SOUNDTRACKS I OUTGREW, FROM SWAGGER TO SOFTNESS AN ARTICLE TO MYSELF

I used to let music choose me. Not in the romantic, cosmic way people talk about “finding their sound” I mean I let music tell me who I was, how I should walk, talk, love, and fall apart. I’ve really started to get disillusioned with the music industry of late and I’ve being thinking about my tastes over the years. I’ve never been one for scenes, although looking back I was in them in a more introverted way.

One of the first bands I loved felt like oxygen at the time. They weren’t deeply poetic, but they hit with force. They were undeniably talented, still are. All that mattered back then, but not so much now. When you’re trying to survive in a world that doesn’t quite know what to do with your softness, sometimes distortion feels safer than empathy.

I wore their attitude like armour. I absorbed their version of masculinity loud, brash, untouchable and it bled into everything. The way I dressed, the way I drank, the kinds of guys I gravitated towards. I wanted the ones with edge. Attitude. Swagger. And it ruined my life.

“THAT VERSION OF COOL I CHASED IN MY YOUTH WASN’T REALLY COOL AT ALL, IT WAS OFTEN JUST PAIN IN DISGUISE. UNPROCESSED CHILDHOOD TRAUMA WRAPPED UP IN EMOTIONAL DISTANCE, REPACKAGED AS SWAGGER.

IT QUOTED HALF A SMITHS LYRIC AND DISAPPEARED FOR DAYS.

AVOIDANCE BECAME ALLURE, BUT UNDERNEATH, IT WAS STILL JUST A LITTLE BOY INSIDE A MAN TRYING NOT TO FEEL TOO MUCH.”

Looking back, it wasn’t about the band or the boys it was about the safety I thought I’d found in not feeling too much. Putting on a front. But avoiding vulnerability isn’t depth. It’s delay. And eventually, I had to ask whether or the music I loved was helping me grow or just giving me permission to stay disconnected. Underneath all the noise, there was a hollow. I mistook all that attitude and bravado for depth. Mistook attention from men like this for love. Mistook their chaos for meaning.

And then something shifted.

In my mid twenties I started listening more to artists like Richard Ashcroft, Ian Browns solo projects, Joy Division, Johnny Cash, The Cure, I went back to listening to Nirvana my first ever band I fell in love with. Artists who didn’t runaway from pain on a Lambretta, they sat in it. Ian Brown had attitude yes, but he felt authentic. When he spoke out about things that mattered like Browns and Sinead O’Connors duet about war, I realised how important music was to really get things out there.

When I met Ian Brown, what struck me most wasn’t his fame, it was his presence. His aura felt grounded, genuine. There was nothing performative about it. He made me feel like I was the only person in the room, not in a showy or romantic way, but because he was truly engaged. He wasn’t waiting to speak or looking past me, he was actually listening. It wasn’t about him. It was about connection.

That kind of energy is rare. And I’ve heard the same account from so many others stories of sincerity, of empathy, of a man who doesn’t just talk about meaning through music, but lives it in how he shows up for people. In a world where charisma is often confused with ego, Ian’s authenticity has always stood apart.

The lyrics of The Cure, New Order, Joy Division also didn’t tell me how to feel, they made me look inwards. It felt quieter. Slower. More honest. No grandstanding, no front. Just raw humanity. I was still listening to the other bands, too, the ones that shaped me earlier. But something had shifted. The pulse was off. I couldn’t unfeel it. I was beginning to question it all, not with anger, but with quiet discomfort. Something wasn’t sitting right anymore.

When you look at Nirvana there was something about Kurt Cobain that made you lean in to him, not because he demanded attention, but because he never seemed to need it. In a world bloated with ego and frontmen clawing for spotlight, Kurt felt like an anomaly. He wasn’t trying to impress. He didn’t sculpt himself into a rock god he unraveled, slowly, imperfectly, and unapologetically. He wasn’t mean to get noticed, because he wasn’t mean. That kind of authenticity is rare, especially in the industry Nirvana exploded into.

What drew me to him wasn’t just the music it was how he moved through it. Kurt wasn’t scared to say how he felt, even when it wasn’t polished or easy to digest. He let discomfort live in the chords. He spoke about pain without turning it into spectacle. And that vulnerability, that rawness, made him feel less like a celebrity and more like someone who’d seen the same ghosts I was trying to name.

But it wasn’t just emotional honesty it was his empathy, especially toward women, that stood out. He called out misogyny long before it was a buzzword. He didn’t just write songs, he spoke up. He used his platform to challenge abuse, to amplify voices that were being crushed by systems and silence. It wasn’t performative activism it was instinctive defiance against harm. And for that, I don’t just admire Kurt. I feel protected by the presence he cultivated not intimidated.

That shift bled into everything. I stopped craving the guys who made me chase their approval. Stopped choosing emotional distance, identified where I was doing all the reaching out and calling it mystery. I realised that I’m not drawn to ego, I was drawn to heart and effort. The poetic ones, the gentle ones, the ones who don’t need a stage to be seen. The ones who don’t need attention from multiple women. When I first introduced the guy I went onto marry in my mid twenties, my friends mouths were on the floor, he was quiet, even a bit shy and his hair didn’t even touch his ears never mind his chin.

This has been an ongoing journey. And oh I’ve made mistakes, huge ones where I fell for the nice, shy guy act only to find the very thing I’d being trying to run from was what was underneath. But the more I learned about psychology, the more things started to click. I began to see how many people were damaged, hurting and taking it out on everyone around them. Acting out, performing strength, avoiding intimacy… it wasn’t about me. It wasn’t my fault it was about their own survival. But their survival often came at the cost of our connection and my feelings.

Understanding that changed how I held my past, and how I chose my future. It helped me forgive what I used to romanticise. It helped me stop mistaking pain for depth, chaos for meaning. I didn’t just change what I listened to. I changed what I let define me.

I’m no longer making room for the emotional detachment I used to label exciting, it doesn’t pull me in anymore. It completely repels me. Because now, I crave tenderness. I’m pulled toward depth. Toward heart. Not that it’s in supply, it’s difficult to find anyone who wants such a bond these days, but that also makes me question why? How did we get to here? But I guess that’s another article entirely.

I’m drawn to quiet men. Gentle men. The ones who are poetic. Empathetic without apology. Men who don’t need to show off or need a stage or someone else’s to be seen, because they’re already showing up with presence, not performance.

And the music that holds me now? It’s not loud for the sake of volume. It’s precise. It’s honest. It breathes with me, not at me. It doesn’t tell me who I should be it reflects who I’ve fought to become.

This isn’t just a change in taste. It’s a change in orientation. One where music isn’t choosing me anymore. I’m choosing myself.