Feminist Agenda // Taylor Kirby

Yesterday was my birthday; more importantly, it marked five years since Fun. came out with their last album.

Fun.’s been with me through a lot. They played me off the stage at my high school graduation; they were my first show at Red Rocks; and, for four years now, they’ve been ruining my birthday with Facebook posts bragging about Some Nights’ anniversary and their ensuing lack of productivity.

On my 20th birthday, I stood on a sidewalk downtown and cried on the phone about how old and washed up I was. People stared, I cried harder—it was a vicious cycle. “I’ve done nothing with my life,” was my refrain of the conversation.

I don’t know if Fun. inspired or simply fed into this neurotic moment of mine; I loved them for their ability to mask lyrics about massive existential crises beneath upbeat, synthy productions, and at the time I was listening to little else.

This was exactly three years ago from yesterday, and though I laugh about it now, I know the meltdown wasn’t just me at my normal level of melodrama. A few months after that, I would finally be formally diagnosed with depression; I was in the middle of one of the worst flare-ups I’d had yet. I wasn’t doing anything outside of occasionally breaking up my sleep schedule by attending classes. Everyone has the music that “got them through”—and Fun. was that music for me. Though my diagnoses will always be with me, I’ve slowly learned to celebrate getting older rather than dreading it; prodiges always fizzle out early in their careers, anyway.

My birthday wish is for Fun. to stop doing the Fall Out Boy thing. A five-year-long hiatus is embarrassingly 2009, and I’m looking forward to hearing if our evolving worldviews managed to run parallel. Until then, I’ll keep dreading the day they finally announce their hiatus has morphed into a permanent separation.