What Makes You Like Music?
This has been a question I’ve had for some time now- what makes you like the music that you like? I set off on a mission a few months ago to figure out how people think, and figure out what makes them like what they like.
When asked the above question, most people couldn’t give me a direct answer to the question. They could give me reasons why they liked certain songs, but none of them could explain what they liked musically. As a matter of fact, the most common answer was “I like the lyrics, and I like the beat.”
This was becoming a common trend. People would be attracted to songs by their lyircal content, and the beat of the song. The musicianship played little to no roll in how much they liked a song. I even went as far as finding 2 completely different types of songs in the same genre to play to people. The first song was from a very musically inclined band. The band was driven by their music, not so much the lyrics. The second band was vocally driven, and had almost no real “music” to it. I’d say almost 80% picked the lyrically driven band, over the musically driven band.
These results really surprised me, and made me lose hope. Today’s music is all about a catchy hook with a good beat. I could write a catchy song with a drum machine, some loops and a catchy hook. No real musicianship required. Nobody seems to care about the music anymore. Hopefully this is just a temporary phase, and things will change again in the future. Otherwise live bands could soon be replaced by a mac running garage band and a “singer” on stage… I certainly hope this is not the case, but only time will tell.
To those of you who feel that you too fall into this category, there is still hope. Find some new music, and listen to the actual music, not the lyrics. You’d be surprised what is out there…
