Back in 2007, Swedish rock 'n' roll mega-enthusiast, Robert Tullgren, was awarded disability benefits by his country's government due to his obsessive-compulsive need to be perpetually listening to, wearing clothing pertaining to, and generally living Heavy Metal
The supplemental income was intended to offset the wages the headbang-a-holic lost after he was fired for missing work because of his near-psychotic need to attend an excessive number of Heavy Metal concerts.
Recently, the story has been running a few victory laps around the blogosphere, even though Tullgren hasn't received benefits since, like, 2009. Nevertheless, the resurgence of this inspiring tale of human determination in the face of addiction has inspired us to wonder what it would look like if the drug of choice were any of the ten following musical genres.
10. Chillwave
If we were pop culture realists, we would have refrained from including chillwave because no one has given half a shit about hazy-'80s-lectro since at least 2010. Fortunate for us -- and our insatiable need to produce content, a desire-drive directly connected to our insatiable need to eat food and pay bills -- we are in the bidness of pop culture fan fiction.
9. Bro-step
Bass addiction is no joke, bro. We all seen a basshead or two in our time. Y'know, the big-tees, the blunts, and the gangsta-skank during the wobble breakdown. But nobody wants to mess with bass junkies, those hairy-tongued, self-scratching tweakers with bloodshot eyes just lookin' for one last drop. They can pay you Tuesday, man, just hook it up with some'uh'dat womp.
8. Psytrance
The effects of an addiction to the psychedelic techno variant known as "psytrance" include the chronic inability to stop dancing like you have to pee while your entire body is simultaneous covered in slimy beetles or grasshoppers or something. Also, the psytrance addict can only feel the effects of other drugs when dancing to psytrance, which only compounds this terrible addiction's capacity for life-ruining destruction. Friends don't let friends dance to psytrance!
7. K-Pop
"Gangnam Style" broke all of those YouTube records because the crossover Korean pop mega-meme introduced North American popular culture to its most dangerous addiction since the C.I.A. put crack cocaine in the ghetto. The C.I.A. is responsible for PSY, too, BTW.
6. Vuvezuela Drone-core
Much like cigarettes, its hard to imagine how somebody ends up blowing a vuvezuela nonstop, at all hours, for seemingly no reason other than to feel their solar plexus tremble in resonance with this ancient instrument's cosmic vibration. All it takes is one night of self-destructive bad decisions and nihilist-hedonist choices for you to end up feverishly sucking on a kazoo in a sketchy stairwell.
5. Salsa
C'mon, who hasn't gone too far with a lil' mambo at least once in their lifetime?
4. Harsh Japanese Noise
To be addicted to "noise," - the extreme music genre developed and popularized, in part, by Japanese provocateurs like Hanatarash, Merzbow, and the Incapacitants - is to be afflicted with a compulsion that makes its self-destructive nature hyper-explicit. That is to say, to be addicted to noise is to be addicted to self-inducing one serious mindfuck of a splitting headache after another.
3. Hare Krishna Hardcore
Sure, Shelter lived a lifestyle free of drugs, meat and promiscuous sexual activity. But was their rabid devotion to Hare Krishna and/or hardcore punk rock promoting Hare Krishna something comparable to an addiction?
2. Trap Music
This genre is all about drugs in the first place. The people listening to it probably have something to do with drugs, at some point of the drug-doing process, be it the making, distributing, selling, consumption or theft (of drugs).
1. Disco
Much like benzoylmethylecgonine (aka YAYO, aka blowcaine), disco has the ability to transform a wholesome, gainfully-employed citizen into a sweaty, blathering, teeth-gnashing, fast-talking narcisisst.
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