How I learnt to shake off my music snobbery and embrace the mainstream

If you’d told me a couple of decades ago I’d be at a Pink concert and – shock, horror – enjoying it, I’d have turned my back on you so fast my long, luscious locks would have whacked you fair in the face.

Back then, I was Rob Fleming in Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity (or John Cusack playing Rob Gordon, in the not-quite-living-up-to-the-book movie of the same name). For the uninitiated, that character is the snobbiest of music snobs.

And that’s just what I was.

Pink performing in Sydney earlier this month, before she made it to Brisbane.Credit: Jordan Pannowitz

If you weren’t getting your musical cues from Triple J and 4ZZZ, then we didn’t have much to talk about.

If I visited your house, you could bet I’d be judging you on your CD collection (extra points if it’s sorted alphabetically by artist, then chronologically by album).

You say you’re a grunge fan but don’t know Mother Love Bone? Pffft. You rate Nirvana but don’t know the Pixies? The Melvins? Mudhoney? Well, I don’t know you either.

That New Year’s Eve party, where someone hijacked the party tunes to whack on Radiohead’s melancholic Exit Music (For a Film)? Yep, that was me – on Y2K, to boot!

Now I won’t go as far as to say a girlfriend’s Celine Dion fandom led to our breakup, but it certainly didn’t help. And country music? Don’t even get me started.

Yep. You can see what sort of person I was back then. A condescending, insufferable musical elitist.

Thing is – and I recognise this now – being into alternative music made me feel somehow superior to those who were, let’s face it, much further up the social pecking order than me.

It was an exclusive little club in which members could lord it over the Beautiful People. So much more cred to see a Regurgitator at the Zoo than a Mariah at Boondall.

Boys so much better Beastie than Backstreet.

Over the years, though, something has shifted in me. I define myself less by what I like, but who I am. The same goes for how I see others.

Which takes us to last Saturday night, where I’m squeezed into the Suncorp Stadium crowd to see Pink on her Summer Carnival tour.

Pink? Oh yeah, I remember her. She was part of the B105 lamestream that formed part of the background static in the early 2000s, when I was listening to “real music” and earning some more cred.

I’ll be honest. It wasn’t a gig I’d have typically shelled out money for – this was a birthday gift for my beautiful better half. But damn it if that wasn’t one of the best shows I’ve seen. Pink’s talent, her attitude, her charisma, her realness.

And it wasn’t just the stagecraft and crazy aerobatics – Pink’s got some bloody good tunes, too. (Always first with the news, I am.)

It dawned on me that, if they’re bloody good tunes now, surely they were bloody good tunes back then. The only difference was that my mind was closed to them.

Could it be that, by closing my youthful mind to “the mainstream” I’d deprived myself of a lot of guilty pleasure?

Of course, it could.

While I’m at it – and to further tap into the zeitgeist – that Taylor Swift goes all right too. I mean, it may be 10 years old now, but Shake it Off is an absolute banger.

I could not see 15-to-25-year-old Cameron making such a concession. The idiot.

My mind often goes back to my teens, when my parents bought tickets to see the Highwaymen at Boondall and asked it I wanted to come along.

My answer? A resounding “no” (or, more likely, a teenage grunt in the negative).

My irrational teenage intolerance of country music deprived me of seeing Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson and Waylon Jennings together on the same stage.

It was a deprivation that came back to haunt me just last year, during a visit to the Johnny Cash Museum in Nashville.

What could have been... The tour poster for the Highwaymen in 1995.Credit: Cameron Atfield

Have a look at that tour poster. What I would not give to experience that now.

I’m grateful that, in my advancing years, I’ve allowed myself to become more open to different music, even those from what I erroneously considered “inferior” musical genres.

And while I’d still pick Regurgitator over Mariah any day, I’m glad to have finally jumped on to this mainstream bandwagon and allowed myself to enjoy Pink – and others – for what they are.

Damn good entertainers.

Guess that’s what this “growing up” caper is all about. (Though I still hate Blink-182, those wannabe punks.)

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