I Like Everything

When musical taste first began to matter, when people started to judge others based on what they liked, I was asked, naturally and inevitably, what my favorite music was. The first time I was asked, I didn’t have much in the way of musical taste: I didn’t really care about music at the time, so I’d classify myself as having no taste rather than bad taste. So I answered that I liked “Whatever sounds good.”

That kind of vague and obvious response (I mean, unless it’s necessary to dispel notions that I like stuff than sounds awful, like high-pitched wails or something) is one example of an attitude people often profess about music: “Oh, I like a little bit of everything, except [insert awful genre here].”

I think it’s kind of a weird phenomenon, because that response is virtually confined to music. People who are asked about what books or movies they favor typically either by naming specific books or films, or naming discrete genres. But never all of music save for one genre (usually one of country, heavy metal or rap, if not more), which is ridiculous, of course, because I don’t exactly see people beating down the doors to hear Shostakovich or whomever, even though, to believe the “I like everything” claim, there’d have to be much more support for jazz or classical, for example, to say nothing of even more obscure genres. And that’s the music that’s on the fringes of our perception; what about the stuff than we can’t even perceive: foreign country’s music, for instance. It’s a response that’s plainly ridiculous on its face.

So why did I respond that way, and why do I hear so many people respond that way? Why do I still respond that way? If I were being honest, I’d say that I basically like exactly two genres: classic rock and hip-hop. I like a lot of artists who aren’t members of those genres, but those two genres account for the majority of my iTunes library and music plays right now and probably will for the conceivable future. But I’m not honest, or rather, since I usually respond to those questions on autopilot (interesting discussions about art usually begins with why rather than what), not conscious. Something subconscious takes over in those instances and demands that I answer in a certain way for reasons of its own.

I suspect that those reasons have to do with being judged. It’s a trite point that middle school is the judging ground, but it’s true enough I suppose. Probably the more important part is that, with acne disfiguring you and changing height stretching you into different forms and all that stuff, you’re morphing from one identity to another and you’re starting to figure yourself out. There’s a confusion of identity there, and for many (most, maybe—I don’t know anyone who dislikes music, whereas I know plenty of people who never read or rarely watch movies), music helps define your identity.

Music marks you with one identity or another for a very simple reason: it lends itself to creating a community. Movies, of course, can be watched communally but they dominate rather than underscore. The sense that movies steal you from your world and insert you into another is often one of its strengths, but you certainly can’t have a discussion about it while it’s happening, unless you’re the asshole in the row in front of me in the movie theater who takes cell phone calls while the movie’s playing. Also, because music is less interpretive than critical, it’s easy to banter in easy emotionality rather than criticism. That leads to good feelings when people just shoot the shit about how mind-blowing that guitar solo was or whatever. Also important, in these digital days, is the ease of exchanging or downloading music, meaning that cooperative action becomes paramount. What you get are little gated communities enclosing people exchanging agreeable pleasantries.

Notice, though, the three genres that I mentioned above: country, hip-hop and heavy metal. Everybody I know hates at least one. I personally hate two of the three (country and heavy metal). I can’t really say I have a real firm reason for hating either of these; I probably hate them more on principle than anything else. I haven’t listened to a ton of country (everyone tells me, though, that I’d like Johnny Cash, and remember: there is always one privileged exception. For rap it’s often but not always Kanye West. Heavy metal is…fuck I don’t know. I’m not cool enough to, but I’m sure someone does), so I can’t really say I’ve thought it through. It’s probably a combination of the fact that the few times I’ve heard either of these genres, I’ve been bored and unimpressed, and the people who tend to listen to these genres are easily stereotyped (country is hicks, heavy metal weirdos, emo is annoying over-emotional assholes, ec.) and so really blocks any critical sensible scrutiny.
So when people answer, “I like everything except [yucky genre here],” what they are often saying is, “please don’t count me out of your social group.” Or, rarely, they really do like everything. But these are rare and outnumbered by lazy individuals such as myself who only want to coast through a conversation (because if I answered “hip-hop”, and I ran into someone for whom hip-hop is a “[yucky genre here],” well, we’d have just eliminated a topic of conversation and as we know, that is worse than slaughtering puppies or endangered species.) What we’re hoping to avoid is being judged, especially by the music snob, a species that is particularly virulent and common in comparison to the movie snob and practically-extinct book snob. Because having people think you’re uncool is pretty debilitating.

Now, this isn’t all bad. It’s really cool to bond over music, as it is for anything (well, except cults). And it’s a magical feeling to discover some bootleg, some obscure song, and share it with your friends (that makes you an authority). Insofar as we have stuff we like and stuff we don’t like as much, we’ll always be comparing what we like to other’s preferences as a way to assess their personalities. That’s way more complicated than it can seem, because often people just don’t put that much thought into why they like what they do.