Musical Tastes

Now, I love listening to music. It is one of the things that keeps me (vaguely) sane. But when I was chatting to someone yesterday about music it occurred to be just how odd musical tastes and preferences are. The person who I was having the chat with is three years younger than me but she likes the same music as my dad. Which struck me as really strange - why would someone of a similar age to me want to listen to jazz music from the 1930's?

And then it struck me that everyone's musical taste is fundamentally idiosyncratic and irrational. For example I never listened to classical music until I was 21, and then I only ever listened to it in the bath (Classic FM on a little Simpsons transistor radio, natch). Outside of that environment, I never listen to classical music and since I know longer have a radio in the bathroom (The Simpsons radio is listed as Missing In Action, a victim of the numerous house moves I have made over the past two and a half years) I don't listen to it at all. Therefore my musical taste is dependant on environment as well as mood and hundreds of other factors.

Also, I can love one band and not like a very similar band. Take The Smiths and Gene. Gene are frequently compared to the Smiths, especially with their first two albums. Martin Rossiter is capable of writing some excellent lyrics, and some up with some striking imagery - take Where are they now? - a wonderfully poetic song about loss and depression which ends with "I'm lost in the fog". Now compare that to How Soon Is Now?, one of Morrissey's many lamentations about being unpopular that includes the lyric "And you go home, and you cry and you want to die" - about a subtle as a sledgehammer. But I love the Smiths - they remain one of my favourite bands. Gene, even though I think are a slightly better band musically and lyrically, I can take or leave. For me this just reinforces the feeling that musical taste is irrational. Logically I should like Gene more given what I have written above, but I don't. And it also reinforces my feeling that musical taste is idiosyncratic - I just asked my Jazz loving friend what she thinks of the Smiths. Her expression was one of someone who has just sucked on a lemon...

There is no real point to this post, but I am still wondering - what does condition people's musical preferences?