Whatever sort of out-of-the-box musician you are, there’s a place for you.
My name is Meri Amber, I’m a Sydney based geek pop singer-songwriter.
Usually when I introduce myself like this the first thing that happens is people respond asking ‘what is geek pop?’ I tend to explain it as being pop music for dweebs. Stylistically I generally perform songs with elements of bright pop and 90s punk-rock-style whimsical lyrics, they feature topics that are somewhat left-of-centre like ninjas, superpowers or the internet, and they’re littered with pop culture references.
When I first started playing music I was very young, a guitar was somewhat plonked into my hands and I was encouraged to learn it. I grew fond of it and in my mid-high school years thought I’d try my hand at writing a song. From the first song I wrote and performed live, ‘I’m Not a Hypochondriac’, it became clear that I was not going to be your regular musician.
When I performed the song the whole audience laughed at me. I was at a music camp and ran back to my cabin crying before some of my room mates explained that it was because everyone thought it was funny. I started writing more songs (classics like ‘I Want To Be An Amoeba’, ‘Telepathic Stalker’ and ‘Ode To The Air Vent’) and figured at this point that I was going to be a comedic singer. When I attended talent school they encouraged me down this path and I thought I was set.
Then came adulthood.
I dressed up and went to some local comedy bars and tried sharing my songs. Some of them got a good response, others didn’t get laughs and it seemed like the audience was universally disappointed. I had songs like ‘Etcetra’ (a song completely written out of punctuation symbols) and ‘The Scary Things’ (a song about late night television) that I loved but weren’t as funny as comedy audiences expect. I became tired of simply trying to get laughs and wanted to just tell stories in my songs, regardless of whether they were funny or not.
I also found out that adult comedy was very different to the comedy I had known as a kid. People swore and made a lot of sexual and political jokes. To this day I barely swear, find a lot of sexual jokes to be awkward and consider the majority of politics a snore. I worked very hard to try and fit in with the community but felt like it was a constant struggle. It seemed like the path I thought was my destiny wasn’t going to work out after all.
I’m not proud to say it, but I gave up for some time.
Then I did something even worse and tried to be something I was not, again. I started releasing folk pop songs and desperately trying to get them to fit into the style the same way I was trying to fit into the comedy box beforehand. Needless to say, my folk pop songs still came out rather quirky and whenever I did concerts people kept asking for the crazier of my numbers.
Eventually I got the hint that people liked my crazy songs. Even when they weren’t funny, even when they were just about odd topics or told odd stories. More poignantly, even when they weren’t folk pop. I started loving what I was doing again as I slowly accepted it.
Through a strange series of events where people were telling me I was “nerdy” a “geek singer” and such things I started to become fond of the idea. I put my foot down and decided “I’m going to invent the genre of geek pop” and figured that, because I invented it I could do whatever the hell I wanted within my newly created genre and I didn’t need to squeeze into an ill-fitting box.
It turns out I didn’t invent the genre. After I’d been doing it for some time, a nerd comedy duo from Canada discovered me and introduced me to the world of geek music. It was a world full of people, like me, who wrote songs about left-of-centre topics and who were inspired by pop culture. There was sub-genres like nerd comedy, geek rock, nerdcore (hip hop based), filk (folk based) and 8 bit (music made using computer game sounds). I became super excited. Here was a world that I felt I could exist in without changing a thing!
I started applying to play at comic conventions like some other geek musicians did and, because geek music doesn’t yet seem to exist in Australia, had to explain myself to the organisers. Some of them gave me a chance to perform and I found out that the formula works. It turns out that the people who like dressing up as super heroes, reading comics, watching sci-fi TV shows and arguing over the laws of imaginary worlds are exactly the sort of people that like songs about YouTube, gaming and zombies.
I’m still experimenting and seeing exactly where I fit into the musical world both stylistically and lyrically. People who listen to my music never know what the next thing to come out will be. There’s been an accounting album, a song written from emojis, a photography song and an album of Doctor Who songs amongst multiple other things released within the space of two years.
But, I’ve found that there’s an audience for that. There’s people that want songs that look at the world from an odd angle, there are people that get a kick out of recognising pop culture references and people that want songs that reflect their personality as geeks, oddballs and residents of their own imaginations.
So, after a rather depressing and seemingly hopeless journey, I came back to the stupid phrase that keeps being repeated everywhere. It still sounds stupid, but here we go. Be yourself. It’s the best advice in the world.
Also, ‘be yourself’ applies no matter how strange ‘yourself’ is. You’ll be surprised to find that there’s an audience for pretty much everything. Whether you’re fusing ska music with electronica or writing all your songs set in your own fantasy world, there’s someone that will think that’s the coolest thing ever. People are drawn to genuine and that’s what you’ll be. More importantly, you’ll write your best material when you’re not behind a façade and you’ll feel better.
Maybe country pop seems to have a huge audience now, but there was a day when that was new, strange and different too.
For all the reasons there are to try and assimilate. I think that the best thing you can do for yourself, your art and your audience, is to forget fitting in. Do what you do, you’ll likely find there are other people that do it too and even if you don’t, you might inspire others too.
The worst thing in life is to have regrets and I have regrets about trying to be something I’m not. I hope by reading my story I can inspire you to realise that ‘you’ is enough. You don’t have to change ‘you’ to find a place. Hopefully, this’ll mean that you can live your life and create your art, your way, with no regrets.
Meri
Meri Website: http://www.meriamber.com/
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