At an “Oktoberfest” carnival in 8th grade, I met a boy with blonde tips who was in an awful band and had a reputation as an exceptionally fast swimmer. Immediately, I was in love. We sat down on a grassy hill and he asked me if I liked the Smashing Pumpkins. I said “Yes!”, even though I had no idea who the Smashing Pumpkins were; my favorite record at the time was Michelle Branch’s seminal Hotel Paper. He then asked if I liked a band called “UDB,” to which I exclaimed, again, “yes!” UDB, I learned from a friend who’d overheard him joking about it later, meant “Up Da Butt.” We did not speak again, and I still hate the Smashing Pumpkins.
After speaking to a number of colleagues, I learned that not everyone lied to be cool when they were younger. Then again, it’s also possible that they are lying to me now in order to give the appearance of having once been cool. “Uh,” Hamilton Nolan replied when I asked if he’d ever pretended to like a band to impress someone. “No, I was just into hip hop.”
“I think I was the opposite, more obnoxious type of teen,” Deadspin’s Samer Kalaf told me, “where I hated everything popular and pretended that I understood Pink Floyd.”
“I was a really cool teen,” Anna Merlan said apologetically. “Much cooler then.” Kate Dries, as always, also provided a strong statement: “I never pretended to like any bands and as such my musical tastes were deemed wildly unpopular.”
Fortunately for my self-esteem, I was eventually able to locate a handful of coworkers across Gizmodo Media Group who, like me, were trying (varying degrees of) hard. Below are their stories, accompanied by a playlist you may or may not want to listen to.
1. The Rolling Stones
On the first day of freshman year of high school, the “hottest” freshman boy showed up wearing a Rolling Stones shirt and had the tongue sticker on his folder or something. Naturally, I spent all of my babysitting money on the entire discography of the Rolling Stones (my father has never been prouder) and made it my mission to be an absolute expert so I’d have solid material for the first time I spoke to him. When I finally did, he was like, “Whoa, you seem to really know a lot about the Rolling Stones!” And I was like, “Yeah, don’t you love them too?” He said, “Not really. I mean, I have a t-shirt…” He did go on to become my first boyfriend, though. –Phoebe Bradford
2. Blur
I feel like I should have pretended more, for my own safety and shielding of ridicule, but I always openly enjoyed typically gay shit like Madonna and Mariah Carey. I guess it was one of my ways of being out without being out. I remember once being irritated by a girl going on and on about Oasis so I decided for no other reason than to oppose her that I was team Blur. I had only heard “Girls & Boys” (this was the year before their self-titled album with their sole legit U.S. hit, “Song 2,” came out). So I bought Parklife and then realized I loved it and then became obsessed with Brit Pop for years and years. So pretending to like a band, I guess, resulted in my actually liking the band. Never did get into Joy Division, though, despite feeling obligated to. –Rich Juzwiak
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