Find your tribe in a Sea of Creativity
my favorite thing in the world to do is assign music to characters. and by assign i mean figure out their fav bands. fav songs, fav albums, fav musicians … their listening habits, their opinions in music. are they a music snob? do they not really care? do they listen more during the day, while working, or while they’re chilling at night? what are their unpopular music opinions? genres/decades they fancy? there’s so much you can do here and so much character depth you can add and uncover.
sometimes i just. lob artists/bands at characters to figure out what they’d think. grow their music taste and opinions yk. i think about the holts from adf quite often, it’s just fun to see the differences between three brothers and even their parents and how music is passed down vs how some go against the grain. dale might love the smashing pumpkins and tyler might hate them. complain about billy corgan’s voice, cross his arms and think about how much he hates this and how much he’d rather hear something like what’s the story morning glory (oasis). but not wonderwall! no, that’s beneath him, he may tolerate it but he doesn’t love it and resents the idea of it being assigned his favorite song just because he likes oasis. he doesn’t understand dale’s interest in weird shit like supertramp but can silently appreciate the rolling stones even if he finds it appalling that their album cover is a guy’s bulge. tyler can appreciate 70s but he just doesn’t…love it. too many long intros, not enough singing - i think tyler does enjoy hearing someone’s voice, so all that rock n roll guitar solo shit doesnt really fly with him. i know he’d just die if he ever heard dale play shine on you crazy diamond, he’d be like wtf is this? no turn it off i want to hear some real music. and dale’s like bro, this IS real music. this is literally pink floyd. and tyler’s all, i don’t give a shit change it. and dale’s like fine whatever. then tyler is like no, i don’t wanna listen to david bowie, just put it on some 90s or even some good 70s stuff, i just don’t wanna hear those weird solos. so funny to me.
and dale! i don’t see dale being into a whole lot of pink floyd - maybe just the popular stuff, esp the wish you were here album. if he dove into it more i think he’d enjoy it (especially the wall) but just hasn’t really given pf a big ole chance yet. just into weird shit, just music made for that certain demographic that people like tyler can’t and maybe never will understand. dale’s experimental and nods off to reggae, bob marley and (by extension) bunny wailer, and alton ellis. watches old docs on woodstock and the doors and jimi hendrix. probs got into stevie ray vaughan through his cover of hendrix’s “little wing,” he can just really appreciate a good fuckin’ guitarist. i think he’s a little all over the place, kinda the guy that listens to everything w other people’s influence, picking up on new songs along the way, kind of a magnet for new music. he loves his mom’s taste in music and they listen to some similar stuff. not sure yet if dale got sharon into reggae or if it’s the other way around. either way i feel like reggae is important to dale, he enjoys uplifting music and doesn’t really fuck with depressing shit, maybe more mellow stuff here and there but nothing like what jay would ever listen to. some of it is just too dark for him. so i do think he has a bit of a line despite picking up so much from others. doesn’t mean he dislikes grunge, he just doesn’t really enjoy songs like black or polly or even jeremy. tyler’s similar, not that he hates grunge or anything but if he even got a glimpse of nirvana’s “rape me” he’d be super turned off.
surprisingly i can see all three listening to pearl jam, kinda something that keeps the whole fam together. jay obviously enjoys the ten album, jeremy and black and once… thinks that whole album is a masterpiece. tyler likes yellow ledbetter and some other stuff off of vs, elderly woman and daughter… and dale i think also likes vs, def yield and maybe even some vitalogy ? better man and faithful, given to fly? yeahhhh. jay’s a full grunge fan, likes that crusty 90s, sonic youth and pixies and nirvana.. maybe a little old country thrown in from his dad. could definitely see jay being a deadhead if he’d ever been able to keep up with a band like that and wasn’t stuck to the confines of two rock. just enjoys jamming to music, electric guitar vibes all around. when it comes to blur vs oasis jay is probably gonna choose blur, much to his brother’s chagrin. not that he’d admit that, he’d probs say something like “i like em both..” just nodding along when tyler’s music snobbery comes up. unlike dale he doesn’t really mind that tyler doesn’t open his mind to different music. meanwhile i bet it annoys dale that tyler won’t even give songs a chance just because of the title. also have mentioned this in the past but jay does like a lot of girl singers, mazzy star and hole and sonic youth,, maybe even the cranberries ? can see “linger” being a guilty pleasure song of his. also he’d def enjoy the smashing pumpkins (which i am listening to rn hence why i’m bringing it up lol) so he and dale have that in common i imagine. shockingly enough i think jay might also weirdly be into like, 60s to mid-70s bob dylan? none of that christian shit he got into later in life but definitely simple twist of fate and like a rolling stone… that whole highway 61 album. maybe is possibly obsessed with that black and white bob dylan aesthetic, firing back at reporters and smoking cigarettes in every vid and being up on stage all by himself, just a guitar and harmonica. black shades and everything… and no i’m NOT just saying this because i’m also obsessed with bob dylan but jay seems the type what can i say.
so, the gist? dale is weird experimental mostly 70s/some 60s shit, tyler is 90s alt rock and jay is moreso 90s grunge and rock and shoegaze. can’t see any of them being much into 80s, maybe jay could get into the cure with some time but as of now i can’t see him being into it yet. bet dale could appreciate those synth solos that were so popular. maybe sharon listens to a bit of 80s… not too sure yet i’d have to see. i mean thats probs the era jay grew up in so? who knows. but yeah, dale is into bob marley and tyler oasis and jay nirvana, their tastes can obviously overlap and it’d be hilarious to see what they’d do with a joint playlist between all three of them and how they’d react to each others songs, may write that someday if the time is right.
why did i write this? because i needed to expel all of these jumbled music thoughts in my head and these three are the easiest to do that with. this may not be canon to anyone else in the adf fandom (btw this is not even my fandom but i’m here hi) but it makes sense in my head and i’m sticking with it. i may go deeper someday if anyone is interested or if inspiration strikes again so, we shall see. but yeah here hands you this essay