Musing #6: Musical Taste (Again)

Think of your top ten favorite musical artists (or if you’d rather: your top ten favorite albums or songs). Do you think there’s another person you know whose list would exactly match yours? My guess is, probably not. How about someone you don’t know? There are about eight billion people on the planet. Surely there would be one who would agree with you 100%. Wouldn’t there have to be?

Maybe.

But what if you did your top twenty? Or top 100. I’d be willing to stake my whole career that there is not another person on the planet whose top 100 would match mine (no matter what order). And I don’t think my taste is particularly eccentric.

We could discuss it and come up with a myriad of answers as to why this might be, but I prefer to leave it as one more part of the great mystery that we call Music.

With the realization that we truly are alone with our unique musical tastes (in the sense that there is no exact carbon copy of that taste), I see no reason to scoff at, look down upon, or feel superiority over another’s taste in music.