Women who are into country, folk, death metal, or too much pop. Not my cup of tea.
Women who are into 90’s and early 2000’s alternative and old school hip hop. I’m apparently not their cup of tea. I strike out with so many of them.
Women who are into indie music. Aha we have a match! Midwest Degenerate Gambler x Sexy Hipster Succubus.
I have a feeling that hipster women like me for other reasons though. Like how well-traveled I am and my (off the beaten path) food preferences.
Is there a right way and a wrong way to discuss music while meeting women? Are music preferences even important to you?
What are the “popular” indie bands today? Ive been out of the loop. Ive been listening to podcasts while driving. Back when I got into indie music (like 10 years ago?) I was digging bands like Tame Impala.
Wrong way: “You’re not into that country, folk or death metal shit, are you?”
Music preferences are very important to me. It was somewhat of an issue when I was dating, as I seemed to be meeting few women with similar musical tastes to mine, until I met my current wife. But incompatible tastes in music would probably not be a deal-breaker if we were otherwise compatible.
People that label themselves into corners aren’t for me. I like country (old school and alternative), folk, metal (I lean toward classical San Fran thrash), pop rock, punk, a lot of alternative, old school hip hop, indie (not sure that is where I would stick Tame Impala, but it is listed as one of their genres), classical, and a whole lot of other music. So, yes music is very important to me, but I wouldn’t want to find someone who only likes what I do, assuming I had such a limited scope as you describe. Sounds pretty boring.
Hehehe, I dunno, it’s a crap shoot. I love a wide variety of music. When my wife and I were dating eons ago, she mentioned that she wasn’t fond of a bunch of the big band jazz I listened to. Pretty much any blues singer with a band that wasn’t named Muddy Waters or Howlin’ Wolf wasn’t interesting to her, but country blues was generally pretty palette-able. Similarly, I wasn’t interested in some of the synth pop she liked (e.g. I like The Cure up to about 1990, she likes everything they did to some extent). The biggest overlap in our Venn diagrams were noise rock, a bunch of alternative pop/rock, heavy funk, psycohbilly, and some hardcore punk.
Around our ten year anniversary she (who brought most of the early Black Sabbath records into our collection) said “I didn’t know you were so much of a hesher” because I spent a few weeks listening to mostly metal. We’re still married, but our music choices still sometimes bewilder each other. I can’t predict what I like that will confuse her, and she can’t predict the same about me. We can still find lots of stuff that we both enjoy.
Though, there are always lines that you can’t cross, and sometimes you won’t know until you’ve crossed them. I had a girlfriend at one time that I was getting along with really well early in the relationship, and our musical tastes largely coincided (heck, the only girlfriend I had that wanted to listen to Lyle Lovett as much as I wanted to). However, when going through her tapes one day, I spotted a Jimmy Buffet tape and said something along the lines of “Ugh, I just can’t handle him.” She responded with “Well, I guess it’s always fucking SOMETHING, isn’t it?” Jimmy Buffet was her favorite performer, and that relationship lasted about two weeks after that.
So yeah, try to be as nice as you can with your musical opinions. If you love something that the other person absolutely objects to, or you feel the same way about their choices, headphones are often an option. Usually it seems to me that there’s a large intersection of music most pairs of individuals can agree on. But, there are always those land mines of performers that people have decided to identify with that if you step on them, you’re done as a relationship. Tread as lightly as you can.
I really mean to be sympathetic, but that made me LOL.
To me what matters is that the lady in question should like SOMETHING. It doesn’t really matter what as long as she has a bit of a musical ear and isn’t completely closed-minded. I like to be able to talk about music as much as to listen to it.
It’s great to share some common ground with your partner regarding musical tastes and the arts, but having differences can be equally rewarding as long as both are open-minded. These differences provide opportunities to expand your horizons.
I once dated someone whose tastes were aligned with a generation much older than ours. She was into crooners from the '40s and '50s and introduced me to the greatness of Sinatra. She also loved the Golden Age of film and was a die-hard Bette Davis fan. Now, I’m a Davis fan too.
In return, I introduced her to Romantic-era classical music and '70s rock and roll. When it came to films, I helped her appreciate the Big 3 silent-era comedians: Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd.
Embrace your similarities and learn from your differences.
OMG - this brought back the memory of Mike breaking up with me (via letter - he was at sea on an aircraft carrier at the time) because he decided our musical tastes were too different. To this day, I’m sure it was the only excuse he could come up with. We did get together a few years later, but it was obvious we weren’t meant to be, musical choices aside.
There’s a pretty good overlap for my wife and me, although she listens to “poppy” music I don’t care for and she’s not a fan of Zappa. When we were dating I put on Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica, and she commented on how it reminded her of Ornette Coleman.
Live music is a huge part of my life. I go to around 170 shows a year. My favorite genres are jam bands, blues, bluegrass, jazz and funk. I also like folk, some indie, some country and reggae on occasion. I’d need someone to have at least some overlap and like live shows. Not to go to all of them but to some of them. I’d gladly go to some of their stuff that was outside of the union in the Venn Diagram. I have ended up finding new bands that I enjoyed very much that way.
It all depends on how important music is to you. I mostly want my potential partner to be into music that isn’t entirely mainstream. I hate it when all that they like is classic rock that was popular within five years of when they graduated high school or “everything except for country and rap” which is meaningless and usually ignorant.
Music is important to me, but I couldn’t give the tiniest shit what my partner listens to. I have other friends to geek out about that with. I also generally prefer enjoying a show alone, anyway. And as for what’s playing in the house? Don’t really care, either. I don’t think there’s a genre of music I won’t listen to.
Given a choice between sitting in silence and listening to music, I’ll take silence. In fact, being forced to listen to music is bad for my mental health (looking at you, restaurants and stores with annoyingly loud ambient music systems).
My boyfriend and I have an intersection at grunge, where we were both the same age in the 90s and both doing the same things with our friends and living in the same midwestern area. But the type of music we listened to before that (informed by our parents) and after that (what we got into post-grunge) is pretty different. We’re both big music fans, though. I don’t think we’ve ever gone to a concert together.
My brother and his wife are both into very different Franks - Him, Zappa, her, Sinatra
I don’t care what music you like, as long as you don’t force me to listen to something I don’t like.
That said, I would love it if Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” and / or “Together Forever” could become “our song(s).” This admission will probably suggest to the reader what kind of music I like. It is a taste NOT shared by a relatively high number of people.
That said also, women may have their own requirements about what kind of music I listen to / am willing to listen to. I dealt with this last year. I tried to date a woman who is into Metal and K-pop. Not my cup of tea. She said she was disappointed that I wasn’t interested in going to Metal concerts with her (but seemed to understand about the K-pop) and it was something that caused her really not to feel the connection. On one occasion, I took her to my favorite pub / music club where I am a regular. The jukebox was packed full of ABBA, which is reflective of the kind of music many regulars like to listen to there. She couldn’t stand it. I gave her some money and told her to choose something. She complained that there were no Metal selections in the jukebox. At the end of the evening, she said she would never go to that pub again as the music was bad, the beer was lame the toilets covered in piss, and the service awful.**
** In fairness, one of the co-owners, with whom I enjoy interfacing, but who is no gentleman (in fact, he’s an alcoholic who drinks on the job) did come up to her and start babbling incoherently.
Edit: since then I have been to a Chelsea Wolf concert with her on a purely friendly basis and will be going with her to another concert of her choice in October. Just to have something to do with her. Even if it didn’t “work out”, she shouldn’t be too disappointed as she has at least found a guy willing to go and see a show that could appeal to both of us on some level from time to time.
I can’t think of a partner I’ve had where we didn’t share some musical taste, enough to land on something in the car anyway, though my wife and I actually “met” via talking about some musical artists so it was a given that we’d have middle ground. Today she still likes plenty of acts that I’m not especially interested in and I have my own but we seem to have a pretty strong overlap. I feel like I’ve introduced her to more songs/artists than vice versa but that probably says more about me usually dominating the airwaves via us being in my car than it says anything about the value of our respective tastes.
In my college days I was dating a woman who was really into jazz. Jazz sounded like random notes and made no sense to my rock & roll infused ears. But I really liked her so I tolerated her music. One night she was playing Thelonious Monk which was WAY out of my bailiwick. We were just sitting there, not really talking much, she was grooving on the music and I was doing my best to tolerate the racket.
It should be noted that there was liberal consumption of alcohol and pot that evening. My perception was sufficiently altered for me to experience a musical epiphany! Thelonious Monk wasn’t noise, it was genius! From there she helped me to branch out into other jazz and blues artists.
Our relationship eventually fizzled for non-musical reasons but I still have still fond memories of her and how she helped expand my horizons. I still listen to Monk tho now he’s on mp3 instead of vinyl.
