On Taste And How We Come To Have The Taste We Have

Nathan Melody

The song ‘Life is a Highway’ is one of my favorite songs; I listen to it almost every day. I think it does a superb job of illustrating  my tastes and why I have the tastes I do. My tastes are only a product of exposure, if I only heard other kinds of music I would be perfectly content with those songs and artists. However, where I have been exposed to music or who first played the music also affects whether or not the music is enjoyable. When I first started being able to comprehend or even have a minuscule appreciation of music, I enjoyed whatever others played, I was happy just to listen to what they loved to listen to. As I grew older I began to listen to music outside the direct influence of my surroundings. This led to a reform in taste in the casting off of music I had previously appreciated, namely my parent's music, and an increase in more modern music listening. However, while the latter seems to be a change that is still prominent, the former has gradually faded until it is now almost nonexistent.  

Life is a Highway has a deep connection with what I used to listen to. I originally heard it in the movie Cars and loved it because it wasn’t a girly, princess song, but it was from a movie. But, I didn’t always like it, I never disliked it. However, it just existed but also at the same time did not exist. Because I had moved past watching and rewatching the same movies over and over (I had switched to watching the same football teams instead), Life is a Highway just never crossed my mind. They say ignorance is bliss, and I agree. I had known it existed, but in practicality, it did not - to me that is. So, I went about blissfully ignorant of the song, perfectly content in the fact that I did not know it, so content that I didn’t realize it was a fact.

However, because I listened to other people’s music, and because I watched the movies my little brother wanted to watch, I gradually began to relearn my taste for Life is a Highway. This got the ball rolling and soon enough I was a Country fan. Taste can be fickle, and that is certainly a property my taste possesses. I feel as though it was a gradual process, but all the progress happened in a single, swift stroke. 

I like the music I do for many reasons. The main one is that it sounds pleasant, which I think is different for each of us. However, I believe there are certain, intangible reasons we find it pleasing. For example, it could be popular, it could bring back recollections of important events, people, or times in our lives, or it could be what we just have always listened to. I fall into something like the second and third categories. I have heard Country music for most of my life, and it used to be that when we went on a boat we would bring music, and more often than not Country music would play. However, while being indoctrinated by Country got me in the door, it has been the memories I’ve made that have kept me: the memories of the boat both good and bad, and the memories of a long road trip with my family, during which music was always playing, are my chief memories. However, there are many others which the exact remembrance now escapes me, but are held in essence within music, and more specifically my music. While it is the artist who creates music and most often expresses themselves through music, I believe that music plays a role in all of our expressions. Our motley assortment of songs, usually snippets of the overarching theme of the artist's expression, defines our expression, we make the music ‘ours’ and it comes to accurately define who we are.

We are each entitled to our own opinion and musical taste, and as such we are entitled to admire and disdain music as we see fit. While that may seem harsh, especially to those who turn the creation of music into a livelihood. However, the question we must ask is “whether anyone’s taste stands on solid ground” (Wilson 19). I believe that everyone’s opinion does because of our innate entitlement to taste. For this reason, while I believe that my music taste is satisfactory (or else I wouldn’t have it), I believe yours is satisfactory also because all music is ‘too human to be dismissed (Wilson 22).

Work Cited

Wilson, Carl. Let's Talk About Love: Why Other People Have Such Bad Taste. Edited by Carl Wilson, Bloomsbury Academic, 2014.