When the Strokes released Is This It? in 2001, I was incensed. How dare this band of rich kids from New York release a good album!Naturally, I didn't think the album was good at the time, because I didn't listen to it. I saw the video for "Last Nite" (on MTV!), thought the song was pretty awesome and knew automatically that I Hated This Band. I mean, how dare they?
In 2001, I was 15 years old and nothing was more important to me than feeling a sense of ownership over the bands that I liked. And here come the Strokes, looking all cool with their leather jackets and just ruining everything. I spent my adolescent years listening to punk rock and cultivating an entire persona around listening to music that no one else listened to, only to have these chumps come around and blow everything up. At the time, I was positive that within a month, everyone I knew would be listening to the Velvet Underground and Television and I'd be the same as everyone else.
Of course, it never happened that way--and why would it have? No normal person hears a pop song and views it as a threat to their way of life. Most people don't put any thought into the music they listen to, which explains why Shaggy had not one, but two #1 singles in 2001. In fact, during the height of the Strokes' relative ubiquity, their only real contribution to pop-culture was opening the flood gates for a wave of bands with "the" in their names.
So, in a way, the Strokes were responsible for me purchasing and listening to Highly Evolved by the Vines. The year was 2001. I bought a CD. By the Vines. And I Hated the Strokes. I was 15. We all make mistakes.
Following the whole "garage band revival" bullshit that ultimately went nowhere, I rarely put any thought into the Strokes--if someone brought them up, I would regurgitate my standard "inauthentic rich kid" talking points and move on. More often then not, people would agree with me--it's now evident to me that I wasn't the only 15 year old who viewed the Strokes as an affront to their identity.
But then one night in 2008 I was alone in a bar in Berlin and "Is This It?" came on, and with no one around to tell how much I hated the Strokes, I was forced to actually listen to it. So I did. And for those 2 and a half minutes, I felt like the coolest motherfucker on the planet. Later, I sat down and listened to the whole album; the singles were exactly the same as I remembered them, which is to say that they still sounded great. Even when I Hated the Strokes, I still took the time to learn how to play the intro to "Hard to Explain" and if "Last Nite" or "Someday" just happened to come on the radio, I'd express my distaste for the band, but secretly enjoy the songs anyway. The rest of the album? Very few complaints--If you can make a 36 minute album with three top-notch singles and a handful of other songs that are merely "good", I will listen to it any time. At 15, Is This It? would have blown my mind, had I not been so worried about it destroying my life.
