How Did You Acquire Your Taste In Music?

Cafe Society
1

Just wondering if it is possible to explain why people like certain types of music, and dislike other genres.

Nature, nurture, other?

In my case, my mother loved Country music and would often tune in radio stations that played nothing but - however, I hate most Country music (other than Patsy Cline) so obviously, that didn’t set my tastes.

Both of my parents also liked the old Big Band music of their era - some of which was OK, but never really listen to it anymore.

Growing up, I latched onto music of my generation - Beatles, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Doors, etc. I can still listen to any of those songs and love them.

So I guess that would indicate music of your peers?

Then again, I also like Broadway Musicals (yes, I am Gay, why do you ask?) but oddly hate Opera, despite seeing grand productions in Vienna and Berlin - just can’t get into it at all.

Today, I listen to a radio station that plays current pop hits with singers I have never heard of, but I like a lot of the music…I doubt many my age listen to stations like this, but the music does grow on you.

So, can you determine why you like, or dislike, certain types of music?
Nature, nurture or other?

2

Coming of age in the 80’s, of course!

3

All of the above, at some time or other. My parents rarely listened to music, preferring Mitch Miller and Lawrence Welk instead. So I was forced into Rock & Roll in self-defense. I listened to what my peers were listening to. Then I ended up working in a record store for a few years, which really expanded my horizons. By then it was the mid-80s, and they stopped making music.

4

It certainly wasn’t from my parents. When I was growing up, my parents listened a “beautiful music” station (lots of Frank Sinatra, Johnny Mathis, Montovani, Percy Faith, etc.) I didn’t find out until much later that my parents were folkies in the 1960s, because they rarely listened to that sort of music by the time I was around (though they still had a cache of Kingston Trio albums).

A number of the specific bands which I grew to like (and which I still like) were introduced to me by high school or college friends. Generally, a lot of the music which I still enjoy was stuff which was popular when I was in high school and college (late 70s to late 80s).

5

Some people would say I have yet to. :slight_smile:

6

I had a friend one year ahead of me in high school–he was light years ahead of me when it came to musical tastes. Before I met him I was listening to stuff like The Monkees and The Partridge Family. After a couple of months hanging out with him I was into The Who, The Yardbirds, The Doors, and stuff like that.

7

I have no idea, but I suppose I got a lot from my siblings and friends.

I didn’t aquire a taste for classical music and opera until I was in my late teens. I heard some Wagner and I was sold.

8

Moving thread from IMHO to Cafe Society.

9

My love for folk music seems to be innate. As is my hatred of rap.

My love for the Beatles and 60s-70s rock in general feels innate, but I’m suspicious. After all, my parents felt the same way about the big bands as I felt about the great 60s rock bands, yet the former leave me cold.

I liked romantic music from an early age, not because I thought it was particularly wonderful, but because it was a whole lot better than Patti Page and Frank Sinatra. Today, other than a soft spot for few favorites, I can barely stand to listen to romantic instrumental music, and I think romantic symphonies, in particular, sound like a herd of elephants (though without the grace). But I’ve come to love First Viennese and Baroque music.

I’ve acquired a taste for opera in the last 10 years. Maybe it came with age, or maybe I could have like it when I was younger, but was just pig-headed. In any case, all of a sudden I just decided that it sounded fantastic.

10

Four older brothers, and my first car having only an AM radio, out of which I could only get a local Oldies station.

11

Nurture-wise, my parents piped in “easy listening” music into my bedroom at an early age, priming me to look for and appreciate melody first. But the next-door teenage boys were constantly taking me everywhere from the time I could walk and talk, and they were all nuts about the Beatles, so I absorbed that too. Nature-wise (tho all this is speculative) I’ve always been drawn to “otherworldly” music (tho I guess you could blame that on the Beatles too).

12

My now sister-in-law got me into Billy Joel, and growing up in the '80s I still like that era. (my iPod is probably 2/3 80’s)

13

WRIF Detroit. BABY!

14

My parents had a 78 rpm recording of “Stone Cold Dead In The Market” (probably the Ella Fitzgerald/Louis Jordan version) which I played repeatedly at an early age.

The rest is history.

15

I’m mystified where exactly my tastes came from. I grew up child of the 80s, and I enjoyed Top 40 music from the decade, but I was primarily listening to oldies from the dawn of the rock era to the 60s. It really wasn’t that much from my parents, although my mother was a big Elvis fan and I did grow up around hearing a lot of Elvis, Polish 60s-70s pop, as well as country and bluegrass. Also, I was very much into Bach, Beethoven, and Chopin in my middle school years. By high school, my tastes started to move up to classic rock of the 70s (Zeppelin especially), although it was still mostly grounded in 50s/60s oldies. By graduation, I started catching up and getting into the new alternative, but my ears still weren’t quite ready for most of the college rock of the 80s and 90s. It was in college that I really started to dig through the late 80s alternative, and then after graduation I started working my way backwards through post-punk and punk. However, I went through a number of phases, including jam bands, various kinds of dance music, electronica, hip hop, heavy metal, riot grrl bands, Serbian wedding music, etc.

For the last decade or so, my favorite overall time period has probably been the punk and post-punk/New Wave of the late 70s to early mid-80s. I’m just very curious as a musical listener, and there’s really nothing I won’t listen to, although mainstream country does try my patience.

16

I didn’t really care one way or the other about music until my last few years of high school, in the mid nineties. I remember the first CD I bought was Monster by R.E.M. and I was hooked. I’d be hard pressed to say why: I’d latch on to specific songs that really resonated with me, then move onto other songs on the album as I listened to them to death. It didn’t take long before I obsessively bought the entire R.E.M. catalog, and moved onto things like Radiohead.

It is difficult to say what caused me to like specific things, and it doesn’t help that it changes over time. I still like R.E.M. and Radiohead, but am far more drawn to more recent things like Arcade Fire and The National. The process is still the same: there will be one song that really resonates with me, and I’ll listen to it to death, and it’ll transition me into the other work of the artist.

All I can say for sure is that I seem to like the same sort of music as people who work in advertizing. Music I like is always being used in commercials these days …

17

Growing up I listened to a lot of classic rock (Led Zeppelin, Santana, The Who, etc.), thanks to my mom and my dad’s taste in it. I also got a lot of exposure to classical (school mainly) and Big Band (grandparents) and didn’t strongly dislike either, though I was too young to fully appreciate either. Then the 80’s happened and, like just about every other teenager in the 80’s, I liked New Wave (Culture Club and the like), plus a lot of pop metal (Bon Jovi and the like), hair metal (Poison and the like), and genuine heavy metal (Iron Maiden and the like).

Then Kurt Cobain came along and effectively ruined rock and roll, and I almost immediately lost interest in just about anything and everything played on any radio station except classic rock.

Then about 15 years ago I was scanning the radio dial looking for something, anything to listen to, and I more-or-less accidentally discovered jazz.

I have never looked back. :cool:

18

Peer pressure! I adored most all of the music of the 60’s (and still do). Did. not. like. syrupy romantic ‘girl songs’ so much, and still don’t, and was accused of being unfeminine! because I liked Cream and the Yardbirds, or actually any song with a strong beat. I don’t get this, were girls NOT supposed to like rock n’ roll? Like we were blowup dolls with no opinions who got taken to concerts by boyfriends, otherwise we’d be home listening to Bobby Sherman or something? Hey! I saw ALL the bands touring through our town, Jethro Tull, The Who, Alice Cooper, Led Zep TWICE…loved ‘em all. Parents’ taste in music: I don’t think they had any preference for anything, no big band, Frank Sinatra, or even Elvis. Though I do remember my mother playing Dixieland jazz band music on our brand new hi-fi, she loved polka music above all else, and an occasional crooner like Johnny Mathis. I listened to my records against a constant background of “turn that shit DOWN!” … That was the beginnings for me - I loved the 80’s even more, but I kind of stopped listening to popular music after that. Now I’m all over the place and my playlist has every genre of music known to man on it.

19

My mother only listened to classical music, so I began life surrounded by Chopin and Schumann (her favorites) and other composers mostly from the Romantic era to the present. She used to play Saint-Saens’ “Carnival of Animals” for me a lot when I was a child, and other kid-friendly music like “Peter and the Wolf” and Mussorsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition.”

My best friend in elementary school (late 1980s) had an older brother who played music at loud volumes from his room: The Cure, REM, The Jesus and Mary Chain, The Cocteau Twins, Sisters of Mercy… Without ever saying a word to me (he was way too cool to acknowledge a 4th grader), he was a huge influence on me and exposed me to a lot of great music. As I got older and started buying music on my own, my own tastes progressed in much the same vein. The first album I ever bought was The Cure’s Disintegration.

But I also loved classic rock like Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin, even people like Elton John–this was thanks to my aunt Annie, who lived with us for a while. My second album I ever bought was Fleetwood Mac’s Tango in the Night.

My friends in high school listened to similar stuff as the boy above, and just through them and watching MTV’s “120 Minutes,” reading magazines and zines, reading interviews with my favorite bands and learning what music they liked (this was how I discovered Tom Waits, for example), I started building a foundation. Then came the period of, “Hey, I’ve heard about [famous band or musician] but have never heard them perform…what are they all about?”

Then pepper all that with a dose of random music from the past (I love medieval music [not chant], popular music from the 1920s and '30s, stuff like prison songs and cowboy ballads collected by Alan Lomax, etc.), and I am who I am today.

20

My uncle lived with me and my parents for a while and played the shit out of stride and ragtime piano – when you’re five or six and someone who’s “cool” (i.e., not your parent) can tear it up with some badass flashy music, it kind of seals your fate.

But the real turning point was hearing and learning off the record Janice Scroggins’s gospelish introduction to “Maple Leaf Rag” – I guess I was twelve or so. That sound was so laid-back and fresh (yet I’d heard it all my life, just didn’t know what it was), I couldn’t go anywhere else.

Before then, it was hearing the presto agitato to Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. I needed to take some lessons to get that shit down, that movement is pretty damned exciting to a little kid. Also the Op. 126 Bagatelles, the faster ones. They just sounded bad as shit. Alfred Brendel was my man, but the first discs I could afford were the Ashkenazy sonatas.