Do you think it's possible for someone to have "bad taste" in music?
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rockfan (
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June 19th, 2015
We all know art is subjective and that criticizing someone as having “bad taste” in music is pretty arrogant. But do you think it’s true? Do some people have truly bad taste? If someone listens to music without trying to understand the characteristics of a song or appreciate the intent of an artist, is it fair to argue that a person can have “bad taste” in music? What are your thoughts?
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I used to get discrimination for loving Weird AL Yankovic . Radio stations won’t play his music.
Yes. The band that proves my point: Air Supply.
As long as you enjoy the music, I don’t see why it needs to be analyzed, understood and turned into a a project.
Taste is subjective, but so is “good” and “bad”. I think people often tend to be too intolerant about music, calling it bad instead of not to their taste. Within my own tastes, though, there’s certainly music that is “bad” to me, but I acknowledge that even stuff I hate tends to have a great amount of skill involved in creating it, and that some people find value in it, even if I have an “OMG how awful” reaction to it.
By my standards, yes. However, as you said, musical appreciation is subjective. Music is emotional. The reason people like certain music might have more to do with the emotions that piece or that band evoke. I have some truly weird shit in some of my playlists, but it’s because those tracks or bands make me think of a person, or an event or a time. I have looked at albums in family and friend’s music collections and wondered ‘what the fuck?’ It might be they’re truly tone deaf and have no taste, or perhaps their choice in music might just not be my preference.
To each his or her own. It is true that some people have no ear for it, are tone deaf, and/or couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket.
Nope. Beauty lies within the beholder’s eyes!
Anybody that listens to Gansta’ rap, hip-hop, and/or Christian music is listening to bad music.
My husband and I have totally different tastes in music. We have learned to compromise and tolerate each other’s taste, but when up against the wall, we both admit that we each believe that the other one has bad taste in music.
He tends to love the songs that get overplayed on the radio until almost everyone gets sick of them. I tend to like obscure stuff I find by accident and nobody else has heard. He likes really complex noodly guitar music. I like extremely simple three chord or power chord stuff. He likes music with ‘deep’ romantic and emotional lyrics. I think they sound cheesy. I like stuff that makes me laugh. He thinks they sound stupid.
We probably both have bad taste in music—just bad in totally different ways.
No. Different taste, perhaps, and, as @Zaku points out, both “taste” and “good and bad” are highly subjective. If someone listens and likes a certain type or specific piece of music, they probably are appreciating the artist’s intent and how the piece was crafted.
It’s all perspective. Personally, I like Air Supply, and Mozart and Pink and The Beatles and Enya, and Sinatra and Brubeck and Streisand and Ravel and Bizet etc etc etc. With that range, would you, @rockfan, classify my taste in music as good or bad?
I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to erase the memory of finding a Des O’Connor album in my sister’s record collection. It was a low point in our relationship.
Taste is subjective. I let you have free reign on it.
de gustibus non est disputandum
I agree that we really cannot discriminate and tastes of all kinds are subjective, neither right nor wrong, however…that said…I flipping hate country music. haha
I love all music except country, gag me with some sad sack ” my truck broke down and my dog died and my girl is cheatin’ so I might as well get drunk on that 100 pack of Coors Lite tonight” crap. lol
I also hate gnomes, fairies and other assorted stupid garden decor and country decor with chicken cookie jars and rooster statues all over the place. There, a small window into Colomas tastes. haha
I can prove that I have bad taste. Take a listen to this ( warning : foul language)
I love Wesley Willis. I don’t just appreciate him as an eccentric outsider artist as most of his fans do. I seriously enjoy the living crap out of his music. I won’t pretend that I think he is a musical genius. I won’t even try to pretend I think he has any musical talent at all. But I love the sound and I love the over-the-top craziness of his lyrics. I love his cheesy Casio keyboard, his off key yowling and the product placement. I can listen to his stuff over and over again for an hour or two if I’m in the right mood.
It reminds me of the hundreds of hours I used to spend at my grandmothers house in her little homemade music studio. She had a KORG keyboard, a microphone and a 2 track audio mixer. I have very little musical talent, but for some reason, for a few years I was totally obsessed with her little recording studio and I spent so many hours making up song after song, playing it on the KORG and singing along. I’d just churn out tape after tape of this stuff and then I’d listen to it over and over, laughing and having an awesome time.
When I listen to Wesley Willis, I feel like I’m 10 years old again and I just met someone who felt the same way about music that I did back then. I totally love his stuff.
But I have to admit that it’s pretty bad music that lacks virtually every quality that makes music good.
Sure, there is such a thing as bad taste. Unfortunately, it is exceedingly common.
Well, I would say different tastes from me, but not necessarily bad (who am I to say?).
No! I consider my preferences in music, movies, TV shows, books, art, etc. are neither more nor less valid than anyone else’s, for reasons I am not obliged to defend.
That said, there are definitely standards of quality that have been set in all art forms—yet these seem to be far less “set” than they were once.
I enjoyed the Des O’Connor song, @Earthbound_Misfit.
I tend to separate musical comedy from ‘Music’. Often cited on Fluther, I consider Tom Lehrer a comedian/satirist of considerable musical talent. Weird Al’s message also outweighs his musical talent IMO, @talljasperman. Probably Westley Wills as well, @keobooks.
If your musical interests didn’t go any deeper than this and this, then you probably have poor taste in a musical genre I enjoy (and I like those songs. This seems to transcend both genre and taste. Mine and humanity’s.
This makes me ponder something. Most people are really quick to judge something visual ad been in good or bad taste. But they are very hesitant to judge music. I wonder why that is.
In art, almost everyone universally agrees that velvet Elvis and dogs playing poker paintings are very poor taste. Peopleofwalmart.com wouldn’t have nearly the appeal that it does if people couldn’t agree on what constitutes bad taste. It’s not just careless or sloppy dressing. You can tell that some people put a lot of time and effort into their tacky look. When it comes to stuff you can see, it seems to be a no brainier.
Food is kind of in the middle. Most people think taste is subjective, but there are a few exceptions, like Hot Pockets .
But music? Totally subjective. Isn’t that weird?
Double posted to add @ibstubro—I think Piña Colada might be the musical equivalent to Hot Pockets. I think you may be onto something with the bad taste music.
Anyone who chooses Cannibal Corpse over Al Green makes me honestly ponder this very thing. I don’t understand them, but it doesn’t make them wrong, just different.
@Apparently_Im_The_Grumpy_One It’s a generation gap thing.
I love a lot of the 90’s venue in rock, alternative rock etc. but I also can’t stand rap, death metal and a lot of the new techno music. I think the 90’s produced some of the best music since the 70’s.
@Coloma
I agree, but personality definitely plays a part too. E.G. I’m not from the 1920’s but I still dig a lot of the music from that era.
You hit the nail squarely on the head, @Coloma. Each generation develops its own sense of what counts as “good” musical taste. Everything else is then considered to be in bad taste.
On a personal level, I suspect that subconsciously everybody defines the music they enjoy as being in good taste, and everything that is somehow radically different to be in bad taste. In a sense, everybody’s opinion is neither right nor wrong, it just is.
If it’s on the mainstream radio it pretty much sucks
@Apparently_Im_The_Grumpy_One I love old Big Band era music and Cuban/Latin music and jazz and Zydeco and Cajun and Blue Grass, oldies and, and.,...I’m pretty darn diverse.
My friends and I had some great Latin music playing the other night while whipping up dinner.
@sahID I think there is still a lot of cross generational sharing though. My daughter is 27 and she has been a fan of 70’s rock since she was about 11 years old. She played a mean Led Zeppelin on her electric guitar back in her teens.
Yes, people who don’t like the music I like have bad taste.
Anyone who listens on purpose to Celine fuckin Dion or C&W is tone deaf & needs a slap.
@ucme I’ve enjoyed a few of Celine Dion’s songs. I have no shame.
<laughs so much he gets hiccups>
@ucme Although I think anyone who dislikes Johnny Cash is a bit off.
Seems to me there is about a 20 year cycle in music tastes. When I was a kid in the 70’s I liked 50’s music and we had Happy Days. I really liked a lot of the alt rock of the 90’s. I don’t listen to pop music on the radio anymore, but I’ve heard some songs I really liked in the past couple years and sought out the artist.
Jason Mraz comes to mind, though I didn’t pursue that very far.
@rockfan Alternative hip-hop is so great, and that’s an awesome playlist!
One time I was cooking dinner and having a beer with my roommates. I played 93 til Infinity and we accidentally stayed up til 4 AM watching 90s hip-hop videos.
One of my favorite people on earth still listens to Linkin Park. He owns the CD and plays it in his car. Siiiiiiigh.
Another time we were driving and One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer came on the radio. That’s one of my favorite songs and I like FLIPPED OUT, like drumming on the back of the seat, singing along because I know all the words, etc. The other passenger kept trying to talk over the song, and my buddy kept driving onto the rumble strip to make him be quiet. In hindsight I’m kind of amazed that we didn’t crash, but it’s one of my favorite music memories.
I’m going through this page dedicated to the worst music ever published I’ll read a band, album or song title and run it through YouTube. I thought I knew what truly bad music sounded like. I had no idea how bad it coul get. And it wasn’t all obscure stuff. Oh no. Lou Reed is there, and apparently someone thought it was a good idea to let the Bee Gees make disco covers of the Beatles greatest hits.
I’ll report back if I survive this experiment,
@keobooks I’ve seen this list before and managed to listen to most of everything on it. It’s all awful and disastrous, but I actually think mediocre/middle of the road music is more annoying and frustrating
Kind of strange that White on Blonde by Texas is on there though. I think it’s a pretty good album and it’s been voted as one of the best albums of the 90’s by Q magazine
I didn’t think White on Blonde was that bad. It didn’t really stand out as horrible at all. So far, except for the Shaggs and some albums made to sound terrible on purpose, nothing is standing out as absolutely terrible. Yes, the BeeGees mutilated Beatles songs, but that mostly sounded bad compared to the original songs. They weren’t totally vile. Kevin Federlane was pretty lame, but he wasn’t ear killingly awful. He sounded like eminem on the verge of overdosing on barbiturates.
Maybe the songs will sound worse when I get to the individual songs rather than the albums. So far, the stuff is kinda forgettable. I actually kinda liked one Lord Sutch song. But stay away from the Shaggs. Stay far away from the Shaggs.
That link threw an error for me.
I just started the individual song titles worthy of the worst songs ever. Omfg, I want my baby back is about the most hilariously awful thing I’ve ever heard. I think it had to have been made as a joke. It had me going until the “Oh, baby, I really dig you.” part. I don’t think anyone would ever swoon over that and want to make it ‘our song.’
“I don’t hardly no where to begin”. Me too Jimmy, me too.
David Hasselhoff on psychedelics. lol
I think some people can’t really hear music. It’s just background noise to them.
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