Our Music Taste

I chose to start this article off with two points that apply to everyone, the first being that your parents will never like your music—whether it’s too loud or too harsh, it’s just never their style—and the second being that everyone thinks their taste in music is amazing and will always praise their carefully crafted playlists and queued songs.

Have you ever noticed that your parents don’t like your music because they think their taste is superior? This is because your taste in music changes alongside your physical development up until you reach around your late twenties, and the music that you enjoy at that age will most likely stick with you for the rest of your life. I, being a music junkie, like to consider myself quite open to most genres of music, but even so, there are genres that I appreciate more than others.

As the summer approaches, you might find yourself preparing a perfect playlist for exam studying, one for when working out in the gym, and another for long car rides. If you listen to even a little bit of music, you’ll realize that these playlists will have different attributes that play varying roles on affecting your mood. A study playlist would have fewer lyrics and adlibs and a more relaxing overall sound to promote focus and relaxation, while a gym playlist would have more erratic sounds and a general increase in volume, similar to a car ride playlist, which would have more catchy, feel good songs to have your family and friends sing along. It would be counterproductive to listen to a workout playlist when trying to study or fall asleep because it would stimulate your brain and speed up your heartbeat when you should be listening to soothing music to slow your heartbeat down.

If it’s evident music affects your mood, people may ask whether it can affect your personality over a long period of time, or if listening to a certain genre of music can influence you to become more like the artists of that genre. If you’re always listening to music where they speak of loving someone so incredibly deeply that ‘everything means nothing if I ain’t got you’, as Alicia Keys says, will it cause you to fall more deeply in love with a significant other as you relate to the lyrics she sings? If you’re listening to SZA’s ‘The Weekend’, can it promote a lackadaisical attitude to adultery as she sings that another woman is with her boyfriend and she meets with him on the weekends and that it’s fine that they share a single man?

I believe that the music you listen to is determined  by your personality, and not the other way around. You are introduced to music at a young age, and as you grow up you experiment with sounds. You rarely find a single genre that you enjoy listening to, but rather multiple genres to match the various feelings you experience throughout a period of time. Growing up, I’ve certainly noticed my taste in music change - even the music that I listened to at the beginning of the year no longer gives me the same feeling it used to. At the moment, I’m in love with more chill and soothing songs, with nice melodies and  catchy lyrics, and I think I’ve finally found something my parents like as well! A couple of songs that I’d recommend are Anderson .Paak’s “Winner’s Circle”, which has a jazz/funk vibe to it, Tierra Whack’s ‘Only Child’, which feels like a warm afternoon by a pool, and Willow Smith’s ‘Wait a Minute!’, which is perfect to blare out the car speakers with the windows down on the 401.

Music is helpful for almost every situation, so as June approaches, be sure to update your summer playlists with only the best songs, even if it’s too loud or too harsh for your parents!