I'm 5 Years Late to Every Trend
Could it be a good thing?
My Spotify is set to the “Smart Shuffle” mode, which means that songs not in my current playlist are mixed into my queue. A week or two ago, a song I’d never heard was smart-shuffled into my headphones, a mellow, indie-R&B sound that made me pause what I was doing. I finished the song and then immediately played it back from the start.
It was “Jonny” by Faye Webster. I loved the low bass, the muted keys, the weepy woodwinds, the syrupy rhythm, and, of course, her voice. The song is playful yet poignant: she pleads with “Jonny”—a casual, though intimate nickname—“did you ever love me?” A genuine melancholy sneaks up on her: “Jonny, do you see what you're doing? / What you’re making me think about? / This wasn’t ‘posed to be a love song / But I guess it is now.” And I love that kind of sentimentality.
I started listening to her other songs. I texted some of my friends and asked if they knew her. I needed to share my discovery.
They all knew her. How? How did everyone know Faye Webster, and how had I not? Here’s a text conversation with my friend Kate:
She performed at Yale in February? Kate continued:
Apparently people have known about her for years. Her album Atlanta Millionaires Club, which “Jonny” is on, came out in 2019. I hadn’t made a “discovery;” I just caught up.
Recently, I’ve felt as though all I’ve been doing is catching up. In early June I read Normal People by Sally Rooney, which came out in 2018, and I’ve been making my way through the TV adaptation, which came out in 2020. I’m currently reading My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante, a 2011 novel I received as a birthday present in 2022 or 2023 (I don’t exactly remember). I’m at least 5 years behind consuming most trendy pieces of media.
I often wish I were a finger-on-the-pulse cultural maven. I wish my tastes immediately matched what was popular and current. I wish I could, right now, casually rattle off opinions on Severance or the new Ocean Vuong book or Materialists (though actually I may watch Materialists soon). I wish I could have talked to my friends about Normal People when it came out. I wish I had liked Faye Webster in February.
There are two reasons, I believe, for my lagging consumption. Firstly, I’m not the most motivated reader/watcher/listener. This view is pessimistic: I’m behind on trends because I’m lazy. Notionally, I want to consume new media, but it’s hard to overcome the initial energy cost of going to a bookstore or heading to a movie theater; music is definitely easier to access, but it takes effort to find new songs that fit the ones you like. There’s also the desire to avoid disappointment: I don’t want to invest any time into a piece of media I won’t end up loving. (Nobody does, but how else are you going to find new things you love?)
The second reason is that I’m a slow consumer. Probably, it’s because I can’t multitask well. I can’t casually watch TV shows while doing work, and I have a hard time concentrating while listening to music. I’ve always been slow at reading books. If I take another pessimistic view, my inability to focus on several things at once has stopped me from consuming more efficiently.
But maybe it isn’t an entirely bad thing. When I watch or read or listen to a piece of media, I’m focused only on that object. I deeply absorb it, and usually I end up remembering specific details for a long time afterward. I’m not sure if my natural slowness lets me process pieces of media more thoroughly, or if an innate desire to understand an object thoroughly makes me a slower reader/watcher/listener. But in any case, while I’m slow, I internalize things well—an advantage of the tortoise, not the hare.
There’s great value in immediately consuming everything you can and offering quick evaluations and judgments, but that’s a well-known fact. I think there’s a parallel, underrated value in slow consumption, a more contemplative and, for me, fulfilling way to approach art and culture.
But then again, I should be more on top of it. It’s not as though these two approaches are mutually exclusive. How many Faye Websters could be out there?
I knew when u took my copy of the white album in 2021 u would never be the same
Dr. Twitchell will pay for this.