by Walker Hawkins

      Obviously, there are many things that define a person, one of them being music. It may seem farfetched, but the music that you listen to, specifically your favorite musical artist, tells a lot about the person you are and the people with whom you associate. Now, you may be wondering what your taste in music says about you, something that I will try to answer. However, while I can’t include every popular artist of the day, I will try to choose those that seem to be the most “in” at the moment. Here it goes:

       Panic! At the Disco:
You are a very emotional person that feels the best way to express yourself is with music that sounds likes whales humping. Your previous favorite bands include Blink-182 and Good Charlotte, but they totally sold out, leaving you with a gaping whole that could only be filled by, ironically enough, crying and eyeliner. Even though you’re a teenager from an upper-middle class white family, you attend a private school and you drive a Volvo, you feel that you are in the majority for the first time in your life.

       Franz Ferdinand:
You think that you were born in Britain and that you were conceived during a Sex Pistols concert, while the reality is you have a subscription to Rolling Stone. While you know nothing about the rock scene in England/Scotland, you try to tell everyone you know that you can definitely hear the Belle & Sebastian influence in Franz Ferdinand’s music. It also makes you feel really smart the you know that the band was named after the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand who was assassinated in Serbia by the terrorist group only known as the Black Hand. You are not smart.

       Death Cab for Cutie:
Everyone who has never heard Death Cab thinks you are into heavy metal. While this is very annoying, it is still second to the nagging feeling that you should be killing yourself at this very moment. You constantly look at the negative side of life and think that nobody truly understands the intellectual you are. You broke up with your last boyfriend/girlfriend using the lyrics to “Someday You Will Be Loved”. You also have a bad habit of trying to tell everyone that the lead singer is also in the band The Postal Service.

       Audioslave:
You’re tone deaf.

       The Killers:
First and foremost, you hate people who listen to Panic! At the Disco, even though you are always mistaken for a fan (I guess it’s the eyeliner). You are also a very emotional person, but monotone whispers are your preferred method of communication. You constantly find yourself relating past experiences to their music and imagine yourself playing onstage with the band. You too had a boyfriend that looked like my girlfriend; it’s like they put your life to music.

      Beck:
You, like the music you listen to, can’t decide who you really are. One day you’re into funk, the next your in to rock, and on occasion you just feel like some folk music. Although you tell yourself you are creative and diverse, your psychologist has diagnosed your condition as schizophrenia. You also find yourself using such phrases as “street cred” and “chill”. You think that just because Beck wears a bowler hat, you can too, which couldn’t be farther from the truth.