Walking through the entrance at FHC,  I didn’t understand how my own music taste could be so detrimental to finding who I was as a person, or finding the people around me. I always viewed music as something we all collectively enjoyed, had our own favorites, and respected the differences of others. But I harshly realized that people could easily judge who you were or who you pretended to be just based on the bands and singers that fill your Spotify or Apple Music playlists. Every single year of high school thus far has felt like I have been in a constant search of finding my own sound and curating the ultimate playlist to describe who I was, until I realized that my dream playlist was somehow the perfect mixture of the music I’ve listened to for the past four years. 

I was a freshman in 2020, the peak of quarantine and a time we all wish we could forget. Nobody truly knew how to handle months of practically no social interaction and unrestricted internet access, so we all came out of quarantine with either bad DIY haircuts, whipped coffee or hundreds of TikTok drafts copying whatever dance was popular at the time. Looking back, I became envious of how simple it all was. If you put on the song “Blueberry Faygo ” or any trending Tiktok song dance I would’ve claimed that was my music taste. On the other hand, I started experimenting with the more “grunge” or “alternative” style and occasional songs by Mother Mother and Panic At The Disco would grace my speakers. On May 21, which also happens to be my birthday, Olivia Rodrigo released her chart-topping debut album “SOUR,” which is still the best birthday gift I’ve ever received. That album came out during a time in my life where I was still freshly grieving a relationship that I describe as my first love, and everybody knows that your first heartbreak is incomparable to anything you’ll experience again. Nobody ever talks about the life-changing music you discover through that dark period. Olivia will always be my comfort artist now because of the comfort she brought me during a hard time. I even had the honor of seeing her during her “GUTS ” tour this year, and all I could do while uncontrollably sobbing is think about how healed my freshman self felt and how everything comes full circle, even music. 

My sophomore year was definitely the year where I became more comfortable with not being involved in every single popular song or artist circulating around TikTok. It had gotten to a point where my music taste was genuinely just a build-up of things I had hyper-fixated on during quarantine and I needed to return to my roots and the artists I truly loved, or find new entirely genres of music. I did both those things simultaneously because I revisited artists and songs from my past or childhood while also discovering my love for metal music like Slipknot or dark rap like $uicideboy$ and Lil Peep. During that school year, I saw Big Time Rush and $uicideboy$ in concert, both so different yet fit my aesthetic at the time perfectly. 

My junior year, I became a part of a large friend group and was forced to drive around listening to your stereotypical teenage boy music. I never realized my friends had such an opposing music taste to mine until I was queuing up Taylor Swift right after a friend had blasted “Famous” by Kanye through my speakers. I would listen and sing along because I thought it was ironic, until it wasn’t. I found myself unironically singing Yeat in the car alone and adding Travis Scott to my everyday playlists. Your environment can change your perspective on a lot of things, and I think they changed my perspective on what music I used to hate on and what I can tolerate now. All of our collective playlists blended into one, and I realized how many truly talented artists I discovered through all of them.

Senior year was truly my year for music. I was given multiple opportunities to see some of my overall favorite artists of all time, while also visiting smaller venues to watch multiple smaller bands perform. Seeing artists like Sza, Drake, J.Cole and Olivia Rodrigo helps me humanize them in a way I was never able to do in the past. When I saw Olivia Rodrigo, I had the honor of having floor seats close to the stage and was singing hand in hand with my bestfriend that I had also seen Sza with, while being able to be eye to eye with Miss Rodrigo herself. I discovered that I love the whole concert environment and experience being in a crowd gives me, so I started spending my time at the Blueberry Hill Duck Room, a small speakeasy type venue that hosts smaller band performances. I participated in my first few mosh pits, saw my first rock bands, and was exposed to an entirely new This month, I see rapper 21 Savage and rising pop princess Chappell Roan, both at the St. Louis music park a week apart from each other. 

Filling my life with music isn’t something new to me, but every year music takes a different form in my life. Whether it be for how I express my changing aesthetics, emotions, or being able to have the opportunity to see them in person, it all means the same to me.