Stop Pretending That You've Listened To These Albums

This article was originally published on Noisey UK.

We lie on average 10 times per week, and you can bet your stained reputation that if it’s not about why you’re late for work, where you got your cool sweater from (Gap, don’t be ashamed, they make great sweaters), the last time you drank alcohol or ate carbs, it’s probably going to be about music.

There is no shame in lying about music. While our grandparents may have had to line up at the docks and wait for the latest steamboat shipment of George Formby records to arrive once every five years, there is now more good music coming out each day than we can psychologically cope with. Consequently, it has become inescapably hard not to fall behind on what exactly is popping at all times.

Thanks to Twitter, little snippets of information are constantly scurrying across your eyes like misspelled cataracts; small nuggets of piffle implanted for later quoting. Which is why in so many conversations, when someone says “Did you listen to that new Kaytranada track?” and you respond “Yes,” what you actually mean is “No, but I read a rather descriptive tweet about it and I’m confident I can wing this.”

The following albums all fall under that category: you say you’ve heard them, but you haven’t heard them. You’ve just managed to fabricate your claims to such an extent that you have now fully convinced yourself that, yes, you are a big fan.

Ask yourself this, how do these albums start? Tell me how they end? And what were their non-single highlights in your opinion?

Why you pretend:
How else can you legitimately wage in with your 10 cents on Iggy Azalea every time you’re in a bar or round a friend’s house and a conversation about hip-hop or butts inevitably does the rounds, but in reality, you have no idea how and if Iggy Azalea has disrespectfully appropriated black culture, because all you’ve ever heard is “Fancy” at the Virgin Active gym.

Will you ever listen to it?
If you listened to The New Classic you might even slowly begin to think that, regardless of the songwriting quality on display, it’s actually much more of a pop album than a rap album anyway. You might end up on a tangential strain of thought that makes you question why when white men channel hip-hop they don’t get anywhere near the same—or how after 14 years of hip-hop being marketed heavily to white people it’s no surprise that young white girls are growing up to emulate it’s cultural impact—but then you’ll hear the tea kettle boil and return to your surface reality. You shall continue to base your argument on Q-Tip’s Twitter, Snoop Dogg’s Instagram, and incomplete headlines from passing think-pieces.

Why you pretend:
You needed some variable chat during the build up to the Mercury Prize. People were getting sick of that line you’d prepared about Kate Tempest being a cross between Mike Skinner and Ayn Rand.

Will you ever listen to it?
No, but here are some helpful statements to get you past the tribulations of wanting to be the type of person who knows them without having to waste too much time on knowing them at all really.

1. “It’s great that an act like that can win the Mercury. I think the money has gone to a good place.”
2. “Their vocal interplay is very impressive.”
3. “They are of Scotland.”

Why you pretend:
“Yeah, they are a really interesting band… very experimental,” you answer tentatively whenever that nauseous topic arises in your social circles. “I think Merriweather Post Pavilion was my favorite” you add, at the same time graciously thanking your subsconscious for pulling that album title straight from the ass-end of decomposing memories still festering from your time spent on the internet in 2009. You tell people that you really enjoy his/their/someone’s singing style, when it’s actually the bit you find most inexplicably difficult to enjoy.

Will you ever listen to it?
To your credit, you’ve HAVE tried a few times to get into the band. In fact, you have at least three of their albums on your iPod. You once got halfway through Centipede HZ during a pretty bad signal failure on the tube, but found yourself switching to “Get Low” by Lil Jon once you’d woken up. The best advice is to hide your fake obsession with them beneath an equally bewildering but protective veil of unquestionable statements.

I have this weird connection with Animal Collective that I don't think anyone will ever understand. #HipsterProblems

— Hatin' Manning (@DabWolf92) April 12, 2012

Why you pretend:
Everyone thought it was excellent that someone so unlikely managed to supersede Drake, Mac Demarco, and Arcade Fire to win Canada’s Polaris music prize, especially as a "throat singer," and you wanted a slice of that self-congratulatory diversity pie that we all seem to feast on whenever something remotely alternative, like a woman or a foreign person, becomes unexpectedly popular.

Will you ever listen to it?
You went a bit quiet on the whole thing when her views on indigenous seal hunting circulated online, even though the last time you positively engaged with a seal was when you bought “Kiss From a Rose” on CD single for a short-term girlfriend you never kissed when you were 10. Eventually, you removed Tanya Tagaq’s album from your Spotify favorites without listening to it, because it kept inexplicably coming up on shuffle during sex.

A photo posted by @modularpeople on Apr 14, 2013 at 11:12pm PDT

Why you pretend:
Lonerism is the perfect album for those awkward, disconnected car journeys with your parents where all parties' desperately desperately scrape at the air to produce a topic of chatter that isn’t about the weather, the cost of gas or comments on the car itself—the ones that make you start to question whether your connection to these people goes any further than future medical problems. Bang on this record, and the absence of conversation is replaced by a rich tapestry of peroxide psychedelia. You think it’s really cool, and your parents thinks it’s a weird Beatles album they have forgotten, because they forget things now. But with the vast accessibility of Lonerism, came millions of new fans (like Danny Devito above) presenting themselves as life-long Tame Impala devotees, and you hated them, even though you were definitely one of them.

Will you ever listen to it?
Maybe it’s best you don’t bother now, because the next album is almost here. Plus, you still get those two or three opportunities at every Tame Impala show, where they dare play anything but Lonerism, to take a piss, buy a beer, or stare at the back of a vaguely attractive person’s head.

Why you pretend:
You’ve been gesticulating wildly online about his involvement with FKA twigs, Kanye West, and Björk, but his OWN album? Aren’t albums like nearly an hour long these days? Without a single collaboration? You imagine it’s really excellent, but let’s face it, even that FKA twigs record made you feel awkward in the same way you do when the dog can see you wanking and makes sad eyes.

Will you ever listen to it?
Your commute is stressful enough without listening to the industrial soundscapes of solo Arca, pouring all his intellectual electronic verve into track names like “Family Violence.” But if you did give it a chance, you’d find the album has as many moments of absolutely blissful wanderlust as it does crunching and manic spells of fervour. But you’ll just stick to “Hold My Liquor” and continue to tweet about Arca being the best beatmaker in the world right now. When you do publicise your lies though, remember to refer to him in the male singular. He is not a duo or a band.

Video: Cool music video from Arca - check out their new album if you haven’t already. http://t.co/fczK7QSs6D

— Jackson Palmer (@ummjackson) November 18, 2014

Why you pretend:
You’ve got almost halfway through a lot of interesting thinkpieces about Vangelis: the legendary Greek musician responsible for the Blade Runner soundtrack and 4.2 million other albums—from the epic score to "Chariots of Fire" to the London 2012 Olympics music to the fact he’s had a fucking planet named after him. In fact, Vangelis is probably the artist you have read the most about without ever actively listening to. Because, the thing is, you like the idea of a version of you that listens to Vangelis. That parallel universe version of you that knows the difference between malbec and merlot, lives in a studio apartment with a cat called Faust, understands Tarkovsky films, wears half open open shirts, and has a local reputation for being a great fuck. The truth is, that’s not you. You’re you. And the only way this you will get to the end of Vangelis' long lost 12-hour soundtrack you downloaded last week is if you die during it.

What would happen if you did listen to it?

You can follow Joe Zadeh's lies on Twitter.