Music I Am Fond Of

Fight Test - The Flaming Lips (from the album Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots)
 
When I first heard this album, I was in sixth grade. My perpetually-cooler-than-me brother, who was in high school, played it a lot and had it around a lot, but never played it around me. Curious at what he was hiding, and kind of intrigued by its album art, I snuck from his room and onto my iPod, and I started listening. From the time I heard this song, I was confused and surprised and generally amazed. The album used instruments I’d never heard to make songs about things I had never heard expressed in song. It was altogether different from anything I’d heard before, and that spread through the whole album. The Flaming Lips, along with a few other bands, taught me that rock music doesn’t always have to involve lead and rhythm guitar and drummers and lyrics about fucking. It doesn’t have to follow formulaic verse-chorus structures or use the same four chords for every song. Music can sound like whatever you want it to sound like and be about whatever’s on your mind. And nothing’s cooler than that, not even my brother.