Asking The Blogosphere (Episode 1): On Music, Follows, And Other Hobbies

This is a new feature I came up with, because lately, I’ve had a problem filling in my Wednesdays with relevant posts. It’s a discussion post of sorts, that revolves around books and your life outside of it. At the end of each segment, I ask you guys a few questions, ones you’re free to answer of course!

P.S. I’ve decided to make you guys surveys each month, and since last October’s was HP themed, I’ll try and spice things up with a different series this November! Look forward to it 😉

On Lorde And Other Recent Obsessions

So you may have heard of the Kiwi girl my age currently taking the global music industry by storm– Ella Maria Lani Yelich-O’Connor. And because every music enthusiast would find in their best interests a proficiency on the proper pronunciation of an artist’s name as much as a clear memory of the lyrics to their singles, let’s start by acknowledging her stage name, Lorde. If you don’t know who she is, I pity you, let me  give you the lowdown. 

1. She was born 7^th November 1996 in New Zealand. She’s hardly a year older than I am.
2. She released The Love Club EP last year, and her first single, Royals, debuted at number 1 on the New Zealand Charts, and reached the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100 a time after. If I’m not mistaken, she’s still there. 
3. Her debut album, Pure Heroine, was released last September, and includes other chart toppers (Team and Tennis Court. Both are phenomenal).
4. She started writing songs when she was about 13.
5. She’s a massive reader.
6. She is known partly for ‘dissing’ other music icons, Selena Gomez and her ex, Justin Bieber for example, and people look up to her for it. I know I do.

I don’t think that her sound is unique in that I can pick her voice out from my pool of artists, but I do think that her songs are haunting and catchy, and the underlying messages substantial and succinct—Royals was a slick single, and I struggled to believe that it was introduced to the world by hardly a seventeen year-old. Sometimes, I just feel like

But of course, it’s hard to begrudge her her much-deserved fame, because she’s bold, contradictory, defiant of the trends, and a chink in the armor of pop culture. Much unlike other artists these days, she doesn’t have any interest in “gold teeth, grey goose, trippin’ in the bathroom, blood stains, ball gowns, trashin’ the hotel room” and instead embraces the thoughts of normal teenagers who don’t live in luxury and in large estates, given response to their every whim and vagary. That of course is my kind of music. I don’t know about you, but I am in constant, mindful observance of the lyrics. And she’s a reader, like me! As much as I can relate to the songs, I can relate to the artist as well—a rare jewel I’ve decided to treasure.

In other news, I am cementing my love for One Direction. I listen to a lot of mainstream music, if truth be told, but I think that this band is one deserving of the hype. Not many artists are unpretentious and down-to-earth in the face of fame and fortune.

What about you? What is your current jam? Who are some of your favorite artists, and which songs would you recommend?

On Regulating Follows

If you may have noticed, my ‘Following’ count on Twitter tends to fluctuate, a lot. This of course is due to the fact that I’ve recently been unfollowing a lot of people. As of late, my feed has been cluttered with updates and conversations I couldn’t care less about, from bloggers who have made no move to reach out and acknowledge my presence, and have in addition, blog content far from relevant or even remotely interesting. I know some bloggers have neither the time nor the patience for responding to comments and other forms of social interaction, but I don’t think that there’s much a point in tuning in to their lives if I feel so out of it—unless, of course, their blog is of a caliber immune to my impending disinterest. And when I do cease to follow a blog (despite knowing that I feel disappointed by unfollows to a certain extent too),

Sometimes it makes me feel guilty—I ask myself, aren’t I hurting people by showing them listlessness and disregard? Do they even care that I did? Do they even notice? Am I being offensive? Don’t I have a right to follow and unfollow as I please?

What do you think? Do you regulate your follows from time to time? How do you do so, if ever?

On Various other Hobbies

We all know that I’ve recently acquired a favored hobby, which is of course, reading (somehow, that’ why I’m even here in the first place). Outside of fiction however, I have do a life – social life, academic life, a highly inactive love life, and other forms of life that teenagers like to embrace. As such, I’ve acquired quite the lexicon of pasttimes and avocations, and fortunately enough, I’m never really bored because of them. If you’re curious to know, here’s a few:

A. I watch a lot of TV. As of the moment, I’m into Suits, The Vampire Diaries, The Originals, Teen Wolf, Downton Abbey, Merlin, and Supernatural, not necessarily in that order.

B. I subscribe to loads of Youtube pages—JacksGap (Jack and Finn Harries), PointlessBlog (Alfie Deyes), Dicasp (Caspar Lee), and Troye Sivan (erhm, Troye Sivan, who BY THE WAY wrote a song for The Fault In Our Stars) to name a few. I watch their vlogs religiously. (I’ve been trying to get into watching booktubes, but I’m just not into that sort of thing, sorry).

C. I try to build up my iTunes library. I have hundreds of artists and entire albums from them downloaded, but somehow I’m still not satisfied. Few of my recent discoveries include Emblem 3, Imagine Dragons, and the Catching Fire soundtrack.

1. D. I blog. Duh!

 

What about you? What are you other hobbies, apart from reading (and blogging)? Do you have any? Do tell!

And that’s it for this feature! If you want to share your own answers, please do! Leave a comment and make my day 🙂