January 28: Does musical taste define personality?
Does musical taste define personality?
Not all the time.
Look, if I'm driving in a car with someone and all I hear coming out of the stereo are hymns and gospel music, I'm probably going to think the guy is a Christian fellow. We can have a nice conversation about the Old and New Testament and maybe enter into a good old fashioned Calvinism/Areminianism tete-a-tete.
But if I'm driving in a car with someone else and I hear them listen to a hip hop song about banging hos, I'm not going to conclude that the dude is a thug or a gangster or a pimp.
When I worked at the Sherbooke Record, we routinely got CDs from record companies who hoped we'd review them in the paper. We never did but I sure got a lot of free CDs. On one of them was this mean looking black dude standing in front of a subway track somewhere. He was dressed in blue jeans and a hoodie. He was scowling like he wanted to kill everyone in the world.
I listened to half of one track and that's all I could take. This was one angry cat. Angry at society. Angry at his parents. Angry at his friends, his girlfriend, me, Colonel Sanders, John Denver, and the person who invented aluminum foil. I thought that if I listened to that album for any longer, I'd wind up being angry at everyone too.
Probably if you look at everyone's music library, you're going to find some things in there that don't quite fit. I'm looking at my playlist right now and I see my favourite artists are Prince, John Mellencamp, Amanda Marshall, Weird Al Yankovic, Aerosmith, Roxette and Enigma.
Now what would one conclude about this?
Prince - Diminuitive 80s bad boy with a penchant for lingere
Mellencamp (who went to the Purple Rain debut) - Farm boy obsessed with mortality
Amanda Marshall - Long blonde hair and smoky voice
Weird Al - King of parody
Aerosmith - America's rock band
Enigma - Intense bedroom music
Roxette - Balloons and birthday parties
So basically, I'm schizophrenic.
Musical taste probably doesn't define personality because we use music to escape. There are songs out there that I can't listen to because they describe me (and wound me) so perfectly that they are painful. One of them is the Eagles' song Desperado, which contains the poignant verse: "And freedom, oh freedom, that's just some people talking / Your prison is walking through this world all alone."
When I was a teenager, I believed the Quiet Riot song The Wild and the Young was my own personal anthem. To wit:
The wild and the young
They all have their dreams
The wild and the young
They've got to be free
The sun never sets
For souls on the run
The wild and the young
Man, to be 15 and be walking home from school on a not quite warm day in mid-April, a Dr. Pepper slurpee in your hand, fingerprint-stained cheap sunglasses on your eyes, zits on your forehead, listening to Quiet Riot (on a mix tape with Aerosmith and Helix and Alice Cooper and Motley Crue and Ozzy Osborne and - don't tell anyone - Cyndi Lauper) in an old crackly walkman. Well, that's the stuff of dreams. And then you round the corner and a gust of warm air hits you and you think Summer is coming back.
My friend Cade gave me this title and I think I introduced him to a band called Wall of Voodoo, whosed album Seven Days in Sammystown I bought in a used record and tape store in Calgary in 1987. I bought it because I was looking for dark songs and that album had a song called Dark as a Dungeon, which was actually a Johnny Cash cover.
I'm glad I bought it because it's still a great album and the first track, Far Side of Crazy, goes like this:
I once hid my lust for stardom like a filthy magazine
I stroked the shaft on my guitar and watched you on the screen
I've become now what I wanted To be all along
A psychopathic poetThe Devil's bastard son
That's a great song when you're in Grade 10 and you think that you're this brooding soul of dark alien wisdom and everyone else knows you're just another pimply angry teenager who's angry because he doesn't want to grow up and be a responsible adult one day. Maybe all these rock stars are doing us a disservice. Maybe they are just prolonging adolescence when they prance around on stage and say they want to rock and roll all night and party everyday. Maybe what teenagers really need are bands who sing about the importance of developing marketable skills and respecting authority.
You know what? I think I know how to answer this question.
Does musical taste define personality?
Yes it does. But only if you're over 50.
I'm 41 and I admit that I like the Spice Girls, Herman's Hermits, Johann Sebastian Bach, Huey Lewis and the News, the Statler Brothers, Roger Whittaker, Leonard Cohen, Trisha Yearwood, and Apocalyptica.
When I am over 50, I'll give 'em all up for Lawrence Welk.
Not all the time.
Look, if I'm driving in a car with someone and all I hear coming out of the stereo are hymns and gospel music, I'm probably going to think the guy is a Christian fellow. We can have a nice conversation about the Old and New Testament and maybe enter into a good old fashioned Calvinism/Areminianism tete-a-tete.
But if I'm driving in a car with someone else and I hear them listen to a hip hop song about banging hos, I'm not going to conclude that the dude is a thug or a gangster or a pimp.
When I worked at the Sherbooke Record, we routinely got CDs from record companies who hoped we'd review them in the paper. We never did but I sure got a lot of free CDs. On one of them was this mean looking black dude standing in front of a subway track somewhere. He was dressed in blue jeans and a hoodie. He was scowling like he wanted to kill everyone in the world.
I listened to half of one track and that's all I could take. This was one angry cat. Angry at society. Angry at his parents. Angry at his friends, his girlfriend, me, Colonel Sanders, John Denver, and the person who invented aluminum foil. I thought that if I listened to that album for any longer, I'd wind up being angry at everyone too.
Probably if you look at everyone's music library, you're going to find some things in there that don't quite fit. I'm looking at my playlist right now and I see my favourite artists are Prince, John Mellencamp, Amanda Marshall, Weird Al Yankovic, Aerosmith, Roxette and Enigma.
Now what would one conclude about this?
Prince - Diminuitive 80s bad boy with a penchant for lingere
Mellencamp (who went to the Purple Rain debut) - Farm boy obsessed with mortality
Amanda Marshall - Long blonde hair and smoky voice
Weird Al - King of parody
Aerosmith - America's rock band
Enigma - Intense bedroom music
Roxette - Balloons and birthday parties
So basically, I'm schizophrenic.
Musical taste probably doesn't define personality because we use music to escape. There are songs out there that I can't listen to because they describe me (and wound me) so perfectly that they are painful. One of them is the Eagles' song Desperado, which contains the poignant verse: "And freedom, oh freedom, that's just some people talking / Your prison is walking through this world all alone."
When I was a teenager, I believed the Quiet Riot song The Wild and the Young was my own personal anthem. To wit:
The wild and the young
They all have their dreams
The wild and the young
They've got to be free
The sun never sets
For souls on the run
The wild and the young
Man, to be 15 and be walking home from school on a not quite warm day in mid-April, a Dr. Pepper slurpee in your hand, fingerprint-stained cheap sunglasses on your eyes, zits on your forehead, listening to Quiet Riot (on a mix tape with Aerosmith and Helix and Alice Cooper and Motley Crue and Ozzy Osborne and - don't tell anyone - Cyndi Lauper) in an old crackly walkman. Well, that's the stuff of dreams. And then you round the corner and a gust of warm air hits you and you think Summer is coming back.
My friend Cade gave me this title and I think I introduced him to a band called Wall of Voodoo, whosed album Seven Days in Sammystown I bought in a used record and tape store in Calgary in 1987. I bought it because I was looking for dark songs and that album had a song called Dark as a Dungeon, which was actually a Johnny Cash cover.
I'm glad I bought it because it's still a great album and the first track, Far Side of Crazy, goes like this:
I once hid my lust for stardom like a filthy magazine
I stroked the shaft on my guitar and watched you on the screen
I've become now what I wanted To be all along
A psychopathic poetThe Devil's bastard son
That's a great song when you're in Grade 10 and you think that you're this brooding soul of dark alien wisdom and everyone else knows you're just another pimply angry teenager who's angry because he doesn't want to grow up and be a responsible adult one day. Maybe all these rock stars are doing us a disservice. Maybe they are just prolonging adolescence when they prance around on stage and say they want to rock and roll all night and party everyday. Maybe what teenagers really need are bands who sing about the importance of developing marketable skills and respecting authority.
You know what? I think I know how to answer this question.
Does musical taste define personality?
Yes it does. But only if you're over 50.
I'm 41 and I admit that I like the Spice Girls, Herman's Hermits, Johann Sebastian Bach, Huey Lewis and the News, the Statler Brothers, Roger Whittaker, Leonard Cohen, Trisha Yearwood, and Apocalyptica.
When I am over 50, I'll give 'em all up for Lawrence Welk.
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