What makes up our musical tastes?

Forcing someone to change their taste in music is no mean feat, yet with the power of trans-cranial magnetic stimulation scientists have supposedly managed just that. A recent study  reveals two things (apart from some scientists having much too much time and money on their hands): that taste in music is alterable, and that to alter music taste requires electric waves to be sent through the brain. Clearly music taste is a little more complicated and ingrained than perhaps thought. I believe that this is because of how music taste is formed, where it comes from, and why it changes (when not subject to trans-cranial magnetic stimulation).

Clearly music taste evolves with time: what your dad listens to now is likely not what he listened to at 16

When I asked friends where they thought their taste in music came from the most common answers were: family, friends, their own discovery, and a need for music that they ‘get’ or ‘gets them’. These answers suggest that music taste is not only a product of our context, but is deeply personal as a reflection of character, and is a response to lived experience. For example, in heartbreak many discover the music of Sufjan Stevens, Sharon Van Etten or Ryan Adams, or in a time of anger and frustration your music taste may augment to absorb the music of The Sex Pistols, The Clash or Savages. Music taste is not static; it changes and evolves, in response to not only changing surroundings – such as living in a new city or spending time with new friends – but in accordance with personal development and change we all experience. Clearly music taste evolves with time: what your dad listens to now is likely not what he listened to at 16. Why else are the apparent joys of The Eagles inaccessible until you get a mortgage and start looking at motorbikes online?

However, though music taste is not static, some features do seem set in stone. Perhaps the best explanation for how ingrained some parts of people’s musical preferences are is in the power of nostalgia. You may hear a song which no longer fits your present taste in music, that you’ve just grown past. Kate Nash’s Foundations, Green Day’s American Idiot, and Lose Yourself by Eminem are classic examples. The overpowering sense of familiarity and the fact that these songs are basically a reflection of your past self explain the sense of nostalgia and even joy evoked whenever these find their way into a current playlist. Some songs, artists, and genres stick, and aren’t as easy to shake off. I reckon many of us would still include bands we’ve loved since we were 14, or those that our parents forced us to listen to, like the The Beatles or Simon & Garfunkel as part of the immovable canon of our taste in music.

Pleasure is only a small factor in the complex construction of someone’s musical preferences

Music taste changes, and evolves parallel to our lives, but the foundations for our taste in music are based so heavily on the personal; experiences, family, social surroundings, that it is not surprising that some preferences really are ingrained and do stand the test of time. In fact, the experiment the scientists did didn’t really change people’s taste in music at all: they only succeeded, through stimulating the production of the pleasure chemical dopamine, in making people like some songs a bit more and others a bit less, and these changes were only temporary. As far as I can tell pleasure is only a small factor in the complex construction of someone’s musical preferences.

As unrecognisable as we may be in 30 years, it will be interesting to see how unrecognisable our tastes in music will be from how they look now. My guess is that a lot will be familiar. Just as I know that the state of my student loan is very unlikely to change in 30 years, I also know I’ll still be forcing Jamie T on whoever is in the passenger seat of my car.