The Martlet

This campus is a hotbed of music snobbery.

It doesn’t matter what the genre, what you listen to is never cool enough for the people around you.

If you’re into hip hop, listening to mainstream music brands you as a poser. If rock is more your thing, the coolest of bands are the ones who are so new their album still has yet to make it off MySpace. If you’re into alternative music, it’s only cool until Zach Braff puts it in a movie soundtrack, then your new favourite song instantly becomes old news.

What if you like Eminem? Or Fergie? Or High School Musical? Or — heaven forbid — the Jonas Brothers?

At UVic, should you dare to show the slightest interest in anything that could possibly make a Top 40 chart (or in big names like the Backstreet Boys and the Spice Girls), you’re immediately shot a look dirtier than the lyrics to Lil Wayne’s “Lollipop.”

Are the campus cool police over-reacting? We all have our guilty pleasures. Can’t we just enjoy them in peace?

Canadian artists like Nickelback and Avril Lavigne are often hidden in the back of our CD collections and are sheepishly acknowledged if they happen to surface on our iTunes when someone else is listening. Nickelback has won nine Juno awards and Lavigne has seven.

Someone has to be listening. In fact, a lot of people are.

We should be proud of our favourite artists for their international success, not ashamed of them for committing the ultimate musical sin of becoming popular. So they’re collecting a paycheque. So they’re appearing on the front cover of magazines. Does that make their music any less enjoyable, or their talent any less apparent?

This summer, Western Canada got a taste of a great outdoor music festival as 125 artists took to four stages at the Pemberton Music Festival. Over 40,000 music fanatics flocked to the dusty farmers’ fields north-east of Whistler, and the next few days were a drunken celebration of nearly every type of music under the sun.

The main stage was graced by top artists in every genre, from Nine Inch Nails to Coldplay, to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, to the Flaming Lips, to N.E.R.D. On the last night, people who’d been watching indie band Vampire Weekend perform just hours before scrunched themselves into the massive crowd to watch Jay-Z, one of the world’s most successful hip hop artists.

People who may have otherwise been ashamed to know every word to “99 problems” happily threw up their hands in the Roca-A-Fella sign and joined the crowd in singing along.

Why can’t that happen here at UVic?

Why are Thursday nights at Red Jacket the only time the trendiest people of this fair city can come together to dance to Rhianna? Why is it acceptable to know all the words to “Spice up your life” when it comes on at Lucky Bar on a Monday night? Any other time, any other place, these acts are frowned upon by the coolest of the cool.

Besides, who designated music snobs as the “cool police” anyway? Where is it written as an immutable truth that Rhianna and the Backstreet Boys are untalented? Music taste is subjective, and if Rhianna rocks your socks then she’s about as talented as it gets in your eyes. Until some objective ranking of musical talent is unleashed upon this world, what you consider cool is cool for you. Yes, even if it’s the Backstreet Boys.

Before you make fun of someone when “Complicated” comes on during shuffle, don’t forget about that Hilary Duff CD hidden behind your own collection of unknown indie albums. And while you’re at it, make sure you reserve a space beside that Hilary Duff album to shove those pieces of obscure glory when they — gasp! — become popular too.