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I started listening to Radiohead last year.
I know, I know — I hadn’t expected this either. Sometime over the past semester, it was like years of distaste for my dad’s Spotify Wrapped artists and ’90s alternative rock just disappeared. I guess there’s something about a middle-aged British man making sad songs that just speaks to angsty teenage girls.
According to Urban Dictionary, listening to Radiohead is also “the easiest way to retain your virginity” and “a favorite among whiny pretentious emo kids.”
Radiohead fans — as well as fans of other popular bands like Weezer — have long been stereotyped as loners, nerds and losers. Though these stereotypes are mostly presented through memes and jokes, it still creates the notion that some artists and their listeners are more acceptable than others.
On the other hand, Radiohead has over 30 million monthly listeners on Spotify, and Weezer over 14 million — enough to question if these stereotypes hold any weight.
Where these stereotypes come from
Kyler Paden, a senior studying popular music and the drummer for Right Rosemary, said that stereotypes about loser music are mostly jokes. Still, he said that songs like “Creep” could perpetuate these ideas through their lyrics.
“It puts forward that stereotype of the self-deprecating loser,” Paden said. “People who like to put themselves into the weird, out-of-the-ordinary stereotype listen to that.”
Jon Aceves, a freshman studying graphic design and a member of the Album Listening Club at ASU, also said these songs may resonate with people who do not have romantic partners.
He mentioned Weezer’s “Pink Triangle,” which is about “wanting to love someone, but you not being adept in liking other people or not having any experience.”
On a deeper level, Samuel Peña, an assistant professor for the School of Music, Dance and Theater who teaches pop music classes, said that lyrics from bands like Radiohead prompt listeners to look inward, which can then be tied into the stereotype of being a loser.
“It has to do with the music inviting the listener to be more introspective … maybe that scares some people,” Peña said.
Peña suggested that people who create stereotypes about others’ music preferences are just trying to find an identity for themselves by excluding others. Instead, he said the best way to find authenticity is through personal reflection.
At the same time, Peña said it could be possible for Radiohead and Weezer fans to reclaim the idea of being a “loser.”
“If it’s the listeners themselves using that term, it’s a way of rejecting the over-commercialized status quo,” he said.
Why people enjoy these bands anyway
Despite the stereotypes surrounding Radiohead and other similar artists, Paden, Aceves and Peña all consider themselves fans of the bands.
“When I heard Radiohead, my mind expanded,” Peña said. “My ears, what I was focusing on — there was just so many more complex melodic and rhythmic concepts that I hadn’t heard in radio hip-hop.”
Peña discovered Radiohead in high school, but said students today are growing to enjoy older alternative rock more too.
“They’re looking at the history, the DNA, of the music that they like,” Peña said. “They’re going to discover things that if they don’t dig, they never would experience. They’re expanding their emotional palette.”
Paden said that he has seen this resurgence too, particularly as a music student and with the rise of social media.
And yet, before college, Paden thought he had an idea of what Radiohead’s music scene was. It did not interest him.
“Coming to the music school environment, you learn that it’s just the opposite,” Paden said. “(There are) tons of different people who are into this music, and it’s just something cool to listen to.”
Today, Paden even counts Radiohead as a major influence for how Right Rosemary writes and arranges parts for their songs.
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Regardless of what their fans are like, Radiohead’s appeal stems from one part good musicality and one part nostalgia, which, in the end, seems like a fairly winning combination to me.
“(Radiohead and Weezer were) really popular bands when they were at their height, and they had a massive influence on music around them,” Paden said.
And if, like me, you ever happen to be sitting alone in your room on a Monday night writing an article for The State Press about being a loser, you might as well give up, start listening to “OK Computer” and just lean into the stereotype.
Effects of stereotyping music
“Something that people should be conscious of, to an extent, is judging others based on what they listen to,” Paden said.
He added that putting labels on people based on the music they listen to can make it difficult to interact with other students across the pop music program.
“A lot of how people connect here is by playing music together, so if you have somebody who may be a really great person, but you just don’t click at all musically, there’s a certain lack of connection that might happen,” he said.
For Aceves, being with other people who listen to stereotypically “loser” bands is both a positive and negative experience. He sees a sense of community in knowing other people resonate with Radiohead or Weezer too, but acknowledges that a lack of diverse experiences and feelings can be harmful.
Aceves said that it is also important to distinguish between who artists are and who their fans are.
The Album Listening Club helped him to see this.
“It makes me feel more open to listening to different genres, seeing what I like and don’t like, and seeing why other people would be more inclined to listen to this kind of music,” he said.
READ MORE: ASU’s ‘book club for music’ builds community through album listening, discussion
For Peña, stereotypes about music can help people find a community with common interests, but they can also leave little room for individual experiences, preferences and differences.
He tries to find this balance with students in the pop music program.
“People start off by having an identity, and we make a space for them to explore other ones,” he said of music school. “But also, we don’t tell them they should change. We’re just allowing them to experience.”
For better or worse, I avoided Radiohead for years because I assumed that I knew who their target audience was, and I did not want to be a part of it. I’m not sure whether I eventually realized these stereotypes were not all correct or just that I fit them, but somewhere along the way, it stopped mattering.
A two way street
Both Paden and Aceves enjoy all kinds of music genres, but they said alternative music fans can also have biases and stereotypes against more mainstream music listeners.
Paden said this disconnect simply comes from not understanding how others could enjoy different kinds of music.
Aceves said the same, and added that people who listen to alternative music may consider more mainstream artists to be too “corporate.”
“There are always going to be people who are disagreeing with each other,” Aceves said. “At the end of the day, it’s not anything that should affect the labels that we put on each other.”
Peña said the best way to avoid being a loser was to be open-minded and willing to listen to all kinds of genres.
“The ‘cool’ thing is to reach your full potential as a human, and one way to do that is to explore arts a little bit deeper,” he said.
The last thing I want is to sound like I am writing propaganda for ’90s-alternative-bands-turned-memes, but what I do want to say is this: Just because I am a loser that listens to Radiohead doesn’t mean all their other fans are losers too.
Edited by Abigail Beck, Sophia Braccio and Katrina Michalak.
Reach the reporter at pkfung@asu.edu and follow @FungPippa on X.
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Pippa FungPolitics Reporter
Pippa is a sophomore studying journalism and mass communication with minors in political science and German. This is her third semester with The State Press. She has also worked at Blaze Radio and the Los Alamos National Lab.
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