Justifying My DJATS to Fleetwood Mac Pipeline
DJATS = Daisy Jones and The Six. Not sure if that acronym is a thing, but I made it one.
In third grade, I went through an intense and retrospectively disturbing (but at the time, endearing) Michael Jackson phase. I owned every CD in his discography, every available live performance on DVD, and multiple framed posters which populated my then-electric purple walls. One more detail, because you asked: The Way You Make Me Feel was my ringback tone.
Like all things, there’s a caveat. My infatuation with Michael Jackson had morbid beginnings and was entirely prompted by his untimely death. Before his passing, I had no idea who Michael Jackson was — if you asked me to name the King of Pop in 2009, I probably would’ve said David Archuleta, or someone even more forgotten (read: legendary).
Still, my life forever changed that fateful day in Asian Delite, when my mother, horrified over a plate of plain Lo mein, shared the news that Michael Jackson had died. I responded with a mousy “who’s that?” but in no time, fully immersed my nine-year-old self in the MJ multiverse.
My young life can sort of be organized into these all-consuming obsessions that waxed and waned like adolescence itself. Age 11: Taylor Swift. Age 14: 5 Seconds of Summer. Age 16: Twenty One Pilots. Age 17: SZA. Age 19: a return to Taylor Swift. I’m a woman of taste if nothing else.
Currently (23, yikes), I’m in a moderately intense, but less concerning Fleetwood Mac phase. The caveat? I’m watching Daisy Jones and The Six, a mini-drama loosely based on the “tormented love” between Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. Don’t worry — I learned who Stevie Nicks was when I was 18, though I’m not sure that fully salvages me.
There’s an instinctual embarrassment that comes with arriving late to something, especially when that something is the fanbase of Rock and Roll Hall of Famers, the closest thing this country has to American Heroes. It feels iconoclastic to say I’m in a Fleetwood Mac phase when I’m listening to “Silver Springs” because I saw it in a TikTok. Die-hards would probably confirm these feelings, and as a die-hard of many things, I’d most likely concur.
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I think a lot of this latecomer shame has to do with the ways we project ourselves onto media — a post-modern way of saying art — in all of its forms. As consumers, we prove ourselves through our taste. What we are listening to, watching, and reading (or not reading) is the most tangible way we can show off our intellects without expressly saying I am better than you are. Why do you think Spotify made the Friend Activity feature? BFFR.
We see this with balding middle-aged men who scoff at young women for listening to pop music. We see this also with pretentious English majors who abhor Colleen Hoover’s entire oeuvre and anyone who touches it… though I’ve never met one of those. Still, there’s another level to this consumption competition where discovering a piece of art or an artist is intrinsically less valuable if you discover it with the masses — if you meet its popularity first.
But really, what would art be if there was no one to consume it? Isn’t the creation of anything the pursuit of shared attention, of conversation? There is so much value in something being popular enough that a portion of the world communicates through it. What’s even more valuable is the media that can transcend decades and reach me here, now, even after it has waxed and waned and waxed again just like my juvenile obsessions.
This post is giving way too much Cole Sprouse on Call Her Daddy, so I’ll leave you with this: there’s no “right time” to enjoy media. TV shows, music, movies, books, paintings, etc. don’t have expiration dates, but we do. So, just take media, or art, in while you can, whenever you can. Though, you can probably skip the unhinged Michael Jackson stan chapter. That’s your prerogative!
We’ll be returning to our regularly scheduled program of angsty gossip following this post. I promise.