As the raging emo I can promise you I will always be, I have a massive, humongous spot in my heart for nostalgia. Weirdly enough, I'm not often one to cringe about my past, and if I do, it's usually over in a matter of minutes. I don't mind laughing at myself.
A usual pattern in my train of thought is to cringe, be embarrassed, and when the initial part is finished, then I can start laughing at my own shortcomings and obsessions, and in the laughter lies nostalgia. Don't ask me why. The brain is a funny place.
I found a playlist on my Spotify that is about six and a half hours of tunes I used to listen to during my indie phase (with the odd pop-punk song thrown in the middle, but I'm sure there was a context for that). I pressed play, just for the fun of it, maybe to remember if I still knew them off by heart the way I used to, or maybe to check if I now understood the lyrics better than when I was a seventeen-year-old girl with a completely different English accent.
Let's take it back to the year 2007.
Before I go any further, I often forget that 2007 was almost a decade and a half ago. I know I have accumulated thirteen years of life experiences since, but a part of me still feels like I have never left high school. But the truth is, I'm really fucking old, and 2007 almost marks half of my life. (God, I'm ready for the retirement home)
Now the interlude is over, let's take it back to the year 2007. Seventeen-year-old me has only just had access to the internet, and she is about to pass her baccalauréat (the French equivalent of the A-levels, I guess. I don't know what it is for the rest of the world. Finals but in high school? SATs?). She has only just spotted her first white hair (now, that's depressing. The worst part is that I remember when and how it happened. I was sat in P.E, and my school friend was sat behind me. Out of nowhere, she went "hey, Charlyne, you've got white hair." Thanks, Charlotte). She is obsessed with One Tree Hill (nothing much has changed), the Harry Potter universe (I'd rather not dwell on that bit), and Nouvelle Star, the French equivalent to American Idol. She isn't 100% familiar with illegally downloading music, so she borrows CDs from the local multimedia library, right next to her school and the shopping centre. She probably still chills at the record store (really a fancy word for the FNAC, the French equivalent to HMV) for no valid reason, just so she can take the same bus as her crush (i.e, a guy she's never spoken to and looks at from the other side of the cafeteria, the bus. I will not disclose his name, but he broke my heart before the Halloween break because, through a lot of hearsay, I found out he'd called me ugly. (Thanks, Charlotte) I spent the following English class sobbing. It was a bit embarrassing, I'll give you that. I know seventeen-year-old me used to wear football jerseys and purple tights, not at the same time, but she didn't deserve that kind of disrespect).
At the time, the bulk of my friends was found online, and we used to spend hours on end talking on the good old MSN. Some of these people are still my good friends, some others have drifted into the unknown. At least three of them now have children. At least one of them has got a divorce. I told you I was old. Through their influences, as well as the television programmes I used to watch, the films I found myself interested in, and the people at my school I deemed the epitome of cool, I entered what I like to call my indie phase.
If we're honest, I wasn't all that indie. It took me a while to see that a lot of the music I listened to at the time was either entirely old school (therefore, no one under the age of fifty liked it), or super mainstream, but not the charts type of mainstream. I was the French, mid-noughties equivalent of Fiat 500 Twitter, minus, well, Twitter, the Fiat 500, the bucket hat, and the Strongbow Dark Fruits. (Seventeen-year-old me didn't get invited to parties, and, when she did, she pretended she couldn't physically drink because she didn't want to get drunk and in trouble with her mum and brother) I was the 2007 equivalent of the kids who send you a Spotify playlist with "bands you won't have heard of," but, instead of being filled with The Courteeners, Gerry Cinnamon, Catfish and The Bottlemen, Liam Gallagher, or whoever indie kids listen to these days, I felt different because my favourite band was...get ready for that one...The Beatles.
Aged seventeen years old, my favourite band was quite literally the single most famous band in the history of music, and I still felt misunderstood, angsty, and unique with my music taste. You can't make that one up.
After listening to some of this playlist, still knowing some of the songs off by heart, and wondering if I was okay, sometimes, I have decided to write a little something about it all, a weird little analysis of the weird little seventeen-year-old I used to be.
Teenage me wouldn't have been who she was if it wasn't for the French band B.B Brunes. The French people in the house will know who I'm on about, the others, not so much. B.B Brunes are a French rock band formed in the mid-noughties in Paris, and they were the most successful ones out of what we called the "bébé rockers" (baby rockers), a bunch of bands who played loud-ish guitars and fast-ish rock songs, played in small clubs, and made French rock music exciting for the first (and arguably the last) time in a very, VERY long time. They were good-looking and passed off as jerks, they knew how to write a catchy chorus, and they were pretty much an instant success. I played their début album, Blonde Comme Moi, more times than I can count on my old MP3 player. They were the reason why I went to my first festival (the long-defunct Furia Sound Festival, in Cergy, near my hometown), and they were my first show. My best friend at the time and I were obsessed, and we'd bought tickets to see them at the Zénith, in Paris, in November 2008.
Their songs were about having sex, prostitutes, drinking alcopops and vodka, and doing drugs, which was, quite literally, seven hundred galaxies away from who I used to be. I couldn't relate to any of their music, and I'm not entirely sure I understood all the words at the time. (Frontman and singer-songwriter Adrien Gallo is quite the talented human with words, and I rarely ever understand French music anyway) My friend and I used to go on drives and day trips with her older brother, play our favourite album and sing along in his car, badly and loudly, and I'm pretty sure that if he could have abandoned us on the side of the motorway, he would have. He was just a simple guy who wanted to play Linkin Park in his Renault Clio, and we were the bane of his life.
- Remember how I mentioned that I used to be obsessed with football? In the summer of 2007, which is, arguably, the start of my indie phase, I made my first ever online friends, and, through talking on MSN and the comment sections of our old, defunct blogs, I discovered the existence of a song called Ya Nada Volvera A Ser Como Antes by a Spanish band, El Canto Del Loco. (An actual Spanish person told me once they weren't really a cool band, but I think I generally puzzled a lot of Spanish citizens in my life when telling them what artists I knew from their country) The music video featured football player (and, more importantly at the time, brand new Liverpool FC striker) Fernando Torres, and, by just checking it out, I started liking the song. All these years later, I still listen to it every once in a while, and I can almost understand the lyrics now- I speak enough Spanish for that.
- Another staple of the slightly sad, emo but doesn't want to label yourself that, indie kid of the mid-to-late noughties was Damien Rice. The only actual fact I know about him is that he did the Closer soundtrack, and I haven't even seen it. Just like all the sad indie girls of my time, I loved Damien Rice, and I had a top three favourite songs: Volcano, 9 Crimes, and The Blower's Daughter. I have no idea where I even found those songs, how I ended up there, but many, many a year later, they still tug at my heartstrings a little bit, even though there was no way seventeen-year-old me could ever relate to lines such as "What I really need is what makes me bleed." I can promise you I used this as my message thing on MSN. Why did I act like this man could see into my heart with that line? The closest thing I knew to heartbreak at the time was when the boys I had distant crushes on found themselves new hangout spots and I couldn't stare at them like an idiot while I was waiting for the cafeteria. I truly was just an emo in disguise.
- I used to listen to a lot more French music and a lot more music of varied genres. Not that I've completely become narrow-minded since I was 17, quite the contrary, actually, not to toot my own horn or anything, but I used to listen to basically anything. In 2007, a French band of the electronic music variety exploded onto the mainstream: Justice. And, just like everyone else in France at the time, I loved D.A.N.C.E (and, to this day, I still think it's one of the greatest songs created by a French person/group of people), and another less-known track on the record, DVNO. I have no idea where I even found it (my guess is MySpace), and I know I didn't listen to the whole of Justice's self-titled album. Just D.A.N.C.E and DVNO. And I have no explanation for it. Justice was electronic music for the cool Parisian kids, which was what every suburban kid of my time was aspiring to be. I didn't have the street cred, not in purple tights and Liverpool FC jerseys, but I had the soundtrack. Better than nothing, I guess.
- Remember the reality TV-based white boy of the month, extended to forever, Benjamin Siksou? Our boy wasn't only a singer, he was an actor, and he starred in one of France's attempts at romantic comedies for teenagers, 15 Ans et Demi, the story of a scientist who comes back to France to spend time with his daughter, Eglantine, and ends up taking a course to better understand teenagers. That all comes from Wikipedia, as I actually have never seen the film myself, not any further than the trailer and a further scene. The extra scene features a house party, with characters slow dancing to a song I thought was really lovely, and that's the story of how I became obsessed with Love For Granted by Phoenix. It still is one of my favourite songs on the planet to this day, and through these turns and roundabouts, I have discovered a band I truly like now. But seventeen-year-old me only cared about this song, and I have no doubt teenage me quietly dedicated the line "Oh, my love is easy, you are everything I need" to boys who didn't even know I existed.
(Also, upon researching 15 Ans et Demi, I (re?) discovered that the song DVNO by Justice was part of the soundtrack. The plot thickens. Also, it is a single with a music video, so I have no business calling it a "less-known track")
- I feel like the whole point of being a teenager was having songs, preferably on the slow and sad side of everything, that you would be listening to on a moving vehicle (for me, the bus), longingly looking out the window, and picturing yourself the heroine of a film. One of the best ones for this game was Someone New by Eskobar & Heather Nova, which remains one of my favourite songs in existence. I don't exactly know how I could have been a protagonist in that song, but I had a vivid imagination to make up for it. Believe me, when I was seventeen, no one was out there falling in love with me and being broken up about it ending, nor were they wishing I would find someone new because they adored me. Almost fourteen years down the line, I still can't help but feeling like that girl when I listen to this song, which is a regular addition to playlists, to this day. Just like many other songs of the time, I have no idea where I even discovered it. Was it ever popular? Did it get radio play? Was it on a football edit on YouTube? Did I find it on MySpace? Did a friend send it to me on MSN? Your guess is as good as mine.