Music was never just background for me. For a lot of people it runs quietly underneath everything — in the car, in the kitchen. For me it was more the opposite. It mattered, more than most other things did.
Like it did for most, it started with noise. Too loud, too fast, too angry — exactly what the grown-ups couldn't stand, which was the whole point. Punk above all, later nu metal and metal too, but punk was the beginning and has stayed the core. This wasn't music to tune out. And when you figure out at fifteen that three chords and a clear statement stick with you more than a shelf full of good advice, you start listening differently after that.
Sure, back then it was also about the usual stuff — fitting in, setting yourself apart, being cool. But underneath that was something that stayed. This music didn't tell me what to think; it told me that I was allowed to think at all. That you can question things, even when everyone else is nodding along. That "that's just how it is" isn't a particularly good answer — least of all in a conservative village in Bavaria.
My politics, and the way I look at the world, didn't really take shape in a classroom, and not at the dinner table at home either. They came out of a pair of headphones. Not as a finished opinion or worldview, more as a direction: thinking differently is fine, being at the bottom is nothing to be ashamed of, and a bit of anger aimed at the right things doesn't hurt. And of course: solidarity with the people who have it worse than we do. At fifteen, you don't really need much more socialisation than that.
The Taste Changes, the Core Doesn't
A fair amount has shifted over the years. You get older and more curious, new things come in, including stuff I'd have smirked at back then. And some of what I listened to then I don't listen to anymore. A taste that hasn't moved in thirty years isn't loyalty, it's stagnation.
But the soundtrack of my youth is still playing — not on CD anymore, on a stream now. And not only out of nostalgia. When the first few bars kick in, I'm right back in it. That's the thing I've stayed loyal to, and I don't see any reason to change it.