The year was 2013. Sixth grade was just around the corner, and as I sat on the train to Lincoln Financial Field to watch the Eagles game from some ~*fancy box seats*~ owned by a friend of my dad, the cell signal on my shiny(ish) new(ish) iPhone 5 suddenly disappeared. Oh no. My Cody Simpson turned off. (No, seriously, I was listening to Cody Simpson. That’s how uncultured I was in regards to music. Although, hey, I did have pretty brown eyes.) I quickly opened my abandoned iTunes account and clicked on the first thing that looked familiar -- Daft Punk’s Get Lucky. From there, I became entranced by Instant Crush, enraptured by Doin' It Right, and enchanted by Give Life Back To Music. Daft Punk was the first band to ever give me that feeling of truly loving a song, and on that day, I declared them my favorite band. I was… very into Daft Punk. So into them that I was made fun of, a lot, in middle school. My friends said their robot act was weird, my mom wouldn’t let me buy their (very overpriced) merch, and the librarian at school constantly told me off for printing too many pictures of them for my wall and using up all of the ink in the printer. I seriously had a wall of Daft Punk photos in my bedroom for a year. That was bad; I’ll admit it. But hey, you only have one first favorite band, and Daft Punk was mine. I didn’t understand Daft Punk at the age of eleven. I’d heard everyone online referring to them as musical geniuses, pioneers, and legends, but I never understood their musical significance. I treated them just like any other band one would like in middle school, say a boy band or a quirky indie band. Luckily, there was a community online that did the same. Every day, I checked for news of a new Alive tour on my favorite Daft Punk Instagram accounts and laughed at the same recycled cartoon robot memes every single day. It was just like any other band, and any other fandom,but it felt personal. EDM opened me up to a world beyond what was on the radio. Sure, I’d occasionally hear a Skrillex or Avicii song on Hits 1 (it was 2013, after all), but most of what I listened to was relatively underground. Along with Daft Punk and other radio-friendly artists, I listened to a lot of Deadmau5, Justice, and Soulwax remixes of any song you’d care to name. Pandora was my best friend, and I was constantly discovering new artists. Through the French house scene I was unknowingly diving into, Ed Banger Records took Pandora’s place as my best friend, and I started listening to Cassius, Breakbot, Kavinsky, and a bunch of other artists I’ve definitely forgotten by now. For the entirety of sixth grade, everyone thought I was crazy. I constantly tried to explain that they just weren’t getting the magic of Daft Punk’s robot thing, and tearfully convinced my mother not to read the TMZ article which showed Daft Punk without their helmets on. She read it anyway. As I raved about just how good the new Kavinsky single was, I was met with a bunch of confused looks, and when I asked how *no one* at my lunch table had heard Feeling For You by Cassius, I had a feeling they were thinking of ‘voting me off the island.’ Things were pretty bad. That was, until my friend’s hot cousin from France came for the week and I was the only person he talked too because he liked Daft Punk too. All of the girls swooned over him but he just wanted to talk to me about his custom helmet. That was pretty sweet. EDM was suddenly cool because some cute boy from France said it was. Somehow, during the summer between sixth and seventh grade, I was caught in a whirlwind of indie rock and forgot about the EDM and French house artists I had grown to love over the past year. I distinctly remember walking laps around the local pool and telling my friend that I just “didn’t like Daft Punk anymore” and that everything they did was just to scam their fans. "The whole robot thing is a gimmick," I sighed, giving in to what everyone told me. With that, I deleted all of their music from my iTunes library and moved on. … … For two years. And then, I discovered Metronomy. Metronomy brought me back to EDM in the best way possible. Their style combined the indie rock music I knew and loved with the now unfamiliar and refreshing wonky synths of French house and dance music. After listening to their entire discography on repeat every single day of my sophomore year of high school, my Spotify daily mixes finally updated and I was back in the EDM business. Oh yeah. It was always a pleasant surprise to rediscover an artist I vaguely remembered from my days shuffling through Pandora. Throughout my junior year of high school, I rediscovered artists like LCD Soundsystem, The Whitest Boy Alive, and Miike Snow, and felt waves of nostalgia hit me like the bumps of the road as I rested my head against the bus window in sixth grade, all those years ago. One fateful day in mid-winter, I redownloaded Daft Punk’s entire discography, opened up an old Ed Banger playlist, and scrolled through EDM memes for old times' sake. Although it definitely wasn’t perfect, my EDM phase opened my eyes to the wonderful world of underground music and taught me the importance of being just a little bit wonky and off center. Through EDM, I learned to be myself and like what I liked, even if no one understood it. And thanks to those affectionately-dubbed robots and their friends, I found my place in the music world. PS - Here's a photo of my infamous Daft Punk wall: This article is dedicated to Philippe Zdar and Avicii. Thank you for making my middle school experience so awesome and contributing so much to the electronic music scene. We miss you here on Earth.
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About The AuthorLiah is a high school senior who plays guitar and loves the color yellow. She doesn't post much, but when she does, it's awesome. We promise.
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