Like every person this year, I eagerly ventured over to spotify.com/wrapped to view my favorite songs of the decade. The experience is very satisfying: with pretty graphics, interesting factoids about the artists, a few surprises about my own habits, and that sweet sweet nostalgia.
For me, nostalgia always triggers a sort of existential exploration. As I look at my decade exclusively through the lense of what music I listened to, I find myself asking one question above the others: why this music? I could have had more rap. More pop. More grunge rock. Anything. But no, I had mostly “Modern Rock”, “Pop” (gasp), and “Classical.” Why? And why do some of my friends have almost exclusively other genres like rap or pop?
Perhaps a better first question is “why do we like music?” then maybe we can infer taste from there. It is merely ordered and chaotic sound after all.
Personally, I find Jordan Peterson’s explanation to this question most the most satisfying I have come across thus far:
“That’s why you like music. Music shows you a multi-level reality that unfolds and shifts across time within parameters. It’s not just chaos. It has an element of predictability and unpredictability.”
Here’s 2 minutes of him belaboring the point more:
But how does this relate to individual taste preferences?
Unfortunately, not that much I think.
When I was in college, I really wanted to argue that there was an objective standard by which some music was “better” than other music. And, like a human with opinions, a part of me still feels this way. And I still think that “beauty” is objective, but interestingly even “beautiful” does not equal “best” for many people (perhaps wrongly, but then that is a different argument).
My incomplete argument lacked heart and a decent amount knoweldge. Mainly: it’s a really difficult argument to make becuase you have to define “better,” and there are a variety of reasonable ways of doing it. Is it most popular? Best for increased brain activity? (my favorite) Best for dancing? Best for salsa dancing? Beats me, man.
It’s far too big of a topic. You can, for example, define “better” in a way that makes it possible to say “classical music is better than rap,” like a good elitist. But you can always present a good alternative definition of “better.” Does Mozart’s work explore the heartbreak of modern divorce as effictively as, say, Eminiem? No. Is exploring the heartbreak of modern divorce a good use of time for most people? Maybe. Maybe not. Your opinion probably changes with what you are trying to argue. Perhaps Mozart’s work touches the human soul at a deeper level than the exploration of a tragic modern phenomenon. Or perhaps Eminem is warning us about how bad things can get and we should listen.
Or perhaps “high” art like classical music is simply the elites of society showboating their intelligence. Tolstoy wrestled with a sort of disdain for the performance arts like opera and ballet for this reason. And I get his view. As much as I like a good Tarantino film, there’s something distasteful about people praising him in the same breath that they disparage “mainstream” films like (for example) Marvel and with it, it’s audience and creators. Worst of all, these criticisms are often made by individuals incapable themselves of replicating the art they disparage. One work may very well might be more ‘sophisticated’ (an elitist term for “complex” when applied to art as far as I can tell), but there’s a depressing lack of interest in the complexity of seeing the world from a “simple” or “common” perspective that accompanies this view. Worse, it judges the humans involved as incompetent rather than just different or not seeing as much as a more “gifted” artist. And while such a criticism may be true sometimes, it misses the point of art by assuming that sophistication is the point.
That’s the main dilemma when you try to deconstruct individual taste. A lot of time, when people are saying that art x is better than y, all they are really saying is that they like x better, and constructing a worldview and arguement to support it. So how do individual tastes really work then? Why do I like The Raconteurs more than Taylor Swift and why do some of my friends like Kendrick Lamar over, say, Drake?
There are, I think, a couple main variables:
1) Social Posturing
Yes, I think this is #1 and not further down on the list, and hear me out about it. I’m using the term in more than just an elitist/status sense. We wouldn’t even know about the existence of most artists and music pieces without someone telling us aobut it. Then, after knowing about something our friends are doing, we are eager to share in the conversations that occur about the topic. This reinforces participating in the activity a group does, and now you have a set of people all listening to music X.
At scale this creates a snowball effect known as fame, which then informs what artists everyone else knows about and will in turn listen to.
Yes, you have your non-conformists who are aware of this phenomen and refuse to listen to a song because lots of other people do, but they often and ironically end up finding people doing the same thing and listening to the same niche artists as themselves: simply creating the same phenomen they dislike on a smaller scale. You can’t escape the social drive of human nature.
2) Curiosty/ novelty avoidance.
Taste is also a matter of exposure. It seems to be the case that if a person spends a certain amount of time with a genre they will eventually be able to appreciate it, even if they may never deeply love it. I think this phenomenon is a function of our empathy, at competition with our novelty avoidance survival instinct. If we recognize something we feel like we can trust it more than something we don’t recognize, and eventually… end up liking it.
This phenomena also strengthens the argument that social posturing is the #1 variable in determing a person’s music taste, as what is familiar to them is often what the people around them listen to.
On the other side, the strength of a person’s novelty avoidance (along with the desire to explore and conqueror) differs in individuals and manifests itself in things as mundane as music listening habits. You ever had that one friend that knows more artists than you can count? Or perhaps only a couple? For some, finding new music and being aware of the evolution of a particular genre is something like a life calling. It’s a manifestation of their curiosity married to their love of music.
I don’t understand it personally. I’ll find a couple artists I like and stick with it until I am bored, oftentimes choosing not to listen to music for days if I am. I don’t have time to find new artists because of my other interests, and I imagine that this kind of tension is also a huge factor in people’s taste’s “evolving” over time.
Even with millions (billions?) of songs, there’s a finite number of genres and respected artists to listen to. So we try out that song that we never would have before. Or we develop opinions about artists that we’ve only listened to once. And so while some people are constantly looking for new music to listen to, others are not as quickly bored by repetition and get around to “discovering” new music much more slowly.
3) Idea / personality resonance
This is the one that artsy personality types like to think is #1, but that is an arrogant and optomistic over assumption in my opinion. First, humans are too socially motivated to be driven simply by our inner preferences. Second, our survival mechanisms (novelty avoidance/social acceptance/etc) are literally built/evolved to override every other system.
We would like to think that our tastes are OURS, in no small part because we would like to think we are in full control of ourselves. The artist would like to think that they own their creation and not the other way around (think Frankenstein).
Meanwhile the truth of the matter is, to put it another way: good artists copy, great artists steal.
So too do we steal our opinions. Start to notice when you hear the same sentence uttered by different people. Is that really their opinion? Or is it just the most interesting opinion they’ve heard that ressonates with them?
At the same time, we do have a soul and unique quirks and tastes that naturally incline us towards one thing or another. Music lyrics can both socially program you and articulate a deep feeling that the listener resonates with.
Though now I find myself stepping into the realm of art vs. propoganda and hypothesizing that context is
the differentiator… too far, Stephen. Calm down.
I just think that our awareness of what deeply resonates with us is too shallow for it to be the primary factor in determing our musical taste, esspecially given the strength of the other factors.
4) ?????
I have spent as much time as I’d like articulating the variables that were most obvious to me, but I’m sure that if I spent more time thinking about the music taste question, more would present themselves.
The fascinating gist is that there isn’t just one reason. Or a defined finite set of reasons. We are these infinitely complex creatures that are motivated by a dozen things simultaneously… then we comedically wonder why self discipline is so hard.
Anyway, I enjoy the curiosity that is begged by having a blank point. Please comment other variables that come to mind for you.
Personally, I’m an advocate of knowing yourself and knowing how what you are listening to affects you. You can’t hear a collection of words on repeat and not have it affect
your subconscious in a significant way. And I think there is an element of discovering music that you like that other people don’t agree with: and that might
be
“low” or “high” art music. The point is you don’t just want to be a drone that accepts whatever is happening, and the sort of person who questions why we are doing things.
But that’s just me, isn’t it?