Yo man, turn it up. This is my embarrajam!

Em·bar·ra·jam [em-bear-a-jam] noun, embarrajamming (verb):

A song an individual is particularly fond of listening to, often repetitively, in private. Stems from the slang term “jam” and is a source of embarrassment when others find out.

Yo man, turn it up. This is my embarrajam!

A fact of the hip life is that music snobbery rules out certain songs. It is not ok to like an occasional Keith Urban song if you are a die-hard dubstep buff. And God forbid Ashlee Simpson’s “Pieces of Me” comes up next on shuffle while you and your Phoenix-loving friends are sitting around smoking a hookah. Some songs are just simply best listened to in private or hummed in the shower, rather than out in public where others might hear and, inevitably, have a good laugh at your expense.

Most of us have experienced that moment in a car full of friends when the exciting privilege of playing your ipod is marred by an embarrajam mishap. Everything is well received until your Radiohead song finishes and the un-mistakable voice of Christina Aguilera blasts through the speakers. Which excuse path do you take as you fumble to unlock the ipod and switch to something cooler? You consider, “some of my little sister’s music must have gotten into my library”; or maybe you could pull off, “I was trying to download a different ‘Candyman’.” Unfortunately the only thing you can bring yourself to say is, “how did that get on here?” Some members of the car might even like the song, but do they back you up, tarnishing their devastatingly hip persona? Never.

I had to wonder what the CC masses are secretly listening to in those precious hours between lunch and slack-lining, or Rastall dinner and bed. What fills those hours when there’s no one to impress, and no need to uphold CC’s standard of “effortless cool?’ So I set out to find the answer to the burning question, “What is your embarrajam?” Aside from the overwhelming number of closet ABBA lovers, the answers were all over the map, including those people who simply refused to share.

One singer in a popular campus band admitted to a love for Taking Back Sunday. When asked why that was embarrassing she replied, “beside the obvious reasons? Because I’m not a twelve year old homosexual boy from Ohio?” A certain Synergist began singing the lyrics to a new Beyonce hit, but quickly decided his occasional thirst for Bright Eyes was the real source of embarrassment. He explained that pop songs could be jams but emo songs recorded while we were in middle school were not considered endearingly sensitive, but merely embarrassing. One brave hipster (the likes of whom were consistently opposed to sharing their embarrajams) listed Discovery as a favorite embarrassing artist. I was under the non-hip delusion that New York City experimental R&B was a cool musical category, but the hipster informed me that it was “too cool to be cool.”

The list continued from Billy Joel’s “Vienna” to The Little Mermaid’s “Under the Sea.” The Phish-head next door is bumping Beyonce, and that ripped guy on the soccer team can’t get Abba’s “Dancing Queen” out of his head while he’s running laps. It became apparent that there was no reason for Christina Aguilera to be a lower form of music than The Grateful Dead, other than her lack of “cool.” Social boundaries are as effective as barbed wire fences when it comes to embarrajams. While one group may be in awe of Benny Benassi’s genius, they might give no thought to the power of a good electronic mash-up. A jam is valued for it’s musical aesthetic within a group that appreciates its sound, but because an embarrajam is simply entertaining, it isn’t valued in the same way. 

It seems the campus prefers pumping up the jams rather than exposing their embarrajams. Only a few respondents tried to convince me they had no embarrajam. I refrained from searching their backpacks for the Miley Cyrus track lurking in their ipods and let myself accept that they simply hadn’t come to terms with it yet. As long as there is a social standard to uphold, embarrajams will remain a private manner. Next time you find yourself walking through the dorm halls in the middle of the day, listen a little closer. If you’re lucky you might just hear your neighbor embarrajamming to Miley or, even better, Billy Ray.