Music tastes and what does a genre have that appeals to you

[Zodiark1593]

I enjoy pretty much everything so long as it isn't heavy RAP (with all the swear words) and obnoxiously heavy metal.

[Misanthrope]

6 hours ago, Bhav said:

So basically you're a Yoko fan?

 

 

The screaming is random and annoying but not quite intentionally amusical as you can get, you've gotta get dissonant (music term for as awful sounding as possible) to get the tortured scream thing better, like so:

 

 

[Virus__]

My tastes are mostly in rock & metal, since it can go from stuff that is quite technical to something rather simple & still be enjoyable. I'll go from listening to something like RUSH or Iron Maiden then all of a sudden something like Bad Religion or The Living End will come on & then switch to Motorhead or Slipknot. Also it doesn't have to be serious, it can be stupid & fun like Steel Panther & Alestorm for example, music to me about enjoyment.

 

I also like how some songs tell stories either re-telling an event in history or something completely mythical, and some bands just do the whole progressive song writing thing so well. One of my favourite writers would have to be Steve Harris of Iron Maiden. He has written some amazing songs over the years, Alexander The Great, Paschendale, Rime Of The Ancient Mariner, Hallowed Be Thy Name, Where The Wild Wind Blows, Empire Of The Clouds.

 

Even with out being complicated musical pieces, there's some fantastic albums out there that also do the whole storyline thing like American Idiot by Green Day, I know not everyone likes Green Day or that particular album, but it's a great example of a modern day concept album imo, I got to see the musical version of it when it debuted in Australia in 2017 & it was really good. Only musical I've ever seen, I'll probably keep it that way.

 

But you've also got other amazing concept/story telling albums like The Wall, 2112, Powerslave, Welcome To My Nightmare & Master of Puppets just to name a few of my favourites.

 

But really, you enjoy what you enjoy. I've also notice it depends what you grew up around. Both my parents listened to a lot of Queen, Eagles, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd, The Beatles etc, which sort of influenced what I liked. I've noticed similar with some of my friends, one mate loves country because that's what he grew up listening to, also where he grew up it was more predominate. It's not a guaranteed thing, but it does play a factor with some I have noticed.

[RyomaSJibenG]

i'm not sure about genre, my go to has always been a good beat + good lyrics

even if a song have awesome beats but have a mediocre lyrics its just turns me off

 

its the reason why i hate most of the mainstream music

 

 

however, i have soft spot on Eurobeat. those just makes me go fast (APM wise, driving wise, exercising wise)

[Ithanul]

22 hours ago, MyInnerFred said:

I listen to just about anything excluding rap, there are probably only a handful of rap songs I could actually enjoy.

I'm about the same.

Though, I tend to be called a metal head since I do enjoy me some metal and hard rock.

 

A funny thing, I recall what my German friend one time said when he had my iPod hooked into the vehicle head unit.  He said my iPod had an identity issue/personality issue.     Can't blame that statement since songs would go from classical to goth metal to jazz to Japanese traditional to electronic dance to other different genres.

 

Also, I tend to find going to sleep to heavy metal an easy thing to do.

Plus, I do enjoy music that has a dark theme or dark lyrics like some of ASP's CDs.

[AntonChigurh]

I enjoy a lot of alt-rock, metal, and EDM. I've always loved the sound of bands like Weezer, RHCP, Veil of Maya, and Periphery. Currently i'm hooked on listening to TheFatRat and Carnifex. An odd combo.

[Quadriplegic]

10 hours ago, Volbet said:

-snip-

I guess I can call it real world experience? 
 

On the numbers - while it does seem like rock album sales have topped the charts in US (would be interesting to see numbers for Europe), but when you take into account streams and downloads, rap/hip hop takes the top place. And Youtube views in general suggest that hardcoredubtractorpr0nstep&co has a dominant position in the music world.
I also have to raise the question mark about definition of rock - what exactly is considered as rock when it comes to album sales? Do they include metal genre albums too (which would be a fail, since they are different genres)?


 

[Anghammarad]

My taste in music is all over the board... ok there are things I just don't like... like german "Volksmusik" or most kind of country... else there has to be a certain kind of harmonic in the music so that I like to listen to it... or a kind of beat behind it... 

 

So I go from classic to trance, from metal to break beat, rock to pop... It really depends on the song itself... there are artist where I just like one song, and the rest... no not really.

 

just for you to test, listen to songs from In The Nurserys "Anatomy of a poet" and "Groundloop" albums, then Shock One - Light Cycles, SIA - unstoppable, Korn - Narcecisstic Cannibal and try to find the harmonics I talk about =) 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

On 4/25/2018 at 7:26 PM, Lady Fitzgerald said:

Classical, mostly Baroque, Renaissance, and Classical/Romantic periods, in that order, 60's American folk and Easy listening, Bluegrass, Gospel (especially a cappella), some contemporary a cappella, and Irish, Scottish, and English folk music. Occasionally, some music from other genres.

Forgot to mention New Age, the soothing stuff, not whale calls, etc.

[mr moose]

14 hours ago, Volbet said:

I suppose you have something to back up that belief?

Becuase the numbers aren't really in your favour. 

Rock (and all it's various subgenres) were the leading genre in album sales in both 2016 and 2017.

Even if the popularity of rock music is dwindling I don't see any evidence that should lead us to assume it's due to mental deficiencies in the general population or a lack of appreciation of complex music. 

If we accept IQ as a measurement of intelligence then the trend is quite clear. Each new generation is smarter than the previous one. So, there's not really anything that suggest that today's youth is mentally incapable of handling the metally taxing genre of rock.

This is, of course, accepting the premis of rock music actually being more mentally challenging than more contemporary genres of music, which I don't really see any reason to assume.

 

Also, just assuming that the supposed lack of support of rock music is down to how hard is to mentally process negates various other factors. All of which, I would argue, are more reasonable assumptions. Call it an application of Occam's Razor if you will.

Rock music could simply have disappeared up its own ass, trying desperatly to capture the sound of some ill defined "golden age" and thereby lacking in any kind of innovation or progress. See Greta van Fleet, Foxy Shamzam or the Pretty Reckless for examples.

This could also lead to the sound trend simply changing. The general taste of the public tend to change. There's a reason we aren't listening to the Sugarhill Gang, Frankie Avalon and Cinderella anymore. They were all a product of their time and have luckily been left behind when they were no longer needed. 

 

Music trends also tend to be dicated by the zeitgeist and by what predates the trend. 

It's easy to, for example, see the grunge movement of the 1990's as a counterreaction to the excess and decadence of the popular music of the 1980's, which itself can be seen as an escapist way of handling the unstable world order at the time and as a reaction to the more earthy, personal and political music of the ´60's and ´70's.

Today's music could easily be seen in this way as well, although, we'll need another 10-15 year before being able to properly analyze the context. 

 

It could also be that rock music is simply no longer economical for lables to create and promote. 

Why would a lable pay out royalties to a five-piece rock band when they could just pay out to one rapper and perhaps a couple of producers?

I agree that Intelligence has nothing to do with music choice.  However the flynn effect has been horribly misrepresented.  No one is getting smarter, the world is just changing.

 

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/are-you-smarter-than-your-grandfather-probably-not-150402883/

[Volbet]

10 hours ago, mr moose said:

I agree that Intelligence has nothing to do with music choice.  However the flynn effect has been horribly misrepresented.  No one is getting smarter, the world is just changing.

 

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/are-you-smarter-than-your-grandfather-probably-not-150402883/

Which is why I prefaced my point with "if we accept IQ as a measurement...".

I'm perfectly aware of the Flynn Effect and what it could represent, but I ultimatly couldn't think of a different way of measuring congnative ability in a tangible way. 

 

13 hours ago, Quadriplegic said:

I guess I can call it real world experience? 
 

On the numbers - while it does seem like rock album sales have topped the charts in US (would be interesting to see numbers for Europe), but when you take into account streams and downloads, rap/hip hop takes the top place. And Youtube views in general suggest that hardcoredubtractorpr0nstep&co has a dominant position in the music world.
I also have to raise the question mark about definition of rock - what exactly is considered as rock when it comes to album sales? Do they include metal genre albums too (which would be a fail, since they are different genres)?

Real world experience doesn't really count for much. We all have way too small of a sample size (plus various undisclosed bias').

If we just went by personal experience, then I could just point to Heavy Metal Parking Lot as evidence that rock/metal fans are complete troglodites.

Numbers and facts are, unfortunatly, the only way of going about it, when we're making tangible claims about the world.

 

If we do take both album sales and album equivalents into consideration, then sure, hip-hop/rap was in a dominant position in 2017, but that was for the first time ever and, I would suggest that it was down to a lot of major releases hitting that year. Damn, Culture and More Life were all huge releases in 2017, so that would have upped the numbers quite a bit.

It's also helped by the fact that hip-hop and R&B are lumbed together in the Nielsen stats. With the continued success of the Weeknd and Bruno Mars that also bolstered the numbers quite nicely.

While the numbers from 2017 do speak, it's hard to say exactly what they're saying. Whether or not it's indicative of a trend is too early to say. 

 

Whether or not heavy metal is counted depends on the site presenting the stats. 

Nielsen does count sales of metal, punk, grunge, ect. as a part of rock, but also create specific subcategories for them. 

I would also argue that it's the best way of doing it, considering that the line between rock, metal and punk aren't always clear.