To Get Lost in the Romantic, What We All Want

While watching The Sidekicks play this week, I was thinking to myself about how great 'deep cuts' are. Given that I am a 29-year-old white rock music fan, I know this is not the most surprising opinion, we're divin' in anyways!



I find that there's something alluring about an artist's songs that aren't the ones that everybody likes. It makes the song feel a little more precious and a little more like it's yours. I've always found a lot of pleasure in liking things that not everybody else likes. It's not that I think that makes me more special, but it makes the thing more special to me.

Deep cuts usually have a few shared qualities. They're usually in the back half of the album (though I find track 2's are often great deep cuts) and stand out amidst longer or more experimental tracks. They're never as poppy as the album's singles, but poppier than the songs around them. I find that my favourite deep cuts are often simple love songs or creeds about personal politics that have great vocal melodies.

Deep cuts can extend to other media as well, like an obscure quote from a TV show or a movie that isn't the first check on an actor's resume. Liking 'the obscure thing' can feel stupid sometimes, like it seems like I'm trying aggressively hard to be an individual, like maybe popular things are popular because they're good, but really isn't it great to encourage people to investigate things and discover passions they don't know about yet? I think that my love of deep cuts is a byproduct of my curiosity. As soon as I find something I'm interested in, I always try to do an investigation to learn about the context it was created in and see if there was anything I was missing at first. Yes, that is why I love the song "Together".

The ultimate joy related to deep cuts is when you see a band play them live. In fact, I think there are few things more exciting than when a band plays a song you weren't expecting. It immediately forces you to be present because you know it's something you won't see regularly and the duration of the performance of the song is its own tiny existence while it's happening. You immediately start to anticipate your favourite parts of the song and that light anxiety makes watching the song even better. As a music fan, you invest a lot of time and energy into absorbing someone else's art, so when a band plays a deep cut live, it shows you that they are thinking of that too. They wouldn't play it if they didn't think that some people wanted to hear it.

This was spurred by The Sidekicks playing "Incandescent Days" from their album Awkward Breeds. I put the song on the first mix I made for Rebecca when we first started dating and it makes me remember her apartment in Guelph. That's what I thought of when they played it.