STUDIO deftly able to insert themselves into narratives, and create a listening experience that is infinitely more intimate. But it’s also the same token by which fandoms are so often criticised; this sort of self-insertion, of prying beyond the public personas of musicians and into their private spheres is often labelled as gratuitous and invasive. To this, Luke is defiant. “I never dwelled on the idea of privacy,” he proudly proclaims. “If waiting for hours outside the hotel they were staying at in Sydney makes me radical, then yes, I’m radical.” xxx
Zayn Malik
The blog “was named after a catch-phrase of [band member] Zayn from his video diaries, coupled with the words down-under to show my Aussie pride,” Luke explains, before reminiscing about the craziest action he ever committed out of his love for the band. “Probably … my 25-chapter fanfiction that I wrote, or the hours I consumed scrolling and posting on Tumblr,” he says. “Yet looking back, I also can’t believe the amount of money I spent going to every single concert held in Sydney, and concerts in other cities. $500 for tickets, days in a row.” He trails off as he searches for examples of the stories he authored, imagining romances between different bandmates, as well as between his friends and their preferred members. When he discovers a fragment, it’s rife with overzealous description and dialogue that sounds like it’s pulled directly from the screens of a Spanish soap opera. It’s the perfect example of the manner in which young fans are so
More recently, One Direction’s own Harry Styles issued a defence of teenage fans who are so readily dismissed by musical elites. “Who’s to say that young girls who like popular music have worse musical taste than a 30-year-old hipster guy?” he asked in a Rolling Stone interview. It’s the perpetual question; young listeners have been mocked since time immemorial, and denounced as fad followers (never trendsetters), despite their huge influence on the music industry. So perhaps the greatest gift that fandoms have bestowed unto their participants is the feeling of ownership that accompanies their devotion to the artist. No longer are millennials passively accepting their denigration as poor musical appreciators; they’re empowering themselves by harnessing the collective identity that a fandom affords them. In 1983, media theorist Benedict Anderson wrote of something called imagined communities — the way that portrayals of culture, of figures, of events were manipulated to fit a specific sentiment of patriotic pride for one’s nation. “The nation is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them,” he postulated, “yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.” And
fandoms operate in much the same way. Whether a user exists in one as small as the Vampire Weekend fandom (which comprised roughly a hundred active members on Twitter), or as sprawling as the Directioners, it’s the sense of shared zeal and pride that’s key in the day-to-day functioning of a group that celebrates the achievements of their bands, and by doing so, creates its own idiosyncratic voice in a crowded musical arena. Despite many other vast distinctions between the bands of our affection, the experiences of myself, Aimee, and Luke share a common core — that is, the significance of the fandom in informing our own identities. “I can honestly — and sappily — say that I wouldn’t be the person I am today if it wasn’t for the One Direction fandom,” Luke says after cringing at his own mawkishness. “I don’t think it’s attributed to One Direction at all — it was the fandom that did it for me.” Aimee agrees, reflecting on how the progressive values of the Vampire Weekend fandom made her “more aware of [her] impact on the environment, and more socially conscious”. For her, it’s been almost a decade since she first heard the album that would form the basis of much of her youth. In that decade, Apple has announced and retired 15 cycles of their first iPhone, and are set to present yet another new version this year: their 16th model. Meanwhile, Vampire Weekend is gearing up for the release of a long-anticipated 4th record with the typically confusing working title Mitsubishi Macchiato. When I ask Aimee what she expects from both of these events, she merely shrugs her shoulders — she’s moved on. And therein lies the transient beauty of all fandom, one that’s especially true when it’s affixed to music. Fandoms that provided spaces of solace for participants at one point become nostalgic memories as members gradually shed their skin and turn their interests towards other things. Posters are taken down; online accounts renamed, or deleted; merch t-shirts worn proudly in the past are stuffed away in closets as bands that once occupied a fan’s whole cosmos shrink into nothing more than distant clouds of gas. But a fandom-shaped dent in the music industry still remains, and serves as a haunting reminder of the power of young audiences. I think I’m long overdue for a re-listening of Vampire Weekend.
One of Ezra’s tweets / All art by Vincent Lee
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