hello web traveler!!
you can call me G, and I'm a girl that loooves to listen to music! this website is mostly for me to document my journey into the musical world... it's basically a big shrine for all of my favorite artists. (and it also will have my art because i like to draw sometimes too!! :D)
i guess i can use this page to talk about my history with listening to music and everything. here goes! (sorry it's so long, i really like to ramble and write a lot and i hope you will enjoy reading this nerdy stuff!)
the beginning of me and music
when i was younger, i think i didn't listen to music as much as other people. the most i remember is just hearing songs my parents played, or just popular songs that were everywhere at the time, and i don't remember ever going out of my way to listen to new music much. in fact, i have a lot of memories in elementary school where i would actively go out of my way to avoid certain annoying tunes that they used to play in music class... i would even run out of the room X_X
eventually, though, i did start to listen to music on my own. around 2021-2023 i made fan music videos for various popular songs at the time, and i think this started to kickstart my interest in music because i would have to really listen to the songs to make the videos in a way that i never really did before. some of the first artists i really got into around this time were Olivia Rodrigo, Billie Eilish, and... i hate to admit it... but i did really get into Melanie Martinez for a little bit... yeah we don't talk about that anymore. i like to pretend like that never happened O_O
oh yeah, and i always forget about this, but from around 2021-2022 i was also really into electronic music, especially stuff like Monstercat, TheFatRat, Koven, Zedd, idk just like stuff you'd hear in the background of a video on YouTube from the mid 2010s. it feels so weird to remember that point in time... i think i got into this stuff specifically because this game i played had it in the background, along with a streamer i watched who used those songs in the background, so i just listened to his streaming playlist ig lol. i'm just getting back into electronic music now, but with different artists like Boards of Canada, Autechre, Aphex Twin, Squarepusher... more nerdier types of it on Warp Records n stuff.
anyways, around 2024 is when i really started to become what i guess you could call a "Music Nerd". i started watching lots of YouTube videos and livestreams of people reacting to various music, both good and (very) bad, and from there i discovered the website Album Of The Year, where people listen to music and give it a rating from 0-100. around the time i discovered that website, i knew what i had to do... i said to myself, "i am going to listen to EVERYTHING EVER MADE!!!!!!! and RATE ALL OF IT!!!!!!!!! YEAHHHH!!!!!" and i've basically been following that ever since :)
(yes, by the way, i know that treating art like it's something just to slap a numerical rating onto it is a really dumb and stupid thing, and kinda devalues the art in a way. so now i've created a new system for sharing my opinions on music that doesn't involve as much "thinking about numbers" as before. and, if i listen to something and i don't know what to rate it, i just... listen to it. and don't rate it. because not everything needs to get a rating right away. overall, though, i do find the idea behind rating stuff very fun and i mostly just do it because i like to keep track of things and i'm weird about that. okay. tangent over.)
the first ever album that i rated on Album of The Year was an album given to by my dad, since i wanted him to give me my first ever album to rate from his record collection. It was the compilation So Far by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. i thought it was... okay... and then i started to rate more stuff, with the first album i reached out to listen to on my own being A Lonely Sinner by samlrc... pretty niche pick, i know, but it just came out around that time and it was on the front page, and it had a cool cover, so i was like, why not!
then after that i did a discography dive for Bjork and Taylor Swift. the Bjork dive was really fun and cool, but the Taylor Swift one... yeah that was a huge mistake. the most boring discography dive I've ever done to this day. shortly after i finished that mind-numbing experience, though, i found a certain album that would change my life forever...
finding my pink fuzzy sounds
the first time i remember hearing this album that changed me was when i was on vacation one night. the sky was dark outside, and i was laying on my hotel bed. this vacation rental was pretty dirty; i think there were bugs everywhere in the building because it was a cheap AirBnB, and for some reason i brought my "good" headphones on the trip. (and by "good", i mean the headphones i got from my cinema class in school that were like, idk, maybe 50 bucks. the other headphones i (stil have) are my trusty 10 dollar Sonys that i take on the go) bringing those headphones was a bad idea because i actually broke the headphones in the luggage and stuff. good thing i had 2 pairs. anyways. i was scrolling on my phone on YouTube, and i decided to click on this random video because i was bored. it was titled something like, "Every Rock Genre" or something like that. and basically it was one of those videos that just showed a little clip of each genre for a few seconds to get acquainted with it before it moves on to the next one. there were a lot of weird genres in that video. and one of them was a genre called "Shoegaze". and, the song they used for that clip was "When You Sleep" by my bloody valentine.
one of the weirdest things i've ever experienced with music happened once that tiny little clip played of the main guitar riff in the song.
it's like... i felt a deep familiarity with the sound. i had to pause the video and just reflect on this for a few minutes. i tried to dig deep into the recesses of my memory to try to remember where i'd heard the song before, but i couldn't remember anything. the only picture that popped into my head was a really random memory of me standing outside of my brother's bedroom when i was younger. and, i don't think that memory had anything to do with the song, because as far as i know, i don't think my brother has ever listened to shoegaze... it was so weird... and i still haven't experienced anything like that from hearing a new song ever since. i literally felt like i'd known that song my entire life, and that it was an important song to me already, even though i'd only heard the song for 5 SECONDS!!!! what.
that moment put it into my head that i had to listen to the album (Loveless), and i think maybe even before that i was already aware of the album that song was on a bit by seeing it everywhere on music websites. it took a bit to actually listen to it though, maybe a few weeks, because this album was one of those albums that i'd call "intimidating" from first glance. i don't know, i just have to be in a certain mood to listen to new music, especially albums considered "classics", because i guess for some reason i think that i'm immediately gonna hear the craziest thing in the world upon pressing play. i mean, the scores on the rating website i used all had it rated sky high, and the reputation this album had was insane. so i wanted to be "mentally prepared" for it somehow.
but one night, i realized that i was really never gonna be mentally prepared in the way i wanted to be. so i said SCREW IT!!!!!!!! and just listened to it. i sat down on my desk, used my cracked version of Spotify to find the album, and finally pressed play. (i know, ew spotify & down with streaming services, i don't use spotify anymore...)
the first full encounter
i actually don't remember my reaction to the burst of guitars in the beginning of "Only Shallow". i feel like most people usually remember that moment, because... y'know, it sounds like THAT, but yeah i just kinda... listened to it i guess idk. i think my mind probably wasn't 100% in it at first because there was a storm going on that night, everything felt pretty hectic i guess, and i was still using that old rating system that made me think about stuff too much.
oh yeah and the power literally went out in my house right after the song ended and "Loomer" started playing for a few seconds. so that probably ruined my first listen, too. i had to rush and scramble to figure out how to get the Wi-Fi back online, and eventually i remembered that phone hotspots exists and i continued my listen.
i actually have my review that i wrote right after finishing the album for the very first time still saved... hold on lemme dig it out real quickly...
all i gotta say to that is... wow. i was WAY too hung up on trying to "get" it, whatever that means.
reading this, though, is kinda funny, because i'm basically saying that the album is amazingly good but... i didn't get anything out of it just yet. and what's really interesting is how i mentioned that i "zoned out and comprehended the entirety of it as a whole" because that's actually something you're kinda "supposed" to do while listening to it, especially with songs like To Here Knows When. i also mentioned the cool production, and how i knew the song When You Sleep already (even though i didn't.) the most important thing about that review, though, was probably me saying how it was "dream music", because that's actually what made me "get" it like i so desperately wanted to when i wrote that.
learning to love the sounds of dreams
basically, some angel in my head gave me an idea to listen to the album to fall asleep, since it was called something like "dream music". i was like, what if i literally made it play while i was dreaming. i swear, that has got to be the best idea i've ever had. because IT WORKED. and that's why i'm here rambling about it like a madwoman on this website today.
honestly, i think the thing that made it really click for me is that, upon doing this relisten, i framed the entire experience of listening to the album differently. on the first listen, i was more concerned with trying to figure out "how good" the music was compared to my expectations, analyzing everything i was hearing to try to make sense of it and see if anything stood out to me that way. but, when i just went in bed, and put it into the background, i let the music just happen to me naturally, without over analyzing it at all and instead using my pure feelings to take it in... letting the sounds enter without any prior judgement or overanalyzing. and i feel like that's the main thing that helped me to learn to love it, because, with an album like Loveless that's meant to be more about the feeling of listening to it than anything else, when you try to take it on in a sort of analytical and nonfeeling lens, the magic is lost.
i most noticed this when i would drift in and out of consciousness... because when i would become awake again, it was always the album doing that to me, some sorta sound that jolted me awake. and when it would do that, i would just be... shocked, and astonished at the sounds that were being flung at me through my headphones. it just hit different in a way that's hard to explain. also, i got another deep memory that came to me on the 2nd relisten with the vocals. for some reason, i got reminded of being inside a roller skating rink. when i was younger, when i would go to places like that, there would always be very loud music blasting through the speakers, and it would be so loud that the vocals would hardly make sense to me; it all just seemed to be one big mass of poppy sounds that would overwhelm me. and on Loveless, with the vocals being smushed into the sound to make it all be "one thing", i got reminded of that same feeling... but instead of being overwhelmed, it was nice. i didn't have to focus on what they were saying, and instead just focusing on feeling the sounds as they passed through me instead. it was beautiful, and from then on i deeply understood what MBV was going for with that creative decision.
at the end of the 2nd relisten, i bumped my score up to the album being almost perfect, and i even commented that i kinda wanted to listen to it every night, since the feelings i got from that relisten were just so good.
so, over time, i started to do just that, and listen to it again, and again, and again... and again... and eventually, i didn't even have to be half-awake to fully appreciate the album; it would hit hard no matter where i was and what time of day i heard it. i remember tearing up listening to "Sometimes" while walking to my next class one day and staring at the trees outside, and being in heavenly bliss listening to "What You Want" on the car ride to school and on other walks to class. it became an escape from reality, a place where i could go and just feel this blissful feeling and get lost inside of all the beautiful pink fuzzy sounds.
and as i began to explore MBV's other material, i realized that pretty much all of their music was able to give me this amazing inner peace. the combination of fuzzy guitars and the vocals of Kevin and Bilinda could calm me down no matter what. so naturally, they became my favorite band. i just started to realize that this music really fit who i was and my brain i guess better than anything else i'd ever heard before... before finding MBV, nothing that i listened to really felt like it was 100% "made" for a person like me. but with this band, and the entire genre of Shoegaze by extension, i could say, yeah... this is MY music!... and i can't stop thinking about it. so there we go. i found my pink fuzzy sounds, and i decided to make that my username because yeah i just love it.
what am i doing now though???
all of this super super long stories and stuff leads us to today, where i've been trying ever since to find more music that can give me the high that MBV gives me... after i found that band, the amount of music that i listened to drastically increased, and i also listened to lots and lots of shoegaze albums (over 100 now!) to try and find anything similar to loveless. and i've found lots of amazing music that you can check out by heading off to my world of music that also will be on this website eventually! there i'll list of all of my favorite artists that i've discovered so far, and ill add to my world as i find new artists to love. i'm also planning on documenting every shoegaze band that i've listened to on this website too so stay tuned for that.
also, by the way, i mentioned in the beginning of this about me page that i used Album of The Year to rate things, but starting in 2025 i switched over to Rate Your Music instead because i just like the way that website works better (it's a lot more detailed), and i think it has a much better rating system as well. click the link to go to my profile there and see all of my latest musical opinions ^^
and also one more thing... sometimes i think, "what if i ever find anything that's BETTER than loveless? or an artist that becomes my new favorite over MBV? what am i gonna do?????? since i made this my entire personality on this website?????????"
and to that i say... uh... i don't know :'D i think i'd probably just keep the name i guess, since it was the first thing i really became obsessed with on this deep a level, and uh... just expand this page to talk about that magical mystery artist and MAKE IT EVEN LONGER MWAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAA!!! so check back here in like 10 years to see if i ever find an artist better or not. yeah :D!!!