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Soccer mom acquires ‘hip’ music taste stalking cool kids on MySpace

By Julian de la Joya ⋅ March 11, 2008 ⋅  Email this article ⋅  Print this article ⋅ Post a comment

Waddington: No Chad Kroeger for her

Winthrop, MA — One year ago, Sally Waddington had no idea who My Chemical Romance, Dashboard Confessional, and Fall Out Boy were and what kind of music they played. Now, the 52-year-old mother of three is well-versed on nearly every post-Green Day pop/punk band in existence. She even knows Gerard Way’s current hair color, how many tattoos Chris Carrabba has, and who Pete Wentz is dating.

“My kids freaked out when I started humming ‘Famous Last Words’ one morning while making pancakes,” says the full-time soccer mom. “They were like, ‘Get out of here! How do you know that song?’ It was pretty amusing.”

“It’s like, totally embarassing. Why can’t she just listen to, like, Nickelback or something?”

According to Waddington, her musical renaissance started after she created a MySpace account under an assumed identity “just to see what the fuss was all about.”

“Before you know it, I’m logging in nearly every hour,” says Waddington. “Now I have over four hundred friends.”

Waddington says she spends many hours on the networking site looking through other people’s pages to see what music they’re listening to.

“That’s the main draw for me. I’ve always been a music lover, but that took a backseat after I popped three kids out,” she says. “MySpace gives me a chance to reconnect with that side of me.”

Waddington admits she regularly visits several pages belonging to “a bunch of cool kids” she doesn’t know. “There’s a kid in Iowa that I check out everyday. He’s into a lot of good stuff. He recently got me into Hefner. There’s so much great stuff out there. It’s exhilarating,” she adds.

Her children aren’t so thrilled.

“It’s like, totally embarassing. Why can’t she just listen to, like, Nickelback or something?” says daughter Christina, 15. “You know, like all the regular moms do.”

Drake, 14, agrees, saying that parents aren’t supposed to like what their kids are listening to. “Punk music is all about rebellion. It’s kinda hard to feel that when your mom knows the lyrics to every AFI song.”

Waddington brushes off the protestations.

“Just because I’m in my 50’s doesn’t mean I should only listen to Celion Dion and Josh Groban,” she says. “I refuse to be pigeonholed like that.”