But the thing is, if that for some bizarre reason had happened, and I was suddenly engaged to this cool girl, one rainy Saturday while re-sorting our records I would say, ‘You know, someone would have to be an idiot to disagree with the fact that ‘Murmur’ was the best album of the entire decade of the ’80s. And then she would say, ‘Yeah, Murmur is awesome, but actually my favorite 80s album is ‘Daydream Nation.’ And even though I think DN is my 2nd favorite 80s album, I would think to myself: ‘What an idiot!’ My perfect relationship would crumble, and I’d be alone again, spending Saturday nights browsing Soulseek for seven inches that are out of print.

Music is unique compared to any other ‘art’ form because it divides us the most, makes us the most individual. I mean, I love both film and literature, but it is much easier to list my top 100 albums than films or books (largely because so many albums come out in a given year, compared to movies or books. If you grabbed two people with similar tastes and had them make top ten lists for the year for albums, books, and movies, odds are than they’d maybe have one or two albums in common, and most likely 4 or 5 books and 6 or 7 movies.). Regardless of our upbringings, we’ll always find our own way, and I think the trick is to not hold anyone’s (your friends’, Pitchfork’s, Spin’s, ILM’s) word as gospel, but to simply follow your own path. You don’t want to listen to music because your friends like the same thing, and you certainly don’t want to because a magazine or website recommend’s something either. But, I must admit that it’s hard to resist the swelling feeling of superiority you get when you shock your old high-school friends with something after not seeing them for a while (“oh, you don’t like this? You think this is weird? Well, I guess you should go back to listening to America’s Top 40, huh?”) or making yourself stand out more in the peer group you are currently in (‘oh, you don’t think the Timberlake song is awesome? Well, I guess you should go listen to some Boredoms or something, dude.”). I think the real trick is to pretend you are in a room (or a desert island) and listening to music, as it is normally done, alone, and you are not going to talk about it with anyone. It is just you and a stereo, and no crime will be committed if you put on ‘Toxic’ or ‘Work It.’ This is something that is incredibly hard to do, however. It is so difficult to just listen.

I agree with you about using music to forge an identity–it only takes one “Indier Than Thou” t-shirt at Pitchfork to prove your point. It seems like music–maybe more than any other single factor–contributes to the way we dress and therefore the way we are perceived. (see: list of ironic t-shirts from Pitchfork or the goth-clown Dresden Dolls fans at Lolla.)

But once I broke from my dad’s music and started listening to mainstream country, I was the mainstream, and, as far as I can remember, I didn’t really have a problem with it. I may have been creating an image, but not deliberately. So the change from conformist brain-dead mallrat to indie rock was largely because the music was so damn good, and more challenging than the trite cadences of the local country stations.

Now that I’m a college-educated liberal-arts-degreed twenty-something, sure, I’m more conscious about using music to define me. I feel pretty damn cool when I recommend a new indie band to 3hive.com. I’d like to think that I’ll listen to anything I think is good, no matter what the indie culture (or anybody else) thinks about it, but I’m also skeptical that I can have the same revelatory experience returning to country/pop than I had turning away from it.

But after a while, you (or at least I) begin to feel more comfortable with who you are, and you learn to accept the contradictions, or maybe even stop seeing them as contradictions anymore, and just listen to music that you like, without worrying about how you come across. A whole world of new music opens up to you, and you relish in all its pleasures.

Or at least that’s the idealist way of looking at it. The other way of looking at it is that after college you begin to inhabit a world where it seems like indie rock is the default musical tendency for all white college-educated liberal-arts majors in their 20s (which is the majority of the people you know). And within that context, the homogeneity of that taste feels just as conformist as brain-dead mallrats lapping up the Top 40. And so you start listening to pop music in part because it feels somewhat transgressive, and you like monitoring the reactions when you tell people that you think Justin Timberlake is amazing. And when indie culture decides it’s finally acceptable to listen to Missy Elliott, then you turn to Gretchen Wilson and Brad Paisley. If indie rock is played out, then commercial hip-hop is the new indie rock, and pop-country is even indier.

But that’s the cynical view, and honestly, there’s probably elements of both. As I said to you once, I found it pretty easy to glom onto rap/R&B in 2003 (the year pop broke) because that’s what I was listening almost exclusively when I was 12 or 13, and I’d guess that a genuine appreciation for that stuff is in my musical DNA. So I’m certainly not pretending. But do I think I’m cooler for having such eclectic tastes? Yes, absolutely.

I lived in the chicagoland area for most of my life, but never really bought into the whole Wilco thing. And then 2 years ago I began to have these life questioning moments. Career changing thoughts and uncertainties. And I began to listen to “A Shot in the Arm”. I kept thinking “maybe all I need is a shot in the arm.” Maybe that’s all it would take to change my life in general. “What you once were isn’t what you want to be, anymore” ahhhh! I probably listened to that song on repeat for months on end right before I moved.

I’m pleased to hear it had a life-altering impact on someone else as well. Even if it’s not in the same way.