By: Guillermo Herrera, twitter.com/guille911

Editor: Krystal Carter

How were your social relationships in high school? Did you have a lot of friends or did you have small selected group of friends? Did you do things you really didn’t want to, but did because someone else did too.

Did you want to be part of a group? Did you follow someone else’s rules or did you create your own?

Here’s the big question: what would you change if you could go back in time, with today’s knowledge about how well you know yourself and how you behave in society.

Would you act the same? Would you become a leader? Or were you a leader already? Did you dare to be different?

After working over 7 years playing music in a hit radio station targeted to a younger audience, people often ask me how I can predict if a song will be a hit? How can I discover the summer song before everyone else, allowing our station to play it exclusively and put it “On Style” before our competitors? This has made me interested in understanding how mainstream culture behaves.

There’s no other choice but to choose what appeals to a larger audience as the ’safe bet.’ A generalized taste. Taste that is more likely to appeal to younger audiences, who are in the stage of desperately looking for an identity.

Pop music, is the shortened term for POPULAR music for a reason. It is created to reach these younger audiences. It is commercial record music. Commercial because you can make “commerce” of it, i.e. create money in so many ways, concerts, endorsements, downloads and (although it has decreased in recent years) selling records.

Let’s go back in 1998, when the new star was born: Britney Spears. After Baby One More Time hit, it was almost inevitable that a song like Oops I Did it Again would become a hit too. Or I Want it That Way from the Backstreet Boys. I can do the same comparison with new music like any new Lady Gaga song or any of Katy Perry’s. Are they really musicians or are they charismatic artists who sing?

The problem however, is when you don’t fit into mainstream culture because you are different, it could be music or it could be other aspects. You are a “weirdo”, if you disagree with whatever the majority says or how they behave. Perhaps because you have no intention to be part or accepted in any group, you are independent. Then, all of the sudden, if you are part of these individuals who are not following “mainstream” without knowing, you become a sub-group, an “alternative” to mainstream culture.

The perfect example is in the late 80’s when national media all over the world, were mostly playing pop music such as Michael Jackson or Madonna. They were also playing bands who had contracts with big record label companies who also were making commercial music but as part of the heavy metal genre such as Metallica or Iron Maiden. At the time, an independent band from Seattle, who were exposed mainly through college radios and word of mouth, were promoting this new lifestyle, rejecting mainstream, not following masses, not depending or relying on mainstream media, just making what they loved to do. The name of the band was Nirvana. In the same wave, in Europe was Radiohead.

Kurt Cobain from Nirvana. The icon of alternative music.

Once again, we’re seeing the same battle in the present against commercial appealing music, such as Justin Beiber versus independent efforts like The King of Limbs or Sheepdogs.

Let’s go to the movie industry, where Bollywood is booming, competing now against Hollywood. Another example of independent vs. mainstream.

So imagine living this alternative lifestyle, doing something different of what we’re used to.

Can you imagine the first person from a region where meat was primary part of their nutrition saying that they will become vegetarian? Nowadays we can see that that person is not the only one making that type of decision.

Imagine the first person of the L.G.B.T community to openly express his/her feelings? That person is not the only one anymore.

I guess it is not that bad to be called a “weirdo”, just watch the guys from the Big Bang Theory.

What I’m encouraging you today, is not to feel restrained when you think differently than others. If you truly believe it, if you really feel the urge act in a certain way… do it, as long as it follows the golden rule: not to hurt yourself or others.

You might not be part of what is socially accepted but you could be the creator of a new stream where other people feel the same way you do, but don’t have the courage enough to express it.

That is how leaders of ideologies are born.

You could be one.