ex-girlfriends, of feeling alive by myself and enjoying the wind blowing through my hair. Now when I hear it, I think, oh, they used that other Sufjan song (Chicago) in Little Miss Sunshine. Now I associate Sufjan Stevens with a so-so indie movie that got eighty billion Oscar nominations. Is that fair?

I guess this is also why it's hard for me to accept and even begin to appreciate recommendations from people I know personally. (Aside from the fact that recommending that I listen to MGMT is pretty stupid.) I don't want to listen to something I already associate with a person. I want to create my own interpretation, independent of everyone else. I'm creating my own memories.

This is going to make me sound pretentious (which I am, obviously, I run a website where I write nonsense for everyone to read and ask people to read it and say 'hey hey look at me isn't my taste awesome?'), but it also just blows when music gets popular, period. I remember digging this album and then six months later suddenly it was getting played at the houses of people I didn't respect. Nothing can ruin music more than a bunch of shitty people listening to it because it's suddenly popular in some scene. Now I associate Sufjan Stevens with greasy date-rapist Mexican assholes. Thanks, popularity.

Recommendations from the internet is different. Everyone listens to everything on the internet, you're not going to listen to something that at least five people currently on the internet haven't already heard (or are currently listening to), but everyone is faceless and you don't know anything about them. You can associate a recommendation with a name, but there aren't already memories there about that person. Yay, internet.

Song Note: This song is about the underground railroad. Yay!