Look, I’ve done some things I’m not proud of in this life. We all tell little white lies to get by, don’t we? Smile and nod, feign competence rather than be looked down upon with disdain and disappointment? We all gotta fake it til we make it to a certain extent. But I’ve gotten to my breaking point and I have to tell someone. I don’t even know what shoegaze fucking means. God, this feels so embarrassing to admit, it’s like I can’t look you in the eye, like I can’t look up from my feet.
You might think this is trite, “Oh boo hoo you don’t know what shoegaze is, so sad you bitch ass indie poser!” Well guess what. I’m the VP of Growth at Interscope Records.
I don’t even know what that means either. All I know is we were sitting in a meeting and we were talking about genres we should invest in that we have a notable gap in and ChatGPT suggested that Interscope could use some shoegaze artists and I blurted it out in the meeting. Now I’m stuck asking my social media intern to scroll TikTok for 8 hours to find me a shoegaze artist that will appeal to both the male 18-24 year old and female 30-35 year old age ranges.
I know that “male gaze” is a critique of the way men write for women in film, so maybe shoegaze is how shoes… think music is? That can’t be right. Fuck.
I know. I have a problem. But I keep getting away with it so I just can’t stop. You know it’s actually crazy how far you can take being completely full of shit if you just speak with authority. No one wants to be that guy and call you out. I’ve gotten 12 years into my career with nothing but a firm handshake and a dream. And my female coworkers. I know, I know. This might sound tone deaf. Wait. Tone deaf. Deftones!! See. I got one!
I think the jig might be up soon though. They’re going to figure out I’m full of shit. Someone mentioned my bloody valentine and I thought they were talking about the Machine Gun Kelly song. Or was it that U2 song? Bloody…bloody…Bloody Sunday? Fuck!!!
Maybe this is a prank, like that time the intern tried convincing me “darkwave” was a thing.