Random Thoughts on the Music We Love

How do we learn to like music? Or should I be asking how we find the music we like? I once asked a co-worker what kind of music she liked best and she refused to tell me. "It's just so personal," she said. I was surprised, but knew what she meant. It's hard to share your preferences if you don't know how they'll be received.

My husband says the music he wants to listen to started in 1955 and stopped being created after 1975, with a few exceptions for current bands. Besides the major players like Chuck Berry, the Beatles, Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Ozzy Osbourne (Black Sabbath), Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin, Smashing Pumpkins, he likes artists who were less commercial--including Frank Zappa, Ozrick Tentacles, Madeski, Martin and Wood, Steve Vai and Phish.

I was all over the map growing up, liking a lot of the commercial bands mentioned above but also the Pretenders, Joan Jett, Rickie Lee Jones and Blondie, Regina Spektor, Janis Ian, Avril Lavigne, Beyonce, Natalie Merchant, and then a whole LOT of talented people you likely never heard of. If you forced me to tell you my very favorite, favorite artists - I'd say Paul Simon and Leonard Cohen.

I started liking classical music during my last year of high school and wouldn't play much of anything else for the next couple of years. My son did some of that too during college.

Both my husband and I shared music with our son. He gravitated instantly toward liking the same bands my husband liked - and only occasionally listening to mine. (I think he does like Leonard Cohen). I believe we want our kids to like what we like artistically, but it rarely happens. The best we can hope for is they'll be interested in us enough to ask why we like certain bands or artists.

I decided my husband has more experimental musical tastes than I do - but no matter what I or anyone does, we like what we like, right? We do share a taste for 1930s and 1940s tunes once in a while - which I think a lot of people do, though not a lot say so. I know my son feels the same way because I've heard him listening to Frank Sinatra.

Did he find Sinatra through his father (who is not my husband, btw)? His dad sings a lot of Sinatra material and my son sings some of it too. He surprised me when his grandfather died and he played "One for the Road" in his room. That led to me playing the recording at my dad's funeral. I know he would have loved that song.

I still haven't figured out how we find the music that means the most to us. I'd hate to believe it was just a random thing, because that means it's totally out of our control, like love. What if the love of your life is living just a few miles away and you never meet them? What if the music you love most in the world is being played in a bar in another city, and you'll never hear it?

I have to admit I think it's likely that love, music, and whatever else moves us and knocks us out and makes us happy IS random. I don't know what to do with that. But I think it's true.



Guitar photo:  Nasrul Ekram