The big headphone hype: You might think you’re a DJ, but you’re not

If you have left your house this decade you’ll have noticed the amount of teenagers and students cat-walking across Britain’s high streets, campuses and public transport in huge flamboyant headphones. It’s pretty clear that this trend is getting out of hand.

Not even the minion can justify it.

I frequently see people wearing their headphones perched on the back of their head like some sort of halo or Indian headdress, and there’s a few mates who I literally can’t remember last seeing without their treasured headphones chained around their neck.

It’s beginning to remind me of when people went mad for mobiles in the 90’s; some people were wearing them around their neck like some sort of technological medallion worth upwards of £150.

I’m not saying they’re pointless. I couldn’t. Last week I hopped on the bandwagon and purchased my first pair of half-decent headphones. They’re great. I really appreciate how they transform my mundane walk to the shops by encasing my ears in a bubble of crisp sound, allowing me to shut off from my awful surroundings and enjoy whatever new-fangled music I happen to think is cool at the time.

But from the small time promoter who spent half his loan on a pair of Sennheisers, to the 15-year-old sporting fake Beats his mum got him at the market so he’d be down with the latest playground craze, my qualm is the same. Today, massive over-ear headphones are seldom worn for their sonic virtues, but instead as lavish bits of jewellery and little more.

This is actually what you look like.

What annoys me most about the headphone craze is the amount of people who now seem to believe that parading around in massive fashionable headphones is actually a marker of someone who knows about good music. Fortunately this isn’t the case; owning an expensive pair of headphones might make you look like a DJ, but it doesn’t miraculously make you into a DJ.

This guy can pull them off.

As the latest essential fashion accessory of our generation, they’re also big, big business. Dr. Dre just sold Beats to Apple, apparently making him “the first billionaire in hip-hop.”

Most journalists ranting about the eye watering sale price of Beats put the success of the franchise, and the headphone crazy generally, down to some crafty and underhand advertising.

Free pairs were sent to athletes at the Olympics and everyone from Wayne Rooney to Justin Bieber has been pictured wearing them. And where celebrities lead, consumers follow. Whatever your opinion of such figures, I think it’s safe to say that they’re not the sorts of people you’d be wise to take advice of a musical nature from.

It’s great that more people are enjoying good sound quality – but those who adorn themselves with the flashiest pair they could find on Amazon like the Mr. T of Music taste just to impress passersby, are completely missing the point.

And if they’re also one of the millions who stroll around all day staring into a smart phone, their technology addiction is probably debilitatingly anti-social.