30 Day Music Challenge: Day 14

‘A song that no-one would expect you to like.’

I have no idea what other people expect me to like. I know that, at work, I’m often the person that others apologise to if they’ve just cursed or used non-standard grammar or made reference to subject matter of a crude nature. This puzzles me: am I the person who seems straight-laced, old-fashioned, all those other hyphenated compounds of the person who belongs in another age? Because that’s not really me at all. Granted, I am a bit particular about language. Partly that’s because it’s my job… as I roam the corridors of the school where I work, I’m better at correcting the students’ language than their uniforms, try as I do to do both… if I challenge an undone tie and hear an equally undone past participle, I’ll insist the grammar be remedied first. Partly, though, it’s because I’ve always been utterly obsessed by language. After all, I’m was the weird nine year old child who ended a playground ‘engagement’ because the boy - the best-looking boy in the class - was using horrible American cliches. Even his blond hair, blue eyes and tall stature didn’t compensate. He wanted me to keep the ring… the one he’d got in a 10p lucky bag…

… but anyway. Obsession with language is just part of who I am - obsession with music is another. And figuring out the music that people wouldn’t expect me to like is quite a challenge. I don’t think people would expect me to like the metal genre. Doom metal, thrash metal, heavy metal: I’ve had them explained to me, I’ve had samples played to me by a very patient sixth former, but… no. Not for me. All that screaming. All those irony-free lyrics about deformity and monsters and Transylvanian doom. I think it would have been a surprise to everyone (myself included) if I had discovered a sudden penchant for this stuff.

I suspect my students would expect me to like the kind of thing I hate: boybands, Daniel O’Donnell… age-appropriate blandness with all the piquancy of a plate of macaroni cheese. Again: not my thing. I’ve said enough on earlier days to make this clear, though not, perhaps, enough for the sixth form tutor group many years ago who brought me back a Daniel O’Donnell tea-towel from their Geography field trip to Donegal. This hideous object is still part of the folklore of my classroom, one school on and many years later… but it’s the embodiment of that reaction which should really be a sporting challenge. Extreme irony.

When people ask about my taste in music, they’re almost always surprised. Especially people from a generation younger. I’ll always mention artists they haven’t quite heard of yet: Tori Amos or Nerina Pallot or Duke Special or Van Morrison, perhaps. They’ll smile indulgently and say ‘Aye… I think my Ma and Da have some of those…’ One of the joys of working with the young is that they can recommend new things to listen to, and it’s thanks to current and former students that I’ve made lots of new discoveries, like the Decemberists (thanks Gary), Mumford & Sons (thanks Shannon) or Thea Gilmore (thanks Odhran). Perhaps that makes my likes predictable? Or perhaps I simply ramble so much in class that my most perceptive students know me much better than I’ve ever realised?

Either way, it’s time I answered the question.

One day, about a year ago, a fifth form boy asked me this: ‘Miss, do you like the Firefly song?’ I said I did - that I heard it quite often on the radio while driving to school in the mornings, and that it always cheered me up. ‘Jeez naw Miss,’ he said, laughing in disgust - ‘Jeez naw. That song’s wile gay. Wile gay like, I mean, that guy and his like… fireflies and stuff, he needs to get a life and find himself a girl…’ He went on to tell me about what he’d been listening to and liking: dance music, mainly, and told me what to download. I can confess now, a year on, that I didn’t follow his advice, but the exchange, as the sunlight poured into the Friday afternoon classroom as the restless class got ready to tackle yet another past paper question, has stayed in my mind over time. So I suppose it was unexpected that I’d like ‘the Firefly song’, or, to give it its proper title, ‘Firefly’ by Owl City. A year on, when it pops up on the radio or on a shuffled playlist, I’m amused all over again by that conversation, and the memory and the song both make me smile.

And if I’m the person seen as straight-laced and a bit old-fashioned, the embodiment of a hyphenated compound lost to time, then perhaps the very last song that anyone would ever expect that I would like would be the song that would make me smile at a memory like that.

And you know what? I quite like that moment of surprise.