Nicholson St, East Melbourne. May 5, 2017.

You have always done fandom wholeheartedly.

Earnestly.

Obsessively, others might say.

At the age of 12, you plaster your ceiling with posters of Diesel, aka Johnny Diesel, aka Mark Lizotte so you can stare at him from bed while you listen to his music.

At 16, you spend hours locked in your parents’ shed “discovering” the Beatles via your dad’s extensive vinyl back catalogue and crying over John Lennon’s death – which happened 16 years earlier.

As an 18-year-old, with the advent of the internet you join an email mailing list to talk exclusively about Jeff Buckley and almost fail uni because who has time to study when you’re reading and sending dozens of Buckley-themed emails a day, and skipping classes to exchange bootleg CDs with strangers on city streets or raid tiny music shops in Prahran for rare Buckley singles?
And it doesn’t end when your teen years do.

When you’re 25, you fly to Sydney before dawn to meet up in person with strangers you first met on the internet and race for the front row to see INXS play live on Sunrise. Afterwards, you and your new friends hang out the front of INXS’s hotel until the band members come past and you awkwardly take photos with them, trying to be cool. (You are anything but cool.)

A couple of years later, again in Sydney, you accidentally get locked in a hotel fire escape while visiting the hotel where Michael Hutchence died, because you just needed to get to the floor where it actually happened – and then have to call your husband (who’s still in Melbourne) to call reception to let you out.

It’s not always music, either. At 32, you head up to Sydney to go to a food festival, mostly because Andy & Ben from MasterChef Season 4 are going to be there and, look, you just need to see their bromance in real life, ok?

At 33, you pay through the teeth for a lone ticket to Day 3 of the Boxing Day Test, knowing it will be for little more than an hours’ play, just to see England get their comeuppance as your boys decisively win the Ashes at the ‘G. (Worth every cent.)

And then one day not long after your 37th birthday, you’re flicking through radio stations while driving to work, trying to find a traffic report, and you hear a snippet of a song. You instantly love it. You thank the gods for the Shazam app (and the traffic that has you at a standstill) as you hit the button.

Harry Styles, Sign of the Times.

Who?

Wait, Harry Styles … isn’t he from that boyband? No Direction? One Direction? Ugh.

It’s clearly an aberration, a synapse misfire in your brain, so you go about your business.

Then a few minutes later, still searching for a bloody traffic report, you hear a snippet of a different song you instantly love, on a different station. Wary, but unsuspecting of what truly awaits you, you hit the Shazam button again.

Harry Styles, Sweet Creature.

You throw your phone across the car. You don’t do boybands. Or boys from boybands (the Beatles are obviously not included in the boyband category to you).

You resolve to simply never think about Harry Styles, or One Direction, ever again.

Ha.

Famous. Last. Words.

Within two weeks, you confess your sins publicly (well, on Facebook):

FB world, I have a confession to make. I simply can’t keep it in any longer, so here it is. I just listened to the whole Harry Styles album on YouTube, and I really liked it. I’m sorry, but I just don’t feel I can hide who I am anymore. It turns out that who I am is a Harry Styles fan. I’ve crossed over to the dark side. I’m sorry if any of you feel deceived by or disappointed in me. I will hand in my community radio listening credentials and my PBS car sticker promptly.

Within a month, you’ve fallen down the Larry Stylinson rabbit hole (you can Google it but be warned – you may not come out of it the same person), and within two months you know the entire One Direction back catalogue word for word (and that’s what makes you beautiful). Your children regularly make Harry or 1D song requests in the car, and you have ‘Best Song Ever’ dance parties with them while cooking dinner.

Within seven years, you have:

  • seen Harry Styles live five times in three states
  • done road trips with other fans from the UK and the US who are now some of your best friends
  • badgered your husband into musically reimagining the entirety of Harry’s second album, Fine Line, with you
  • bonded with your daughter’s best friend’s mum over your mutual love of Harry
  • sobbed over the extraordinarily tragic death of Liam Payne
  • written two Stereo Stories about Harry and 1D
  • performed one of them (Best Song Ever) with the Stereo Stories band
    and had some of the most incredibly joyful, joyous, magical, and just plain fun moments of your life.

You have always done fandom wholeheartedly.

You wouldn’t change a thing.

 

 

Stereo Story 830

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Martina Medica is a writer, linguist, mother, singer and songwriter living in the foothills of the Dandenong Ranges, Victoria. And a member of the Stereo Stories band!