Bold statement: Now more than ever, music lovers can own and access a wide range of music, cool or otherwise, without much impact on their beloved street cred. No more “guilty pleasures”. Just “pleasures”.
Two early 2000s innovations forever changed the type(s) of music that hipsters and other insects would admit to owning and/or enjoying.
The first innovation was the mash-up. A modern take on the decidedly non-modern efforts of Steinski, Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers, M|A|R|R|S and the Timelords/JAMMs/KLF, the mash-up soon became a staple of tinny MP3s and trying-to-hard dance parties across the land.
The Strokes/Xtina purée “A Stroke of Genius” set the stage and things had ‘gotten got’ by the time Girl Talk showed up. Big picture, the mash-up was an indirect way for hipsters to admit their acceptance (ne: love) of Top 40 and gave us some tremendous efforts such as the still-holds-up goodness of…
The second innovation was the iPod. No need to recap its impact but a notable piece of fallout: you could no longer conceal the dirty little secrets of your music collection within your BENNO. Liberating to no end, the iPod forced music fans to drop the pretense and own what they…. well, own.
Short version: should you REALLY be ashamed of owning any piece of music? If your friends are going to judge you… Well, maybe those aren’t real friends.
The following is my effort at ownership and the big reveal of my “Theme from CompletelyIgnored.com” and “Theme from CompletelyIgnored.com 2.0” iPod playlists.
These songs are drawn from the 15,000+ songs that live in my 80GB iPod classic.
Theme from CompletelyIgnored.com: 25 songs that, in theory, I should never admit to owning. Rather than, y’know, publishing them on a WordPress blog.
Theme from CompletelyIgnored 2.0.com: 25 songs that I should be name dropping with regularity. With a heavy debt paid in full to this book.
Combined, this is the musical equivalent of buying carbon credits to juke my footprint of perceived lameness.
Bonus Thoughts
– It was a tough call between “Music Box Dancer” and “Popcorn” to fill the random-instrumental-smash-of-the-1970s quota. Regardless, the latter should get more credit for helping to introduce electronic music to the masses. The song is over 40 years old.
– Belated Jorday update (of sorts) via MySpace.
– Totally sincere: early 1990s Europop is one of the most underrated blips in Top 40 history. So many amazing tunes from so many outfits that were clearly one-and-done propositions (and possibly not even bands as I think some of these songs may have been written by marketing agencies). Effectively, the MuchDance series circa 1991-1995 could serve as that era’s Nuggets.
– Grantland.com is tremendous but seeing Rembert Browne poke fun at an 1980s remake of “Apache” without any acknowledgement of its impact on hip-hop? A miss.
– Not surprising but there is a serious Shotmaker hole in the Internet. Maybe this Wikipedia hyperlink will help.
Completely Ignored 
