Music has a remarkable ability to touch our emotions, evoke memories, and shape our identities. It is often said that music taste is subjective, and indeed, it becomes deeply personal to each individual. This article explores the reasons behind the personal nature of music taste and why it holds such significance in our lives.
Read on to learn more.
Emotional Connection
One of the main reasons that music taste becomes personal is the emotional connection it creates. Different genres, artists, and songs have the power to evoke a wide range of emotions.
Whether it’s the joy and excitement of an upbeat pop song or the introspection and melancholy of a soulful ballad, or songs about greed that make us rethink our values, the emotional response to music is deeply personal. Our music preferences typically reflect the emotions we seek to experience or resonate with.
Memories and Personal Experiences
Music has the ability to trigger memories and transport us back to specific moments in our lives. Certain songs become intertwined with personal experiences, whether it’s a first love, a road trip, a milestone event, or a period of growth and self-discovery.
These musical associations with our favorite songs create a deep personal connection, making our music taste a soundtrack to our lives and also a vessel for reliving cherished memories.
Cultural Influences
Music is also personal because our social and culture environments influence what we listen to. Someone growing up in the suburbs will more than likely be influenced by different music than someone growing up in an inner city. The music we hear and are attracted to is usually shaped by the friends, families, and communities we grow up in.
Keep in mind that even though social and cultural influences shape our music preference, as unique individuals we will still develop our own unique preferences in music.
Perception of Aesthetics
What might resonate with one unique individual will not resonate with another. This is all completely based on aesthetic preferences and also perception. Every user might hear melodies, lyrics, harmonies, and rhythms and interpret them in their own way.
The way that we respond to the different sounds of the music we hear helps shape the music we like, and it also creates a personal connection to certain music genres and to certain artists.
How Music Taste Changes Over Time
As we age and new life challenges come up, our music taste changes. Usually our music tastes evolves to help address the psychological needs of the time. For example, when we are teenagers and younger we tend to like music that helps us find our identity and that we can relate to the lyrics.
Teenagers tend to listen to music that is more intense and loud. Almost “rebellious” in a sense because teens are trying to define themselves while also seeking independence from their parents.
Then as we begin to age, music can become a social vehicle to help us find the social groups that we fit into. It also can represent the socioeconomic that you fit into when you become an adult. The older we become, the more we seek music that ties us into our generation which ends up making the music we listen to unappealing to our kids.
Discovering new music as we age comes with being curious and open-minded to exploring and finding new music we like.
Personality and Music Taste
With a study that was done, research found that personality traits are linked to certain musical styles. Normally people that like country music are more outgoing, hardworking, conventional, while also being conservative. Even though country music is normally about heartbreaks, listeners in the study tended to be more emotionally stable.
People that enjoyed pop music in the study are more honest, conventional, and extroverted. Pop listeners tended to have a higher self-esteem, less creativity, and are also hardworking.
Rap and hip hop listeners are not the stereotypical violent and aggressive group that others tend to think of. Rap fans are actually the group of people with the highest self-esteem. Rap and hip hop listeners were also one of the most outgoing group of people in the study.
Indie music listeners were a more intellectual, introverted, and creative group of people in the study. They were also less gentle of the groups and less hardworking. Other personality traits of indie music fans were anxiousness, low self-esteem, and passivity.
Fans in the study that listened to heavy metal and rock music showed that this group was introverted, gentle, and creative. This group of people also had a lower self-esteem.
Those that listened to blues, soul, and jazz music in the study also had high self-esteem. This group was also very creative, at ease in life, and intelligent.
One of the most outgoing groups was the one that listened to dance music. The group of people in the study was also more assertive and it was the group most open to new experiences.
Now You Know Why Music Taste Is So Personal
There are plenty of reasons that music taste becomes so personal as you can see from our blog post above. There is so much beauty in music because it can create a truly unique feeling for the listener. Also, music can instantly transport us back to a memory in a matter of seconds.
If you found this article fun and intriguing, we have more where this came from, make sure you keep browsing this section for more tips.
