I don’t like music very much either, at least not anymore. I have things I like and things I don’t, but the days when I was so passionate about so many musicians seem like a million years ago.
I like bird song, lately I have really enjoyed hearing the birds chirping away in my garden because it reminds me of a weekend in the countryside where my best friend and I whiled away the hours, drinking red wine and feeding Cockatoos & Rosellas.
Yllaria - Thank you for your advice
The meaning of “listening to music” has changed so radically since the introduction of the Walkman that I’m not sure there’s not a generational component to this. When I was a lad, if you wanted to listen to music, you plopped yourself in front of the stereo. You had to put a record on the turntable, and flip it over after 20 minutes or so, or put a cassette tape in the player, and flip that after, what, 30 minutes or so. But now music can be delivered to you so frictionlessly, anytime, anywhere, that’s it’s like an endlessly running spigot. I find there’s something almost oppressive about that, like it’s so easy to deliver music into your ears that there’s no reason you shouldn’t be doing it more or less perpetually. And there are plenty of people out there who *do *perpectually have their iPod piping something into their cranium. But it’s all background music at that point; you’re not necessarily *listening *to it per se.
So maybe I don’t listen to music anymore because I don’t have the time to plop myself in front of the stereo. And I’m not the type to just have music chronically fed into me, as persistent as a saline drip. I really do like silence. So for me, the only time these days when I actually listen to music is when I’m (house) painting – an activity so boring that it demands all the distraction the world can provide. It’s not that I don’t like music, or don’t have particular tastes in music – it’s that I’m usually occupied, or preoccupied, and can’t give the attention to it, or would find it an unwelcome distraction.
So there.
The likes of Miles Davis did a marvelous job in killing off Jazz as a popular form of music.Him and the rest of his ilk, with their pointless, meandering noodling.They took a previously exciting, rich form of music and dulled it down to a limp, pathetic state that nobody but white hipsters gave a shit about.
Him, Monk, Coltrane, Mingus and the rest of them are pure evil.
To me, not liking music is like not liking sex or not liking food. I know that such people exist, but I can’t get into their heads to understand them. I have to repeat what others have said: that you just haven’t discovered a type of music that you can relate to . . . exactly what I’d say about sex or food.
Me too!
Me too!
Bosh.
I have a slightly related “problem”, if you want to call it that, in that I am a grown man who seems to have the musical taste of a 12 year old girl. When I was younger, I enjoyed Britney Spears, Mandy Moore and the such, while today I’m all about Taylor Swift and One Direction. I kind of get the idea that these things are not the things I “should” be into, according to polite society, but I don’t understand any of the shit that adults are supposed to enjoy. I don’t get “indie” music, I don’t get The Beetles or Nirvana, or really even get Lady Gaga. I don’t get most rap music, but that could just be chalked up to not having the cultural context to really appreciate or understand it.
I have to avoid talking about music in polite conversation, because if I spoke truthfully about my musical tastes,people invariably think that I am at best a philistine and at worst a pederast.
I completely agree with the first nine words of your post … after that it doesn’t make much sense.
That part I agree with.
I generally don’t like music either. To me it is just noise - an intrusion to my mind. I can’t imagine paying to listen to someone else make noise. I very much resent that public places like stores and restaurants constantly blaring out this stuff. There are certain places like most bowling alleys where it is intolerably (to me) loud and offensive. Now I know most like music but I do not think them evil or stupid or retarded. I would hope those who do like it would be able to understand that those who don’t are not necessarily evil stupid or retarded either. I don’t know if those who like it are lacking something in their beings that causes them to need this external stimulation or if those who don’t like it are missing something that enables them to appreciate it. Maybe neither- just different strokes for different folks. But for those of us who relish our silence could you music lovers hold it down a little bit? 
There just must be differences in the brain that affect our feelings about music.
I go to sleep listening to music, nature sounds, and wind chimes. Latin rhythms sooth me and take me back to my childhood when Latin rhythms were in many popular songs. (The 1940s.)
I can remember my favorite songs from when I was two: “Sentimental Journey” and when I was four: “Bird Song at Eventide” (which I called “Birds in the Forest.” Some music is so well done that it just makes me overjoyed: the ending especially to “An American in Paris” – the Eric Kunzel, Cincinnati Pops version. It’s a natural high.
Favorite songs forever: “Moonglow and Theme from Picnic,” “Mr. Lucky,” " Great Gig in the Sky" and “The Girl from Ipanema.”
Although I think you are missing out on something that is the equivalent of food, wine, and breathing, it just may not be there for you and you owe apologies to no one. But if you are listening to only a couple of kinds of “music,” you may be in for a surprise when you familiarize yourself with other kinds of music.
Have you ever seen a Broadway show like South Pacific or West Sice Story? Some very moderate jazz like the works of Henry Mancini are so worthwhile. Have you istened to wind chimes? Do you whistle?
The first month that I had my i-phone, I downloaded around 500 songs. I’ve added another 100 in the second month. Last night it was George Shearing’s “Mack the Knife” (a very unusual version) and his “Laura.”
(I was first attracted to my husband (whom I met on the computer) when I found out that he knew the lyrics to the intro to “Laura.”) We’ve been married 27 years.
Music was and is a big part of what bonds us.
I often enjoy silence, but even then there’s a song going on in my head … often the same one for days (right now it’s Dixie Chicken by Little Feat … the other day I woke up with Donna Summer’s Hot Stuff playing – whatever did I do to deserve THAT?)
I enjoy listening, playing, or listening to others play – and my line for what’s good enough to enjoy is rather different in those categories. I also enjoy the Blues, which is even better than music. Or wait, no, it’s just easier.
It doesn’t surprise me that for some people, the visceral connection to music is negative rather than positive (or rather than “it depends”). Forrester’s character Hornblower says he’s tone-deaf, and music sounds like awful noise to him. As well, a poster above mentions processing issues causing music to sound unpleasant.
Even if one’s hearing is fine, I’m not surprised that some report music as being unpleasant. That could be learned, or it could be innate, where whatever hard-wiring most of us have between music and emotion is wired differently, like people with synesthesia or missing regions of mirror neurons.
I have to strain to make sense out of speech; I always have to some extent and it’s worse now that I’m 55 with typical male hearing loss. Yet I can still generally tell what each instrument is playing in a combo. As a result, the “background” music and sound effects in movies and TV shows drowns out the dialog. Places where there’s a lot of noise from talking tends to give me bad vibes. It might be a similar thing for the OP, whose brain may be trying to decipher something it can’t make sense of.
Thanks for your observations. I’m not listening to anything much. Never seen a broadway show on broadway but have seen filmed versions on dvr and if one has a good story I usually fast forward most of the music. and watch the dialogue parts. No whistling and I find wind chimes annoying. Guess it’s like anchovies - you either like them or you don’t. Good listening -glad you get so much pleasure from it.