Embarrassed About the Music You Listen To?
Do you listen to albums that you have to hide from your friends? When people are going through your CD collection do they laugh? Do you have no clue how to find good music?
What is good music anyway?
The obvious answer is “music you like to listen to.” But if that was true you wouldn’t care whether somebody thought your music was bad and you wouldn’t be reading this article.
We all have been guilty of liking music that other people think is bad. We all have different taste in music. However, we are desperate to have other people approve of the music we listen to. It must be some sort of caveman thing.
Be honest. You listen to certain music partly because you want to be considered cool. Most of us are just sheep following the cool music tastemakers. Even the tastemakers have their own gurus. So if a certain respected person in your life says a particular album or artist is good, you generally believe them, even if you have to listen to that album 20 times before you also like it.
Radio is partly to blame for us being music sheep. It used to be that everyone listened to the radio and there were relatively few songs played. DJs told us what to listen to and what to buy. MTV came along and took over the role of chief tastemaker. But now we are all adrift. There is so much music that is available and played on genre-specific radio, tv commercials, movie soundtracks and of course the internet, that we don’t know where to begin to narrow all those choices down to something we like. There is music for every taste. Who is to know what is really good?
I have come up with a few recommendations for making your music collection seem more acceptable to those that matter.
Follow These Steps to Better Music:
1. Listen to albums no more than twice unless somebody else who is cool says they like it first. This will help avoid falling in love with a sucky album just because you played it a bunch of times.
2. Pick a well-known music blog and worship everything they recommend. Use musicrex.com to find respected blogs, music critics and music podcasts.
3. Match your music collection to the friends you are hanging out with. So if your friends like country music, only bring country music with you when you see them. Hide those jazz CDs when they come over for a visit. Perception is everything.
4. Read Pitchfork to find what all the jaded music lovers think is cool. You can say you don’t like an album if you mention “pitchfork” in the same sentence and still be considered cool. For example: “I saw pitchfork gave that album an “8″ but I just can’t get into it.”
5. Make sure you have the top five albums on Metacritic in your collection. This will ensure that you have a wide variety of music and your friends will see how enlightened you are.
6. Go through your last.fm playlist and delete the artists your friends laugh at.
7. Go to live concerts. There is nothing like seeing someone play live to understand whether they are really good and truly appreciate their talent.
If you follow these steps soon your friends will begin to respect your taste in music. Then when you recommend that album they used to think was sucky, they will actually give it a listen. They might even like it!
captainzero replied:
You’re a sheep. Why does it matter what other people think about your music tastes? If you like it, you like it. To let peoples perceptions of you control your actions is juvenile and insecure. If you dig hanging out with Coltrane on a Thursday night more power to you. To live your life in a constant search for approval will never satisfy and you will always be looking down the road.
February 2, 2007 at 5:14 pm. Permalink.
nvr_b_mbrssd replied:
The same critics he’s worshiping thrive on having music their friends don’t. I’m the “cool music guy” in my group, and have plenty of guilty pleasures. I have them because I like them, and don’t care what my friends think about my music. The truth about that is that everyone has guilty pleasures in their collection, but the “cool kids” don’t care what others think of their collection.
February 8, 2007 at 4:21 pm. Permalink.
musicrex replied:
I am sorry that at least 2 of my readers completely missed the tongue-in-cheek aspect of this post.
February 8, 2007 at 11:37 pm. Permalink.
the greasy chicken replied:
1.One’s taste in music should NEVER be a fashion statement. I realize that when you’re young and impressionable, this is kinda unavoidable, but once you’re past your mid-twenties, listen to WHAT YOU ENJOY. Many musicians complain about how the internet has taken away much of the “complete package” of music, how downloading an album (free) often leaves out the band’s album covers, liner notes, image, etc. And while some bands have had an interesting look or social statement that accompanied their recorded output (New York Dolls, Turbonegro, Stones, etc) I think this development is for the best! Now I’ll just download an album, and my EARS are the only judge of its value.
2.On that token: if every asshole with a guitar on the face of the planet were to just drop dead today, I wouldn’t shed a tear. There’s SO MUCH STUFF OUT THERE I’ve never heard, I’ll be well into my nineties (if I live that long, Allah willing) before I even scratch the surface of all of the Folkways recordings, Brazillian pop, Japanese noise bands, and everything else out there fun/interesting to listen to. Don’t sour yourself on music by limiting yourself to one genre or another. Get soulseek, there’s a motherlode of rare, hard-to-find sounds there.
April 3, 2007 at 5:07 pm. Permalink.
Mouse. replied:
first of all. its hard to catch sarcasm through text.
but i think one of the best ways to find out whats good is to turn off the radio. and listen to cds. walk into a place that sells used cds for cheap. pick out five random bands you’ve never heard of from the genre you typically listen to. and then two cds from a different genre. listen to them with an open ear. download them to your computer. sell them back. and then buy more of the bands you like, and more of some you havent heard of.
and of course, going to local shows is important. you get to hear local bands. and support your local music scene. and live shows are the best.
but you should never be ashamed of what you like. no matter what it is. in my car, one minute i’ll be blasting the jonas brothers. and the next i’ll be listening to minor threat. and i sing along to every bit of it.
October 6, 2009 at 4:06 am. Permalink.