Tough question.
I know I don't like when people exclude entire genres based on what is played on the radio. And for that matter, I'm not a big fan of classification at all, in that sense. Regardless...
My actual music-listening life began when I was about 9 or 10 years old, I know. I was inquisitive about this curious contraption that never saw any use and was connected to these very large screen-covered boxes flanking the TV.
Eventually, I wore my mom down, and she retrieved a box of dusty plate-sized black things that I enjoyed watching as they spun in circles. I tried to focus my eyes on the center, following its spin, to keep reading what was written. I barely noticed that any noise was actually being produced. For a while, that's all music was to me...just stuff going on in the background.
It was probably the fact that there were three little kids running around that caused my parents to hide their records away, never listening to them again. Or the CD collection that they tried to amass. Whatever it was seemed rather strange to me, as my mom would spend her nights going through bills while she dumbed CDs down to tape, so she could listen in her car.
One night, as she sat at the dining room table with papers strewn out in front of her - near them, several opened CD cases - I sat next to her, curious as always. Peering over the table, a few of them caught my eye. One was Queen's Live at Wembley '86, which caught my attention because of the Disney-looking cartoon characters near the title. I asked her about it, in whatever way I was able to, and she answered by asking me if I wanted it. That was like a new toy. On another, I commented, "You can see that baby's pepper!" (As a child, I apparently referred to dicks as 'peppers.') So my mom gave me Nirvana's Nevermind. At that point, I realized she would give me whichever ones I expressed an interest in, no matter the level of the interest. I also took The Joshua Tree. She showed me how to use the CD player, which she let me borrow until Christmas, when I was given one as a gift.
Thinking that music was an appropriate gift, and making use of my new toy, I gathered up my sisters and decided to make my mom a tape for the following Mother's Day. I changed the lyrics to my favorite songs from those, wrote them down, and had my sisters sing them with me into the speakers of the CD player I'd been given as we recorded them onto tape. In retrospect, I'm pretty sure I didn't know what was being sung about at all, so the lyrics I had written may very well have been what I "heard." In any case, I made a few connections/associations because of it all. I really liked what I heard. It didn't make me dance or anything fancy, but this noise suddenly jumped from out of the background. The second and most important thing I learned was how happy it made my mom to give her this very crude, very off-key, but very very well-intentioned gift.
Any time she was done with a CD, she would give it to me, and I would listen to it. When I asked her who her favorite was when she was little, she told me very matter-of-factly The Beatles and Bobby Goldsboro. So I asked her for those. Only a few years out of the record-phase, she only had the 1962-1966 "red" collection, on tape, to give me. So I listened to that, constantly. Then for my birthday, I got 1967-1970, and for Christmas I'd gotten actual albums. Then...maybe two years later, The Beatles anthology came out, and I was absolutely hooked.
But it got more serious - I wanted a guitar of my own. Eventually, I got one. A cheap Lotus that someday found itself as the better part of a collage on my wall, which had also gone from littered-with-sports-stars to littered-with-bands.
I didn't like everything. In fact, I didn't like very much. There were fewer than 10 different artists that I listened to regularly. But I liked them intently, and I couldn't be without them.
My music tastes changed, in and out of phases, I'd drift here and there with the rest of the crowd sometimes, only to depart at other times.
My first instinct was to like what my mother liked. Then I wanted what sounded pleasant to my ears. As I grew, found the internet, found other accesses to information on music (RS...ahem), I started to reform my opinions until they started to find stable ground.
In all this time, it hasn't changed terribly. I still like what sounds good to my ears. What has changed is that "good to my ears" has been redefined. I want to hear passion. I want those people behind those mics to be like that little boy singing into a cheap CD player's speaker - desperately intent on creating anything that evokes
something out of
somebody. The kind of passion that often gets muddied and blurred with all the excesses that are too often found in the music scene. You know it when you hear it. It takes you out of your chair, off of your feet (whether to dance or not
, sends chills down your spine...wherever, as long as it takes you somewhere, brings a smile to your face, trickles a tear down your cheek, puts a guitar in your arms, whatever.
Then there are the words. They can speak the same passion as the music itself. They can make or break a song. They can bring the song back into focus. Sometimes they fit, and sometimes they don't. When they do, they can deliver philosophy, faith, belief, heartache, inspiration, et al...right to your very core.
There are so many facets to music to be considered, it's incredibly difficult to pin it down to anything in particular. For me, I guess it all revolves around that passion. When everyone involved is on board, you can tell. A vocalist having the tightest vibrato in the land may not hold a candle to one swallowing bitter wine shards of glass. If the guitarist fucks up a bend, the drummer misses the head and hits the rim...these things don't really matter because if a tiny mistake can break a song, an album, a band...then it wasn't worth it to begin with.
, sends chills down your spine...wherever, as long as it takes you somewhere, brings a smile to your face, trickles a tear down your cheek, puts a guitar in your arms, whatever.