Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me by Steven Hyden

There is joy in this: We root much of our personalities in pop-culture alignments. 'It says nothing about you other than your unquestioning acceptance of inevitable truths.'īut so much of how we relate to music is framed by the sides we take in rivalries. 'Loving the Beatles is so ordinary by comparison,' he writes. This is, of course, in the context of Stones versus Beatles – a rivalry, Hyden insists, that's really about the Beatles' cultural hegemony. He argues he has to be in his new book, Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me: What Pop Music Rivalries Reveal About the Meaning of Life, he puts into simple words what is often passed down as inherent wisdom: 'The most common signifiers associated with the Stones – sex, drugs, danger, outlaw posturing – are synonymous with cool, and, like everybody, I want to be cool.' I asked why the Beatles, Dad insisted, were 'just too bubble-gummy.' So I grew up a Rolling Stones guy. As a kid, I remember rifling through my boomer father's LP collection and finding Hot Rocks 1964-1971, but not a single Beatles record. I lead the least-blue-collar life imaginable – I am literally a mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan (er, national) newspaper – but in the denim-clad corner of Canada where I grew up, it was drilled into me that rock 'n' roll should be the conduit for any and all good times.

And at or near the top of this belief system is the infinite power of rock. When you grow up as a white dude in a blue-collar family, a blue-collar town or maybe a blue-collar province, there are a number of things you are systematically taught to believe as unbreakable rules of media consumption. Your perception of pop culture is inexorably shaped by your upbringing.

Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me by Steven Hyden