There’s an admin assistant at my department who is not into any form of music whatsoever. She’s about 58 and claims she’s never bought an album, doesn’t listen to music in the radio…ever, turns off any news feed that’s about music or musicians because she doesn’t care.
She had no clue who Chuck Mangione was and claims to have never heard his song “Feels so Good” when it was played to her. She also knew next to nothing about Ozzy and was stunned to have just recently learned the bat story.
I have known her for years and she has always said music in any form or style does absolutely nothing for her. Says even as a teenager she didn’t like any music and refused to go anywhere music was the main thing. Lime a concert or a dance. Didn’t even participate in deciding what kind of music for her wedding reception because she didn’t care.
Which I find bizarre. Especially since otherwise she is a completely regular person with no other quirks or personality differences.
Anyone here know anyone like this? Is there a term for someone like this?
I’ve never met anyone who professes to dislike all forms of music, but as a music-lover I do tend to hang around with people who love it instead of hate it!
Music has been such a big part of my life for so long, I can’t imagine it not being there.
I’m not quite that bad, but I have no particular interest in music. I didn’t collect any albums, have favourite bands, or go to any concerts. I don’t hate it or anything (well, some genres are very unpleasant to my ears) but can take or leave it, and wouldn’t miss it if it suddenly disappeared from the world.
There are many, many personality traits for which the population at large exhibits a wide range of variation.
Some people are very interested in food and go to great lengths to experience new flavors and textures. Some people have zero interest in food except as fuel and would be completely satisfied eating a bowl of People Chow three meals a day. Most people are somewhere in the middle.
Some people are technophiles, seeking out the cutting edge of innovation and incorporating it into their lives at every opportunity. Some people are technophobes, refusing to carry even the most rudimentary mobile phone despite the inconvenience. Most people are in the middle.
Some people are highly motivated by athletic competition, and are happy only when they’re challenging themselves physically against others (or their own benchmarks). Some people prefer sedentary lives and can’t be dragged kicking and screaming into even a simple family-reunion game of tug-o-war. Most people are somewhere in the middle.
And so on, and so on.
It seems entirely reasonable that “music appreciation” would have a continuum like this, with a wide range of possible levels, and a few people at the extremes.
I knew a guy in school like that. He just didn’t care about it one way or another. Oddly he was in the marching band because his mom made him join. He liked the social aspects of being in band.
Some music (the Law & Order theme, tinkly classical music) actively upsets him and gets him howling; the rest seems to fall into a general category of indifference/dislike.
I remember Andy Rooney saying that he did not have the ability to hear music. It all was just sound. The term for that is usually “tone deaf.” I didn’t think that was possible but apparently it is. That doesn’t really describe your friend, however. She can hear it, but it’s of no interest to her.
Allow me to offer a rough equivalent. I’m a guy who has no interest in team sports. Never have. I don’t follow, read about, talk about or care about any team sports or the people involved. I have no clue as to the rules of football, basketball, soccer or any other team sport. (Though I do have a mild interest in baseball, I would never sit down and watch a whole game.) I simply don’t care. I do watch some of the Olympics, because the emphasis is on individual achievement. When I was working, so I’d be up on next day’s water cooler conversation, I’d watch some of the Super Bowl, but I would have no clue as to what was going on. Now that I’m retired, I don’t even do that.
Many people would find this baffling, just as you do your friend’s disinterest in music.
I’m no expert but perhaps a decent metaphor is colorblindness. Which in nearly all cases is not true “black and white”-only vision, but can be vision with a very different and more limited color palette than normies experience. In addition to color, vision gives us form, texture, etc.
Music has pitch, timbre, and rhythm. If perception of the first two of those are badly lacking in a person, all music may resemble a perpetual drum solo played on one drum. Uggh.
It’s not clear to me from the OP whether his coworker has some variation of amusia. But I’m willing to bet that in a lot of cases, folks with partial amusia tend towards disinterest in music.
I don’t care about music. I actively dislike being forced to listen to music against my will.
I do have music I like (Pink Floyd, Type O Negative, Barenaked Ladies, some others) but I don’t amuse myself by just “listening to music”. I would always rather listen to an audiobook or documentary or podcast. I can seriously count on on hand (with fingers remaining) all of the times I’ve intentionally put on some music, even as background noise, in the last ten years.
I read somewhere Sigmund Freud hated music. (that’s all I got).
I turn on a music channel on basic cable tv for background, there are many categories - big band and smooth jazz, party music, bellowing Broadway singers, and ‘spa music’. Depends on my mood for the day.
That’s me. Pop songs I like I nearly always like for the lyrics, and some really popular songs I am completely unable to grasp the attraction of, because they have stupid lyrics.
I like a few pieces of classical music, but short pieces. I like medieval and Renaissance dance music because I like to dance to it. I don’t have amusica, because I appreciate and enjoy the humor of Peter Schickele.
But I listen to news or audiobooks in my car-- occasionally podcasts. Recently at the dentist, I was cuing up something on my phone to listen to, and the technician mentioned that music was soothing, and I said, “Not as much as Miss Marple.”
I have a lot of Deaf friends, and they feel sort of harassed by people who are always telling them how sad it is that they can’t hear music, when they don’t give two shits-- or worse, people looking for ways to “help them experience music.” One friend of mine said “Can you just buy me an ice cream cone instead?”
And I get it, because people are always saying I just haven’t heard some pet piece of music of theirs, or I’d love music. Leave me alone.
Oliver Sacks, the neurologist who’s written many popular books on interesting neurological cases, has a book specifically about music and the mind–and there’s a chapter on amusia. It’s a really good read!