Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me Quotes

“If you're reading this book, there is probably an artist or band whose music you have an intense personal relationship with. I would also guess that this artist or band came into your life during a time when you were highly vulnerable. if this is the case, this artist or band might be the closest thing you had to a confidant. in fact, he, she, or it was better than a confidant, because his/her/its music articulated your own thoughts and feeling better than you ever could. This music elevated the raw materials of your life to the heights of art and poetry. It made you feel as if your personal experience was grander and more meaningful than it might otherwise have been. And naturally you attributed whatever that music was doing to your heart and brain to the people who made the music, and you came to believe that the qualities of the music were also true of the music's creators. "If this music understands me, then the people behind the music must also understand me," goes this line of thought.”
― Steven Hyden, Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me: What Pop Music Rivalries Reveal About the Meaning of Life

“A Default Smart Opinion is an opinion that’s generally considered to be inarguable because it’s repeated ad nauseam by seemingly intelligent individuals. Other examples include “Nickelback sucks!,” “The Big Bang Theory sucks!,” and “Kim Kardashian is dumb and also sucks!”
― Steven Hyden, Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me: What Pop Music Rivalries Reveal About the Meaning of Life

“Violence will ruin your day and stain your clothes.”
― Steven Hyden, Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me: What Pop Music Rivalries Reveal About the Meaning of Life

“In 1902, a sociologist named Charles Horton Cooley devised a concept called the looking-glass self, which posits that s person's sense of identity is shaped by interaction with social groups and the ways in which the individual thinks he or she is perceived by others. Cooley believed this process involved three steps: •You imagine how you appear to other people. •You imagine the judgment of other people. •You base your feelings about yourself on how you think [you] appear to other people.”
― Steven Hyden, Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me: What Pop Music Rivalries Reveal About the Meaning of Life

“These days MTV is known for…I actually don’t know what MTV is known for now. I haven’t watched MTV regularly in at least fifteen years. I assume MTV’s programming consists of reality shows in which twenty-one-year-olds flash their junk in exchange for Skrillex tickets, but don’t quote me on that.”
― Steven Hyden, Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me: What Pop Music Rivalries Reveal About the Meaning of Life

“What is life? It is a series of arrangements that each of us makes in order to slow down the deterioration process as much as possible. Everybody faces the same decisions as they advance in age—behavior that was fun when you were younger (excessive drug and alcohol intake, indiscriminate sexual encounters with the powerfully magnetic and questionably sane, residing in shitholes with hygiene-averse scumbags) can’t continue when you get older or else the death march gets accelerated. Mature people learn over time how to structure their lives in such a way that the likelihood of dying is minimized. Eventually the menu of fun items that won’t instantly kill you is reduced to a small selection of spicy entrees, then a zesty appetizer or two, then a glass of water and a spoon (because forks and knives could cut your terrifyingly translucent skin, you decrepit old coot). I”
― Steven Hyden, Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me: What Pop Music Rivalries Reveal About the Meaning of Life

“In his book The Economy of Prestige, author and professor James English suggests that awards serve a dual, seemingly contradictory role in society: first, they exist in order to bestow a marker of quality on items (such as films, music, and TV shows) that don’t have any intrinsic value. But awards also create a forum where the value of what awards represent—the commodification of art—can be debated.”
― Steven Hyden, Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me: What Pop Music Rivalries Reveal About the Meaning of Life

“You keep your wine in a paper bag, you shouldn't be too upset when it leaks.”
― Steven Hyden, Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me: What Pop Music Rivalries Reveal About the Meaning of Life

“But the most lasting rivalry between American landmasses is the one between the northern United States (really the northeastern United States) and the southern United States (really Texas, Alabama, South Carolina, all of Louisiana except New Orleans, and the whitest, most strip-mally regions of Florida). Although the north and south fought a war 150 years ago in order to determine which region's values were going to wind up guiding this nation forward, north vs. south has subsequently played out largely in our elections and pop culture.”
― Steven Hyden, Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me: What Pop Music Rivalries Reveal About the Meaning of Life

“Awards shows wouldn’t exist if you didn’t have one group putting forward a highly flawed theory of what constitutes quality in a given field and another group complaining that this standard hopelessly misses the mark. You can’t have an X without a Y, and vice versa. The Y side has the numbers, but the X side is more stalwart, in part as a reaction against Y’s hegemony. Eventually, enthusiasm from the masses for Y moves on, allowing X to take over. How”
― Steven Hyden, Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me: What Pop Music Rivalries Reveal About the Meaning of Life