Emotional Maturity And Music: "Well, I Guess This Is Growing Up"

I was listening to my iPod on Shuffle the other day, and something came up that I hadn't listened to in years.  This in itself isn't remotely noteworthy - I have a ton of music on that thing, a lot of which is pulled from CDs I've owned since high school or earlier and that I haven't sat down and paid proper attention to in quite a long time.  But the particular song gave me pause, because it used to be one of my favorites.  It was "And All That Could Have Been" by Nine Inch Nails, and as a lad of about sixteen, it had encapsulated my angsty little world almost perfectly.  Here's a link to the song if you're curious enough to listen.  (Be warned, though - it's pretty damn depressing.  You might want to have a box of tissues close at hand, or alternatively, make sure there are no razors or other sharp objects within arms' reach before clicking Play.)


Now, I was a pretty angsty sixteen-year-old.  (Then again, who wasn't, right?)  A song like this, one that forces the listener to share in whatever incredibly miserable experience inspired it in the first place, seems perfect favorite-song-ever material for a kid with tons of negative thoughts and emotions swirling in his adolescent psyche but without any sense of perspective on any of it, much less any way of expressing anything more complicated than deep, malignant sorrow.  Screw looking at things from different angles, this is my angle, and nobody but Trent Reznor understands me.  Of course, even at that young age, I was a budding musician, and I appreciated the compositional and production aspects of the song too, such as its masterful use of atmospheric effects to create mood and its clever switches in time-signature.  All in all, I had thought "And All That Could Have Been" was pretty much the epitome in songwriting, musicianship, and storytelling-through-lyrics.  And it was, like, deep, man.


Listening to the song again eight years later, my impression was decidedly different.  For one thing, it's so oppressively dreary and dark that listening to it really wasn't that much fun.  I guess in the intervening time since I was a dark and brooding high-school sophomore, I've gained more appreciation for major-key songwriting.  Plus, Reznor's complete lack of musical or lyrical subtlety leaves nothing left to interpretation - it's like getting whacked in the face with the gloomiest sledgehammer ever.  I guess I don't feel like I completely share his outlook on things as much as I thought I once did.  But what made me stop and think the hardest was the fact that, when I was the kind of kid who listened to this stuff all the time, I'm sure I was just about as depressing to be around as the music I listened to.  (For what it's worth, though, I still think the song is cleverly produced and arranged from a musical perspective.  I'm still a NIN fan, and for all his lyrical shortcomings, Reznor was - and arguably, still is - a damn good musician overall.)

This got me thinking about how our emotional reactions to music change and mature as we grow older.  When I was a sixteen-year-old NIN-obsessed adolescent, I latched onto the emotional wavelength of that kind of music because it was painted in broad enough strokes for me to recognize with my primitive understanding of human emotion.  NIN has never been known for subtlety or emotional ambiguity: it's venting music, and when you're a teenager, you need music, movies, and other media that lets you vent a bit.  Since most kids that age view things in similarly broad, black-and-white strokes, this ham-fisted approach to emotion is tailor-made for those needing an outlet for all that hormonal tension.  Not that it all has to be dark and dreary: enter Blink-182, whose smart-ass pop-punk was just as much of an outlet for me and my peers as NIN's emotional dirges.  (See "Dammit," which is pretty unsubtle itself and from which I shamelessly lifted part of this entry's title.)  It laid it all out there, and it just begged to be sung along to, to be transcribed from memory in the margins of your American History 1 notes, and to be totally taken to heart as God's honest truth and a clear window into the human experience.  Any number of other bands or genres could fit the bill just as well - the point is that it didn't take any effort to identify with, it just was what it was, in the most obvious tones possible.


When you get older, though, you learn that things aren't so cut-and-dry.  You learn to view situations from other people's perspectives than your own.  You learn that there are better ways to get a message across than screaming it in people's faces - in other words, that subtlety can be a very good thing.  Most importantly, you learn that an isolated instance of heartache or angst isn't the end of the freaking world, and you'd probably be better off getting over it than wallowing in self-pity.  From the perspective of a 24-year-old who's done at least a little bit of growing up since 2002 (then again, maybe I'm flattering myself unduly here), it seems pretty damn silly and immature to put as much emotional stock into a song like "And All That Could Have Been" as I once did.

This isn't to say that I'm some kind of Vulcan-like stoic with no reaction to anything, though - it's just that different types of musical content and lyrical imagery strike a chord with me these days.  If I feel like listening to something with emotional resonance, I'm much more likely to spin some Death Cab For Cutie or The Swell Season than NIN.  Maybe I've just softened up in my old age.  And It's quite likely that in another eight years, I'll look back on the music that tugs my heartstrings today and feel the same way.  So maybe there really is no "growing up," and we're all just drifting from one self-pitying musical experience to another, slightly less morose one, only to move onward again.  Whatever the case, it doesn't change the fact that, no matter how old we get or how mature we think we are, we all need something to vent with in one way or another - and those sources of emotional outlet are as subject to change as our emotions themselves.