Guilty as Charged
Stop apologising for the music you love
One of the first exercises they make you do in drama school is walk.
No Shakespeare. No Harold Pinter. No emotional monologues. Just walk around the room.
Fill the space. Don’t follow anyone. Make eye contact.
Within seconds, a room full of aspiring actors will forget how to perform one of the most basic human functions.
It’s not the walking that trips you up. It’s the constant adjustment of your movements as soon as you enter your peers’ line of sight and realise you’re being watched.
Like when you’re having a ball with your favourite ‘80s bangers in the car, only to turn down the volume the moment you pull up alongside another driver.
You didn’t automatically stop liking the music. It so happens that you now have an audience.
And they can judge you.
Music makes us cry, dance, think, grieve, fall in love, deal with break-ups, and feel less alone. Yet one of its strangest powers is making otherwise confident adults apologise for liking it.
Which begs the question: who exactly are we apologising to?
