Your Musical Taste

[New Damage]

Another thing I was thinking about is how one sticks themselves to a genre or acquires their taste in music. More often than not I would imagine that it would come from parents, siblings or friends, but also what programmes or activities you undertake.

As for myself, my parents don't really do music to hand down their taste (my mum likes Motown and some RNB/soul stuff, whilst my dad just doesn't really have anything. In fact, the CDs he does have are ones he's found in car parks or the street outside our house, so he has Eminem, Jay-Z and Wayne Wonder ).

I kind of really owe my taste in music to wrestling to be honest. Back in 2000/2001 when the WWF were just starting to use proper themes (a la Limp Bizkit, Puddle of Mudd etc.) I was 12, and so that stuff was cool.

The WWE can lay claim for intially getting me into the main Metallica songs too after watching The Sandman's entrance at One Night Stand 2005. Oh and possibly their use of St. Anger for Summerslam 2003 too. From there, my mate gave me an album, I liked it, I bought Death Magnetic and liked it, got tickets to see, and then he gave me the rest of the albums and the rest is history.

From the WWE type bands, I got into the pre-cursor bands that inspired these guys like Guns N' Roses and Nirvana. With the help of Radio X on GTA San Andreas, that got me into grunge, and I just found the fact that all of these grunge bands and their histories and how they intertwined with one another intriguing and made me want to listen to band Y after listening to and reading about band X. Actually, WWE can have some degree of responsibility for getting me into Soundgarden after they used an Audioslave song for the diva search.

Whilst the WWE did apparently use an Exies song for SSeries 2004 (?), I couldn't even remember it, and instead discovered them from the first Guitar Hero. And I guess the Smashing Pumpkins like is down to The Simpsons and the Lollapalooza episode, then TNA's & ROH's use of some songs, then a friend giving me Mellon Collie. The rest have either come through friends, wrestling or just sounding similar to band X.

Edited February 12, 2010 by TheModernWay

[Skummy]

For starters, I really hope two of those paragraphs were meant to be in a different order, as I'd hate to think you're genuinely claiming that Guns & Roses and Nirvana were an influence on Metallica.....

As for myself...I've never, for as long as I can remember, "stuck myself to one genre". I'm not going to use the old cliché, "I grew up in a musical household", because I didn't at all - but I definitely grew up with a family who feel that music is an important aspect in one's life. If the television was on at all during the day, it was tuned to MTV or VH1. Apart from old videotapes from my brothers' generation, that was my childhood TV.

My older sister was into a lot of '80s goth and new wave, while my oldest brother was into '80s new wave and pop while he lived at home...though he wasn't really a factor in my musical development, as he was essentially a recluse, his only influence in that respect being the odd Adam Ant CD he left lying around. My other older brother was the only guy in the village anybody knew that could play guitar, so that kind of marked him out as something quite cool in my eyes growing up, and he was into grunge and early '90s metal...so as he was one of my earliest formative influences, that obviously had a big impact on me - I even had a pet cockatiel that could whisper "Black Hole Sun" - and when I first started buying music it was generally of that ilk.

My father is a huge Bruce Springsteen fan, so that was kind of a constant, as was the occasional bit of Roy Orbison and, in the car, a whole lot of classic rock, mostly in the Deep Purple kind of direction - it's also from him that I picked up my lifelong love of Motorhead. He also used to talk to me about amazing records he used to own, years and years before I ever got to hear them, so artists like Kevin Ayers, John Cale, Roxy Music and Syd Barrett had an almost mythological allure by the time I ever actually heard the music.

My mother is an old hippy chick - it's from her that I first heard Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones and The Who, and I share her love of The Walker Brothers. She's also an enormous fan of The Beautiful South - growing up in and around Hull, they were pretty much inescapable.

Outside of the family....through grunge I quite quickly got into punk, though got bored of pretty much all but The Ramones and the New York Dolls for the most part fairly quickly. Spent most of the latter days of secondary school listening to Tori Amos, Johnny Cash and Nick Cave....apart from Nick Cave, I got into that kind of thing mostly through cover versions and liking what I've heard, my Nick Cave fandom will probably always be a mystery. Quite early on I realised I was far more interested in just finding out what was out there, not just listening to what was given to me. I also got into The Cure because of a crush sometime around this point.

At college I was introduced to The Smiths, The Cramps and The Beach Boys......and then really, tastes have just grown outward from there. I could name specific people that have been major influences on me, and probably work out a rough history of my developing tastes, but for the most part it's just that I'm naturally inquisitive about music, always wanting to find more - and through DJing, writing, playing in bands, working in record shops, and just knowing enough like-minded people I've had enough reason and enough method to do that.

Edited February 12, 2010 by Skummy

[New Damage]

For starters, I really hope two of those paragraphs were meant to be in a different order, as I'd hate to think you're genuinely claiming that Guns & Roses and Nirvana were an influence on Metallica.....

Hahaha, yeah. I moved the Metallica bit upwards to go with the WWE part.

[Jimmy]

I don't know how it happened; but my musical taste are bands like Cobra Starship, Family Force 5 and Panic At The Disco. I really dig the electro pop rock. It's pretty catchy and makes for a damn awesome live show. I saw Cobra and Family Force on wednesday and they were quality. (Y) I just love me some catchy music. I'm actually into a whole wide range of music; I like most things - mostly commercial music.

[AnnIQ Edison]

My child hood was actually, as I remember it, genre free. I basically only listened to music on the radio when I was being driven to school once a week or was watching Video Hits on TV on a Saturday. I will say that I grew up in a Musical Family mainly because my mother is a music teacher and therefore I had heaps of classical music and the such playing all the time and I could always hear her students in her lessons in the front room while I was out back, I still can, but that also introduced to me to more of a jazz appreciation.

I think I really started to branch out from popular music when I began to really join the internet culture. I think EWB really broadened my horizons plus friends who are always up to date with bands I've never heard of and such. Youtube is also a good reason as I would just surf through songs linked through the sidebar and get that album or that song.

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

When my mother was pregnant with me she was working in an indy music store where they could choose what they could play. Being 1980 that meant a lot of Clash, Sex Pistols, Stranglers etc.

Of course I can't claim that my music taste was definitely flavoured by such an experience but research does say that children in the womb ARE affected by different music being played....so I dunno....

My whole life, my mum hasn't been particularly vocal in her musical tastes (indeed much like my wife now which makes buying her (my wife) CDs for presents basically impossible now that she has all the Natalie Imbruglia albums )

My father loves folk music and music of his era - Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull and Fairport Convention for example.

However my early memories are of long car journeys where my dad would play reggae tapes. So I learnt to like reggae - both older stuff and the late 80s, early 90s pop invasion like Chaka Demus and Pliers.

My own musical tastes were kinda muted outside of what my dad played. I didn't buy many tapes except the NOW albums or other compilations that were car friendly as we lived in the countryside so often had to drive places.

I remember late 80s stuff and then the turn into the 90s with the Pete Waterman stuff like Rick Astley, Kylie and so on. It was just inoffensive pop. What first got me was Britpop, pretty much throughout most of the decade. Made aware of Suede at school and then all the Oasis/Blur stuff and Pulp. I listen back to the CDs I've got now and think "Oh yeah, I remember that" so my secondary school life played out pretty much alongside Britpop ('92-'99 including sixth form) including those second wave guys like Ocean Colour Scene, Ash, Cast, Dodgy, Supergrass, Catatonia.....

I remember being really excited by "Born Slippy" by Underworld when it was released after the success of Trainspotting and then Chemical Brothers, Prodigy, Massive Attack came to the fore. In the early 90s there was all the Shamen, "Ebenezer Goode" and all that acid house stuff but into the late 90s the electro was beautiful.

Into university ('99-'02) I still loved my indie and rock (getting into Muse from '99 and Feeder a year or two before) but due to clubbing learned to appreciate trance. That wasn't hard enough for me though so that became hard house (alongside the dance music scene in general) and then into my third year I used to go to techno. The highlight of that period was going to see Dave Clarke at Atomic Jam at the Que Club in Birmingham.

One of my housemates was into more chilled down electro and IDM which caught my attention. I was also into the whole Electroclash stuff from that period - Peaches, Felix Da Housecat, Miss Kittin, Adult., Ladytron (a group which have remained with me since...), The Knife...

I then got a serious reignition of love for The Clash and The Kinks.

I also got into a good chunk of classical music so I guess all the indie rock, electro, glitch and classical has combined into my current love of the post-rock Scandinavian artists, mostly Sigur Ros, Mew, Mum, Amiina and Efterklang as well as Jonquil, Boards of Canada and Mogwai.

So there we are. I've got 20 years of my own musical tastes.

[Liam]

I definitely wouldn't say that my family is overly a musical one, but some of the bands I like have carried over from stuff I listened to when I was younger. My Dad liked Crowded House, for example, whilst my Mum was more of a fan of Garth Brooks or John Denver,

To be honest, I really didn't 'get into' music until I was about 15. I give a lot of credit to Blink 182 'All The Small Things' for being one of the earlier., non pop songs I remember in the charts, and it kinda opened my eyes a little. Then, I listened to 'Nevermind' and that opened up another selection of stuff to check out.

I've always gone through phases. I had my grunge phase, then a heavier metal phase, than a UK 80's kinda phase, before heading on to brit pop. Going forward, I have taken bands from each of these and left the stuff that I've grown out of.

I can't always work out where my appreciation for black, death or doom (along with quite a few of the other extreme metal off-shots) came from. I don't know many people who like stuff that is as heavy as I do, but realistically, with my willingness to check out different bands and genres, I've garnered an interest in it from somewhere. That, or it was a natural progression from some of the more popular nu-metal acts.

Even now, I go through phases, though it generally only veers from having my heavier moments, to times when I fancy listening to David Gray or the Foo Fighters, or stuff even lighter and fluffier than that.

[wolves]

When I was little I definitely didn't have any genre I clung to. My dad works at a radio station so I pretty much listened to what he listened to and what was on the station because I was around it so much. So I basically grew up on stuff from the 60's and 70's as it was an oldies station. I remember the only family vacation we ever took was to Motown and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame so oddly I was a young white kid who liked black music of the 60's. Go figure.

Then one day I got up really early for school for some reason and flipped on MTV as I watched the music videos before heading off to the bus. The video for Slipknot's "Wait and Bleed" came on and just blew my mind. From then on I was a metal fan. I pretty much listened to stuff like Pantera, Slipknot, and Metallica up until around 5th-6th grade when stuff like Limp Bizkit, Disturbed, Sevendust, etc. started to get really popular. I pretty much listened to whatever was trendy at the time, nu-metal whatever it was.

Once I started actually playing music I stuck to modern rock and metal but around the time freshman year of High School came I got really into hardcore and metalcore back before it came super over saturated. That's when I started going to local shows and got really into the scene here as we have a big hardcore scene in Syracuse.

My tastes have pretty much stayed the same since around my Junior year of high school with some additions. Right now my tastes are really all around and haven't changed in some time. I won't bore you with a list of what I listen to these days but I will say that I have such a love for 80's pop music. I really wish I was born young sometimes but then I think about how I might not have appreciated it at the time like I do now.

Edited February 13, 2010 by wolves

[METALMAN]

Most music I've got into I've discovered myself really. >_>

My mum and dad have HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE record collections and although I like a lot of the same things as them it's not really down to them as they've never made me listen to any of their stuff or anything. Although I have turned out liking Jazz and Folk Rock best so I'm similar to my dad in that aspect.

Eh I just generally footered about listening to whatever sounded good in the charts including a weird mix of other things - my aunt made me a Rod Stewart casette tape I listened to a lot. I also listened to the Joseph soundtrack a lot. >_>

I got a CD player when I was like 8 or 9 or something so I started listening to my parents' (comparatively limited) CD collection including such delights as Sting (who I still like), Paul McCartney (who I love the most!). Also included a particularly horrible latter day Rolling Stones compilation. You know it's a bad CD when Beast of Burden is the best song.

I listened to all that shit pop-punk and rap metal type stuff that was big at the start of the last decade cause everyone else did, although I never liked it much. Still don't.

It should be noted that up till now I was never that into music. I enjoyed playing it, but not so much listening.

Now it gets slightly more interesting. I made a new friend at school who introduced me to these COOL NEW BANDS called the Strokes and the Libertines. With these I ploughed the furrow of indie rock music back to stuff like the Smiths and the Cure. Quite a big deal this introduction to the Strokes and the Libertines - as it is without a doubt what actually got me into music.

Eh then a guy in the year above me at school introduced to me to cool stuff like Sufjan Stevens, Elliott Smith, Jeff Buckley, Adam Green and Loudon Wainwright.

then when I was about 16 the future metalwoman introduced me to Belle & Sebastian and Ryan Adams (ultimately my two favourite artists), Bright Eyes, Frighttened Rabbit, Lucksmiths, Arab Strap, Husker Du, Leonard Cohen and stuff like that.

Since then most stuff I've started listening to has been to down to myself really. I mean my flatmate last year got me into Hippity Hop type stuff and another got me into to country but that's about it. Actually, now that I've read what Skummy said - that "naturally inquisitive" thing is the best way to put it for me too. If someone talks about a band on here and they seem interesting I'll usually look them up. that's how I found Scott Walker and quite a few others I can't remember at the moment.

Oh and one other thing worth adding - through playing in brass/jazz bands and orchestras I got into a lot of jazz and classical music which are both things I like very much.

[Dingle]

Hmmm, I don't really remember having any musical interests when I was younger despite singing in plays and other little acting parts. I got the occasional NOW comp album at Christmas or a Kerrang CD but it was the unfortunate nu-metal hoody trend that first got me listening to specific bands (My dad listened to The Rat Pack and Johnny Cash, but I've never been big on the rat pack besides Dean Martin and a few Sinatra songs, and I like Cash now but it took a while. Me ma listened to the beatles and abba; both of which I still really enjoy, but could never listen to their stuff.

So yeah, I had a friend who was really into Limp Bizkit, and I kinda liked them, but Linkin Park grabbed my attention instead. I didn't go far down the 2001 nu metal phase, but for a while they were one of few artists that I listened to. I think it was the exposure to more similarly minded people at high school that sort of diversified me into liking bands like Nirvana, Soundgarden, RATM, Red Hot Chilli Peppers and The Foo Fighters - I only bought 'californication' and 'by the way' because there was a sale at a market and both albums had curious cover art. I sort of drifted around for a while before I started posting on the internet and being affected by a ridiculously high number of alt-rock wrestling style bands due to the WWE being the easiest link for me to finding new music.

I don't really remember when my music changed from alt-rock to indie and beyond, but I'm sure the introduction of System of a Down, Mudvayne, Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead - although I didn't know it was Radiohead at the time - had a lot to do with it. I remember hearing about Coheed and Cambria in 2004 at some point on here, and that was when I started to listen to a lot more music. Ill Nino, The Smiths, Modest Mouse, Audioslave, Blink 182 and Breaking Benjamin (guilty pleasure) all came from this board. Skummy, YI and Benji were probably the biggest influences on my music taste taking a different turn - although not as gay as some stuff Benji likes.

From 2005/6 I listened to almost everything and I was introduced to a wider variety of artists. I finally discovered Radiohead for themselves and not 'Just' or 'Creep' playing on the radio and you fail to catch the song. Muse, Bloc Party, (I also had a Bob Dylan and Jeff Buckley phase at one point, although that didnt last very long.)Kings of Leon, and then more experimental bands like The Mars Volta, and some other bands I cant remember.

This leads me to today where I listen to such a wide variety that I wonder how I could ever have coped with just listening to the one or two bands that I favoured so much in 2001. To sum up what I listen to today, I'll just choose a sample of ten bands to illustrate what I listen to. No-ones reading this anyway, it's like having a blog that nobody has found. So yeah...

Radiohead, The Gaslight Anthem, Imogen Heap, Frank Turner, We Were Promised Jetpacks, Los Campesinos, Mars Volta, Belle & Sebastian aaaaaaand Afroman. Oh yeah. Darkhorse.

[syrupclaws]

My Taste in music is rather long winded. I was trying to list genres, but even that seems tedious to read. I like listening to music. I love playing it. Whether its admiring a musicians talents, Indulging in sappy or thought provoking lyrics, or appreciating song structure by going balistic in a mosh pit; I'm all about it. Finding new tracks prevents my relationship with music from turning into a loveless marraige. recovering old tunes is for nostalgia. I'm also guilty of "wearing" songs. I often listen to music that helps me suit up with the proper game face. Preparing for an epic struggle between good and evil or taking out the trash, either way I got a soundtrack for it.

[Hobo]

My father loves I suppose what you would call classic country music, as well as the bizzare genre of Country and Irish. My brother likes loads of different things and I shared a room with him until I was 13. He had everything from Garth Brooks, Randy Travis to Clapton, Mike Oldfield, The Lightning Seeds, Jon and Vangellis, The Beatles, Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds, Phil Collins,Peter Gabriel Sting and their related bands, Pink Floyd, Springsteen, Billy Joel and a lot more. My sisters I never really got into the type of music they listened to.

My taste in music was originally based a lot on what my brother listened to. Then while he was in Australia, I started listening to Bob Dylan, Townes Van Zandt, Steve Earle (from who I got into Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark), a lot of Johnny Cash and out of the American Recordings I got into Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, Tom Waits and Loudon Wainwright III. I also started listening to Leonard Cohen, from listening to Cohen I heard John Cale's version of Hallelujah and discovered his stuff. I think I checked out some stuff out of curiousness like Randy Newman or Warren Zevon and I ended up really liking it. In the last year I've grown a love for The Mountain Goats and The Magnetic Fields.

I generally find myself drawn to anything that has something I find distinct usually with either interesting use of words for lyrics or a sense of humor which probably explains my love for Loudon Wainwright III.

[Damian WayLNKe]

I can pretty much point to the radio station WHFS for developing my taste in music. With the help of the Internet, in the absence of WHFS, I have been able to continue to find more bands to listen to.

[SRN]

In my childhood, it was simply restricted to car music and whatever came on the radio. I liked inoffensive pop songs and whatever I found catchy. I had a few albums of my own, which hilariously enough was stuff like Westlife and O-Town. Honestly, my taste in music was pretty non-existant at that point, I barely even found any music interesting not even the stuff my dad listened to. It is fun to look back on considering what I am listening to now.

After we moved away and got out on the country, it changed alot though. I first got into stuff like Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit, Nightwish, a bit of HammerFall, all dismal stuff. I guess I really didn't get in to music, like involved myself in it before a friend of mine accidentally introduced me to Dimmu Borgir when he thought I was talking about Dominion 3. Arch Enemy, Darkane, Rammstein, Immortal, metal like that quickly followed. But the person that has had the biggest impact on my taste in music is actually Bushmeister from this very forum, which tells a bit of how late my tastes actually developed. But yeah, through him I've been all around the scope of metal and now I'm far beyond just a simple obnoxious metalhead. Throw Muse, Nephew, some wicked breakcore stuff in, 70's prog rock, a little bit of everything. That's my music taste for you.

[LittleDaniel]

I can pretty much point to the radio station WHFS for developing my taste in music. With the help of the Internet, in the absence of WHFS, I have been able to continue to find more bands to listen to.

Man, I nearly cried when I came home one day from school and my beloved HFS was replaced by Latin music

[Hornswoggle4PM]

As a young kid, I was always encouraged to play music and loved it. Mum can play quite a lot of different instruments and I always liked to listen when she did. Not much happened for a while until at about age 9, I switched from listening to the oldies rock station my parents did to one of those pop stations. I guess even then I had the same musical tastes as I remember being excited when The Living End or Grinspoon got some airplay which was all too rare. The rock bands getting played gradually got less and less, and eventually it was just Puddle of Mudd, Powderfinger, The White Stripes, The Vines or Linkin Park that I heard.

One bizzare incident I recall was that I once was watching the video for Tenacious D's "Tribute" and getting freaked out by the demon.

The first real change came when a song I was getting sick of got knocked off the top spot by Avril Lavigne's "Complicated". This slowly introduced me into punk although I didn't realise this for a while. Within about a year of that I changed stations again to a sports network.

After watching School of Rock I finally realised that rock was what I really liked. Yet again however I put it on hold as my taste for comedy grew. I found the international songs from FIFA 05 funny to listen to, and have recently learnt that by playing "Augen Auf!" to one of my friends who cracked up laughing at it has led to him enjoying German industrial.

A natural progression came when after hearing my Dad talk about him, I began to listen to "Weird Al" Yankovic. Eventually by listen to some of his polka medleys and enjoying the rock songs being adapted (and hearing more about bands such as Nirvana) I finally decided on rock music as my favourite. It has since evolved to first hard rock, then punk and finally a more indy feel thanks to the short-lived jtv saturday, rage and free downloads being offered on the web. Grunge naturally followed and recently I have got into the more hardcore style of The Fall of Troy's "F.C.P.R.E.M.I.X.", The Scare, And Burn, and other similar bands.

But still, Weird Al, The Vines, The White Stripes, The Living End and Spiderbait remain my favourite bands.

[VerbalPuke]

My household didn't really mold my taste in music, my dad helped but my mom used to listen to a lot of the one hit wonder 80s pop nonsense. My brother was mostly a rap and hip hop fan, though I do owe him for having some interest in older rock bands.

The early days were Black Sabbath, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, and The Beatles. I still enjoy all of them quite bit other than the Beatles. Around the same time I was getting into grunge and alternative, stuff like Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, and that sort of thing.

I honestly probably owe Detroit Rock City (the movie, not me trying to be clever with my hometown) the biggest debt of grattitude. It was the first time I was really exposed to the Ramones, and I loved what I heard. I sought out more Ramones, and when my dads childhood friend heard me listening to them, he suggested the Dictators. I really enjoyed the Dictators, and then my dad told me to check out the Dead Boys and again I loved them as well. From there I was on a mission to find as much old punk as I possibly could (and the mission continues). I quickly fell in love with all of the old stuff and began finding that punk wasn't just three chord nihilism, but an interesting and artistic genre that had bands using elements of jazz, funk, metal, rockabilly, avant garde, and glam to forge their sound.

It was probably due to punk that I started checking out 50s rock, 60s garage and psychedelic, and some of the heavier acts of the late 1960s. Punk even helped me develop a fondness for metal due in part to bands like English Dogs, Black Uniforms, and Anti-Cimex who had punks and metalheads alike as fans. I can probably trace my appreciation for most any form of music back to punk. It was down to me not only wanting to know these punk bands music, but also what their influences were.

I like electronic music to a certain degree mostly because of punk bands like the Screamers, Suicide, and Nervous Gender.

Mostly, I'm just a fan of rock and roll. I like it heavy, fast, slow, melodic, trashy, fun, depressing, anything you can imagine.