Albums I grew up listening to as a kid:
Laugh if you will but we all remember the 90's
Growing up I had an older sister who I idolized. When she was a senior in High-school I was in sixth grade. She liked reading books on our trampoline, so I liked reading books on our trampoline. She put her hair up in buns on the top of her head so I did that too. She liked country music so I liked country music. Get the picture? I owe significant chunks of my personal character at that time to my sister. This made me reevaluate my tastes now, ten years down the road. Can I take credit for my music preference, or am I more influenced by things around me than I know?
So my question to you is how do we develop our likes and dislikes of music? How does the culture we grew up in influence our preferences. How does our family, friends, and geography play a part. Can we truly develop our own taste in music? how?
13 comments:
I have never given real thought to how I developed my musical tastes; however I feel like music is a journey. We find our likes through music that makes us exude emotion like singing in the shower, dancing in the car, or when we find music that make us say, “oh man, that’s my jam!” I think we like music when it is relevant to us and we dislike music when it is irrelevant to us.
Of course our family, friends, geography, and culture played a part in our music preference; our surroundings always influence us in one way or another. If you think back to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs we all have the longing to fit in. I think at some point in our lives we have all listened to a certain artist or band just because our friend, siblings, associates, etc. listen to them or told us to listen to them.
If we want to develop our own tastes in music, we will have to be willing to commit time to it. You have to listen to everything: jazz, classical, country, punk, metal, rap, pop, etc. Learning to listen to all types of music is an important step to appreciating art and figuring out what resonates with you. If to really learn to listen you will be able to tell what you like and what you don’t like.
Society has spent the last 40 years telling us that things are more genetically based than we realize. But I am a believer in nurture more than nature. I think that the society and surroundings we grow up in have a huge influence. I grew up in Fresno where rap, hip hop and rock/punk were big. Just outside town was Clovis where country was common. Due growing up in a community that detested country, I detested country, I never gave it a chance and still haven't. But growing up my brother was way into Tupac, NAS or more underground rap; he was also way into lesser known Punk bands. As I aged I grew out of his likings and began to establish my own. But my styles have been effected by his. I became more a pop-punk listener, and more trendy pop-rap. I have grown to be a generally optimistic person, with less time in negative or depressed modes, so happy upbeat rock, pop, hiphop are generally what I listen to.
"No man is an island." So I personally believe no one can actually claim to have created a genre of music. Everything evolves, even the internet, the computer, all of it is evolution. And gladly we are all blessed by the friends, family and communities we live in to become who we are and like which music and media we enjoy.
I think that family and friends play a big role in the type of music that we listen to. When my oldest brother was in high school his girlfriend listened to country music. He started listening, then our whole family started listening. To this day I still listen to country music. I don't know if I would have developed that taste on my own but at the time it was because of outside influences. I think that people can develop their own taste in music but it is still influenced by how they were raised and what sort of belief system their society has. I listen to all different genres of music and I have gotten my sister to start liking Irish rap and heavy metal. She wouldn't have picked those out on her own but once they were introduced to her she had the choice to accept or reject them. I think that based on the culture we live in we will be introduced to different music and even told "Hey this is good" but we always have the personal choice on our preference.
I think the culture that we grew up in definitely has a huge influence on our taste in music. When I was in middle school, all the kids were wearing black and into punk emo rock and that was what I followed, and I definitely thought that kind of music was my favorite. Then high school came, and the music influence shifted to a bigger variety and ska was the hipster thing at our school so everyone got into that. My family likes classical music but I hate listening to it if I don't have to. But my friends' tastes had a huge influence because we would all share our music. Generally, I think our taste comes from a chain reaction- someone shares a song with someone else and now everyone likes it, etc.
But I do think it's possible nowadays for people to develop their own likes and dislikes more because of things like Pandora and iTunes that give consumers more opportunities to discover new music that they otherwise wouldn't come across.
My music tastes have most definitely been influenced by those around me. I think that most people are influenced by their family and friends. I say this because people are more likely to listen to what is being played around them, and then learn to like what they are constantly listening to. I learned to like country music because it is the only thing my Dad would play on the radio. So from a very young age, country music was some of my favorites. But others who never ventured into this genre dislike it.
Developing your own taste is possible, but I think there is still some influence. In order to have your own taste you have to figure out what you don't like first. This means listening to what others listen to and deciding for yourself what is your favorite.
I can definitely relate to you with the older sibling thing. My sister and brother were THE coolest people in the world (so I thought when I was in junior high).I definitely gravitated toward anything that they liked, including music. I remember riding in the car with them and then downloading the music we listened to as soon as I got home. With that said, I think what had a bigger impact on what I listened to, at least when I was younger, was my friends. And I think it makes sense that people are going to listen to what people around them are listening to, because that is what they are exposed to. I know I listen to Michael Jackson and classic rock because that is what my parents would listen to, and now when I hear those songs it brings me happiness and good memories.
As far as geography goes, I think it has a smaller effect, but still can influence music taste. For example, when I moved to Ohio I was exposed to "rednecks" and country music for the first time. My experiences with the hick culture are not the best, and now honestly, there is no music I hate more than country music. Also, I have family/friends from Hawaii and my family goes there often. I LOVE island reggae, but would never have been exposed to so much of it if I stayed on the mainland my entire life.
I think it is possible to develop our own taste in music, but in my opinion associations we have with certain genres/songs is such a big factor. It is also important to put in an effort to explore different types of music to really determine what you personally like.
I agree with the post. I feel the same way about my tastes and dislikes, I was completely influenced by my older siblings. I would like to ask the question to the oldest sibling or and only child. However, I believe that after time you grow on your own and you just start to stop caring what people think and listen to what you like.
I think it's impossible to develop a taste in music without any outside influence. Even those that say they like to go against the grain need to know what the grain is in order to go against it.
The easiest way to determine if music preference is influenced by outside influence is to look at all the different social classes. You are not going to find much country in the big cities like Chicago and New York. At the same time, you will probably not see much hip hop on the plains of Wyoming. Those lifestyles influence music preference.
Dan Johns...
I think that we mainly develop our taste or sense of good music based on the likes of people who we admire or look up to. I was largely influenced as a child, by the music that my parents listened for example. Then, as we grow and spend more time on our own, away from our parents influence, we become more easily persuaded by what is popular to our peers in general (pop culture). This was the case with me at least. I think eventually, we do develop our own taste as we kind of morph the influences in our life, and weed out the ones that don't really appeal to us. In that sense, our music taste becomes very much our own, being that we will not like everything that our surrounding influences do.
I have never really though about it, but I agree that our taste of music comes from our surroundings and who we associate with. Growing up my likes were hip hop and rap and never really enjoyed country because everyone else didn't either.
Now that I'am a little bit older I still enjoy some hip hop when I go out dancing. I have over the years come to love country. I believe culture we grow up in plays a huge part in our influences and preferences of music. Whatever is big in that part of the culture is what people are going to gravitate to.
I believe that we can truly develop our own taste in music when we come to terms about who we are. I started to love country because I feel that I'm able to relate to the message its conveying. Again i believe that when people come to terms about who they are and who they want to become that they will gravitate to the music that speaks to them.
I think this is a great question, and at first thought, I was petrified that I didn't actually like the music I like, but someone else made me! But I see this similar to a testimony. Maybe for a little while, you enjoy what your mom, dad, or friends tell you is good...you kind of just take their word for it. but eventually you make your own decision. i feel like music is an acquired taste. i didn't always like country.
in fact, it bothered me. but my parents listened to it all the time. i just dealt with it. never would i EVER choose to listen to it though. until i was listening to some country and it just expressed very well exactly what i was feeling. so i thought, "dang, maybe other country songs will do this too?" so i found other songs that sounded similar, that i didn't mind as much. but it was when i was dating a girl that loved country that i decided i actually liked it. because i liked that it made her happy (this is really cheesy...) and i liked making her happy. so i associated the country music with good feelings.
that's how i came to like country music. i think it's the same for all music. once you can connect to it, you have a reason to like it, it becomes sentimental, or you just hear it so much that it grows on you, eventually you will like it.
I know that I developed my initial music tastes by listening to what both my dad, my older brother and my friends had to offer. I remember the first albums I owned were the Weezer Blue Album, Jurassic Five's Quality Control and The Beastie Boys Hello Nasty. As I've grown older, however, I've realized that the music I listen defines who I am in a lot of different ways, so I often will gain access to new artists that challenge my musical tastes, which in turn changes the way I think about the world. For the first time in my life, I have been listening to contemporary country music just to see what the fuss is all about. It's still by no means my favorite, but it is good to know why people like it and what place it has in the larger context of the music world.
I believe we can. Some people say they like a song because they like the lyrics others because they like the rhythm, but at the end it depends on how you feel I guess. I listen to music depending on my mood, but also I believe is cultural it depends where you were raised. I am from Dominican Republic so I love Latin music people always say because is in your blood. So I grew up dancing Latin music and American music so I like both.
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