Why do we like certain music?
 

Clearly if something sounds "good" (based on your tastes) you should like it, but how many songs do we enjoy just because we've heard them so often? One example might be the song that immediately follows your favorite song on a particular album. I wonder if we sometimes mistake the enjoyment of something familiar for the enjoyment of something good.

Any thoughts?

Why do I like male harmonies, Farfisa Organ type keyboards, quirky New Wave, power pop, Lee Hazlewood or alternating girl/guy vocals? I'm not really sure-they just grab me.

Much of it is a result of childhood. Chances are if your parents loved music and played certain records it will influence you, like it or not. It was a good foundation for me.

However, what was even better for me and my relationship to music was college. After college, there were huge new musical worlds open to me because of my friends. Ahh...memories. :)

The music my parents listened to didn't influence me at all. They listened to their 50's, 60's, and 70's music while I listened to metal. To this day I still don't listen to any of the music my parents listened to.

Don't remember my parents playing a lot of music, but I do remember they had a lot of Kingston Trio records.

I remember hearing two 45's that my sister and I liked to dance to as little kids:

Big Bad John-Jimmy Dean

Winchester Cathedral-?

Those were both kinda strange. Maybe that's where I got the strange music part from.

Repeatedly playing a couple of older Beatles albums at my aunt's house probably did more damage than anything. I almost always like shorter, to the point pop/rock/punk songs than anything else. My parents listening habits probably made me run in the opposite direction actually (scary stuff that Olivia Newton John).

My brother and I were discussing this very subject during the "great blackout".

We never really figured it out. My mother is a strictly R&B, Motown listener. One night when I sleeping to the radio I switched from the R&B I had grown up on to a Top 40 station (long story why, but it was late).

The next morning after waking up all night and hearing snippets of songs I was hooked on the mainstream Top 40, just like that my music taste was changed. Later in high school a friend introduced me to what was called "New Music", now I guess called alternative.

My brother told me he was influenced by my music tastes. I would listen to my CD player in the bathroom while gettin ready for school or work. I had no idea he was listening, I assumed he would be a R&B fan like my mother. But alas, I've left my musical fingerprint on her.

Now I listen to just about everything. I've been influenced by friends, videos, you name it.

I think I'm a bit different than most people in that I actively seek out new music to sample and expand my horizons.

When I was 10 years old or so with two younger brothers, our babysitter was into Def Leppard, Night Ranger and other early 80s hard rock, so this was the first music I ever got into. This evolved into metal and throughout high school I was into metal (both heavy and hair). After graduating from high school in 1990 I heard a Nine Inch Nails song on a local indie station and was hooked. That started my "alternative" phase which lasted through the mid 90s.

By then, I was really into the remixes of NIN songs on the Fixed and Further Down the Spiral CDs and I got into electronic music in a big way.

The past few years my tastes have expanded and diversified all over the map. Friends with equally diverse tastes offer recommendations. Allmusic.com and othermusic.com are fonts of info and recommendations and a drain on the wallet. I'm mostly into electronic and indie rock/pop but still like early 90s alternative, 80s, some metal, jazz, classical, industrial and some out and out bizarre stuff like Coil and Current 93.

Why do I listen to it all? I just like it. Different sounds are soothing to me at different times or suit a particular mood I may be in at the time. I'm a music junkie, I've got it on all the time, at work, in the car, at home. 2000+ CDs. I never really sit around and wonder why. It's more like, why not?

It's probably mostly influenced from my parents. As a child I listened to a lot of the artists that influenced the ones I listen to now, because those were the ones my parents listened to. That's the only explanaition I can come up with hehe.


Artists like Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Grateful dead, The Who, etc...

It's more likely that your friends or people you hang with greatly influence your music choices. You seek out poeple that liste to the same stuff you do.

You'd be amazed at what you'll listen to when left to your own for an extended period of time.

most people see music as a fashion, they like whatever MTV plays or the radio plays and it makes me sick personally......

Good music should be found, not force fed...........

if you listen to mainstream music, take a good look at yourself in the mirror and say "Yes I am a lemming, I follow the in crowd, I am a jackass"

then smack yourself in the face



lol

This isn't limited to just MTV fans. It's across the board.

A little silly, but I understand your sentiment a tiny bit. BUT, you never follow....EVER? You fly to the middle of the Brazilian rainforest and seek out tribesmen to record their music for your own personal collection? You never listen to a major label? In the 1970's the radio was constantly playing Zep, Beatles, Stones the first go-round... were people following listening to that music?
Does Radiohead, a weird... but mainstream act cater to jackasses?

I personally love listening to small bands that many people will never hear, but that doesn't mean others are jackasses... hell, even my favorite tiny band probably has had people listening to their music way before me. So, I'm a jackass for listening to a small band because ultimately I followed.

My Parents listened to Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn, and Burl Ives.

I Listen to Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, and Black Sabbath.....

Where is the influence there?

Maybe your parents influenced you not to listen what they listen to. Your parents can influence your musical tastes without necessarily leading you to listen to what they do.

As my sister posted earlier, I was definitely influenced by her music taste as she would play, Duran Duran, Seal, and Depeche Mode in the early 90s. it never really manifested into my love of music until the mid to late 90s with my other sister listening to Radiohead, Korn and Tonic. Now I must say that I enjoy a wide variety of music because of their influence accompanied with that of my peers (hip hop and r &b).

Depending on the genre I look for various styles within that genre. For alternative rock (which is my fav) I like hard guitar rifts but they must have melodic vibes with them either with the singers voice (Puddle of Mudd, Audioslave) or with additional instruments such as keyboards or turntables (Linkin Park, Incubus)

Right now, the two bands I am really into are Chevelle and Coldplay.

-ohbfrank-

Maybe they found that mainstream music is what they really like. Everybody listens to music for different reasons, and just because they don't like to listen to poorly performed, poorly produced "independent" music doesn't mean they should be belittled.

Besides, if everyone you knows listens to country music, then N*Sync is the rebellous rock and roll of your youth!

And your sweep of independent music is any better than his sweep of mainstream music?