Music and Taste

[Saturday Boy]

This and the other thread seem to be getting rather tenuous now. Surely all these preconceptions that people have about expecting music to be good or bad is daft purely because it's all subjective?

Outside of the music press (and even in that case it's rare) I've never seen someone proclaim, "You must hate/love this or you are a cretin!" with anything approaching sincerity so it seems daft to debate over what it's (un)cool to like or dislike stuff.

In any case surely there must be some grand arbitor of taste who decides these matters of cool? If so I'd like to meet them. And stamp on their neck.

And I agreed with him.


But, I've been mulling it over, and I've been thinking "maybe that's not the case".

If someone on a thread said they hated the taste of carrots (and they did), it'd clearly be absurd to have any sort of argument or ill thoughts towards that person because of it. It's all about how their brain and tongue reacts to carrots (or maybe some twisted childhood experience involving them), and not the stuff arguments are made of.

More to the point, actually having a debate about it would be ridiculous. "But they taste nice and carroty!", "Nah, they're all orange and horrible!".


But, Music or Films or indeed Comedy you can debate about in a different way, so it's immidiately a different type of affair.

Perhaps because in some respects you approach art more intellectually than you do food (though I suppose a food-loving type will tell me otherwise here), someone insulting your taste in music (or indeed having insulting taste in music), seems to offend sensibilities in a way that hating carrots just doesn't do.


Now, I wouldn't let someone liking Jet, or Bo Selecta get in the way of a friendship, I'm not mad, but is it really true that I don't in some way judge people in some way based on the art they do or don't like? I think I don't, but maybe there is some bit of me deep inside that says "ugh, you like Thee Unstrung, you utter cretin", and means it?