Frederick Community College is home to many people from diverse backgrounds, experiences, and tastes. And one common thread that brings them together is that they all love music in one capacity or another.
Recently, Commuter staff asked students and faculty on campus what type of music they listened to and what song they wished more people knew about.
Erin Snyder is a learning assistant in the FCC’s Gladhill Learning Commons, more commonly known as The Writing Center. She is a singer and loves to listen to music that she can sing along to.
“Music is powerful. It’s almost always something someone has written about how you feel even when you don’t understand what exactly it is that you’re feeling,” she said.
Synder has an eclectic taste in music. She named girl group Flo and singer-songwriter and drummer Florrie as some of her favorites.
Florrie is one of their loved artists because of their great range of music and the lyricism used in her songs/ Flo is enjoyed by Snyder also because of their lyricism but also how they are like a modern Destiny’s Child, their effortless harmony, messaging and overall platform.
And for real music fans, one of her favorite underground albums is “The Phosphorescent Blues” by the Punch Brothers. The band plays contemporary bluegrass.
Kaleb Sellers, 22, of Thurmont, is a STEM major who enjoys music, such as the ska punk band Sublime. He especially liked the song “What I Got?” from their first and last album in 1996.
He also named many rap songs and artists, such as Sublime.
He said he didn’t enjoy country music until recently when he decided to be open and start listening to it. Now, he said, “I’m open to all kinds of music.”
One common thread is that the majority of the songs/artists/bands mentioned when asked their favorites, all either mentioned a specific dislike of the pop genre as a whole or just forwent it entirely for indie, alternate, country, or another subgenre/genre.
Art major Kaydence Graves, 19, of Walkersville, specifically mentioned disliking pop music and favoring alt-rock. They lean more toward indie alternative rock and enjoy artists such as Crywank and Hospital Bracelet.
“I really got my taste in music from my parents; we would always listen to music together,” they said about her interest in alt-rock.
This pattern seems to be consistent throughout most of the interviews done by this team, with four out of the five interviewees either specifically mentioning a dislike of the pop music genre or having a milder opinion like “I enjoy all music” or “I listen to all genres at least a little.”
That begs the question: Is the dislike of pop music from mainstream media heavily pushing it or people wanting more variety that the genre isn’t giving them? Or is it a deeper insight to the state of music that is heavily pushed toward people with this new era of social media and advertising that is steadily becoming more and more common?
What songs should you listen to, according to our interviewees?
- “Tomorrow Is Nearly Yesterday and Everyday Stupid” by Crywank
- “Sour OG RPG” from Hospital Bracelet
- “What I Got” by Sublime
- “The Phosphorescent Blues” by The Punch Brothers
- “Ripley Pine” by Lady Lamb, 2013
- “ORQUÍDEAS”(2024) by Kali Uchis
- “Earth and Moon” by Hospital Bracelet
— The following Commuter staff members contributed to this article Mackenzie Georg, Salim Mkamba, Murphy Nichols, Vianice Ocasio- Gonzalez, Nicholas Pilasky Jr. and Karley Phillips.
