He blames the songs, of course, for creating a romantic ideal that no real life relationship could ever quite match. Rob loves the joy of falling in love, not the work of being in love. He and his friends inhabit that typically male world of music fetishisation, geek collector chic and perpetually suspended adolescence. Yet Hornby and Cusack also present that lifestyle as a manifesto. Rob, along with his Championship Vinyl mates Dick and Barry, organises people according to taste.
People are what they like.
But for Rob, Dick and Barry, while wondering why their relationships last no longer than the perfect pop single, they also use their encyclopedic music knowledge for good and evil. The Clash, Elvis Costello, Chemical Brothers, Mozart and The Beta Band. In the movie, Cusack move the setting of High Fidelity from London to his hometown of Chicago. Somebody would have a scratchy tape of the Talking Heads, and they'd pass it around. Never Mind the Bollocks'.