In eleventh grade when I wrote for my high school newspaper I got screwed into writing an article about our Battle of the Bands. I had serious interests in being a music journalist which were largely fueled by the movie Almost Famous and Sarah Lewitinn. This was not how I intended to pursue those interests. Unfolding almost exactly as I pictured it would, I described a completely uninspired high school band as metal. I really wanted to describe them as nu metal, but I was trying to be kind. The morning the papers were delivered, I got approached by this “band’s” “frontman” in fourth period Russian History and informed, in the most indignant tone possible, that they were not metal, but in fact proto-punk-seventh-wave-prog-rock.
From this second on, I have never wanted to be a music journalist. I figured if high school bands were this big of assholes, any musician that ever received a shred of positive reinforcement must be a fucking nightmare. The genuinely famous and/or talented seem to (confusingly) be nicer and less delusional, but God knows you’re going to be dealing with this Satanic middle group most of the time.
So that’s why I hate writing about music.
But,
Last night in my continued Buzzfeed Video YouTube binge, I got recommended this music video. I almost never click on recommended music, because it is almost always a thirteen year old girl singing country music with heavy Christian imagery, and I WILL NOT BE TRICKED AGAIN THIRTEEN YEAR OLD GIRLS, but this drew me in:
Holy shit I am fucking in love with this girl. She instantly reminded me of music’s power to creep you the fuck out. I felt like I was a teenager watching the music videos Chris Cunningham directed for Aphex Twin, or the screeching descent into chaos that is Veruca Salt’s Shimmer Like a Girl, with a dash of Jamie Lee Curtis’s weird, sexualized virgin in Halloween. I had forgotten how much I missed that feeling.
I can’t help but think this is what all those black-lipstick, upside down cross loving, pseudo-junkie teens are going for, but Meg Myers actually delivers. With music. In a pair of sneakers.