Do you have eclectic taste in music?

'Everything from The Beatles, The Stones, The Who, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan through to The Stone Roses, the Charlatans, Primal Scream, Ocean Colour Scene, Paul Weller, Oasis, Kasabian' Rolling 'Are "Moms" Eclectic?' Thread 2017 [Started by Robert Grazer in November 2016, last updated 1 minute ago by gaz coombes on I Love Music] 20 new answers

I like music that makes me sing and/or dance and/or pay attention. I don't like meditative music with some very special exceptions. So, every genre is fair game but it's true that some are more likely to put me of (metal, latino genres, romantic classical music) than others (rap, disco, free jazz) for a variety of reasons.

*off

When it comes to music, my tastes are...a little different. A little out there. I'm not sure you can handle it!

Always been a bit jealous of the true genre experts on ILM and otherwise. I like investigating different styles, but I wouldn't say I'm an expert or have any affiliation to any specific area or sound.

I guess my musical tastes are 'eclectic' inasmuch as they are heavily informed by my ADD (which also informs my lack of deep genre expertise).

no

a ~possibly~ interesting side question: if you have broad tastes in music, do you have any overarching aesthetic principles that tie the various strands together?

― seb mooczag (NickB), Tuesday, 5 January 2016 13:28 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Often I'll get really wrapped up in an artist or genre for a certain period and pay a lot of attention to a certain area for the space of a year or so. Music works as a natural, free-flowing diary in that respect:- 'Ah yes, 2014 was my jazz year; 2003 was when I was deep into Tom Waits etc'...
I'm also a fan of making myself playlists/mixtapes that concentrate on a specific mood or vibe. They won't always be subject to a clear style, more an over-arching 'feel' or vibe.

If I had to choose an aesthetic principle, I guess I'm mostly interested in hearing ideas I've never heard before. As a general rule, I prefer shock + awe + innovation, and I get frustrated by things that sound generic or cosy or feel too much like a retread of what has gone before or riding on the coattails of an established sound. That's not to say I dislike 'old' music, by all means - I love hearing music by Beach Boys or Talking Heads or Miles Davis or Joni Mitchell because to me these were innovators in their fields, thinking about music in ways that no one had before and selecting their influences in interesting new ways. If an artist can combine shock & awe with hearts & minds in the right balance, then I'll love them forever.

I experience shock and awe every time i go to the shop or come to work, enough is enough

I guess, but it seems very de rigueur today to have "eclectic taste in music" -- you rarely meet rigid genre-heads anymore.

True! Dilettantism is the expected behavior of young music fans I know, without the pejorative view. If you have access to a huge chunk of the history of recorded music, why not dip in here and there?

Yeah, in my experience eclecticism has gone from an exceptional 'Wow, you listen to Pantera AND Happy Hardcore, LOL?!!?' thing when I was at school; to 'Look at me smashing the boundaries of genre oppression - White Stripes, NWA, Squarepusher - life is a box of chocolates!!'; to 'Yeah, just let Spotify do its thing, no bother'...

Absolutely fuck not. The hell with "eclectic" taste in music, it just leads to dilettantism and wishy-washy-ness. I have extremely specific and particular tastes in what I like in music. And all I want to listen to is that thing which is at that moment scratching my itch.

The problem is, that That Particular Thing that I get really obsessed with doesn't seem to bear any resemblance whatsoever to whatever it is that people seem to talk about when they talk about "Genre". "Genre" seems to be random attributes thrown together with no regard to whatever it is in that particular artist or piece of music that I like.

So, y'know, the with hell eclecticism for the sake of it. But the hell with this notion of "Genre" even harder.

― Liebe ist kälter als der Todmorden (Branwell with an N), Tuesday, 5 January 2016 13:42 (2 hours ago) Permalink

you have eclectic taste in music

I guess, but it seems very de rigueur today to have "eclectic taste in music" -- you rarely meet rigid genre-heads anymore.

― on entre O.K. on sort K.O. (man alive), Tuesday, January 5, 2016 11:10 AM (31 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

agreed but i don't think it's as just fashionable as de rigeur suggests, i think it's something deeper. and it is a good development imo

one can only have an eclecticism of outlook, not of taste

i have a catholic taste in music

Haha I have been listening exclusively to West German bands of the early 70s (in fact pretty much only from 3 cities south of the Uerdingen Isogloss) for about 6 months straight now. I have p much the least eclectic tastes of anyone on ILM at the moment.

I like everything from Kanye West to Billy Joel, it's true

people with eclectic taste can go on genre binges, in fact i would say that's a symptom of eclecticism

i agree with most itt that there is something *shudders* about the word eclectic. i think our revulsion stems from an association of eclectic with specific pieces of music, maybe 2000's-era mash-ups? those world music comps they used to sell in cafes and "hippie" gift shops? i don't think there's anything inherently reprehensible about the concept itself, how could there be?

shudders from my fortunately historical days of online dating where every other profile would make the eclecticism claim beside a truly myopic taste, allied to my own self-realisation of myopia relative to the sheer wealth of style and form across the musical globe

xps to flopson

I agree it's a good development, possibly brought on by people having more access to the internet and therefore a much wider source of different music.
It's good that it's easier than ever for people to have broad horizons and less strictly-defined tastes in general.
That said I can't really remember the last time I met someone who said they listened to 'just punk music' or defined themselves via their narrow musical allegiance. Not sure if this idea prevails in people a lot younger than me, and there are probably a lot of people who only listen to grime and shun everything else, but this feels increasingly like an exception rather than a rule.
In some ways I can lament this. While die-hard genre fans could be annoying (I had a lot of friends growing up who eschewed anything that wasn't 'metal enough'), maybe it also means that newer styles and genres only get a finite time to flourish or grow a core fanbase before followers get tired and move on. I'm thinking about the kind of movements that would have spawned small but fervent clubs and fanzines and other outlets, many of which would have continued well after that scene crested.

no shame in dilettantism imo, i've gone deeper in various things at various points and have some relatively strong knowledge about a few artists/genres but i'm not an expert, i'm fine with that. dog latin's posts itt resonate very much esp regarding "natural free flowing diary" aspects of getting into different things successively, also feeling a little jealous of genre-heads but at the same time totally okay with not being one.

shudders from my fortunately historical days of online dating where every other profile would make the eclecticism claim beside a truly myopic taste, allied to my own self-realisation of myopia relative to the sheer wealth of style and form across the musical globe

― sounding like a silly Iain Banks on a track (imago), Tuesday, January 5, 2016 9:56 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

can you tell us more about musical globes from your historical days of online dating.

as with any academic interest, self-identifyingly 'serious' music listeners certainly benefit from an area or areas of close expertise

matt you can stop me when my posts get too Aimless but cmon man

xp dog latin - maybe how you feel about the reign of eclecticism has to do with how you feel about the Retromania hypothesis. if everyone is eclectic we just play around in old forms because the obsessives who drive new forms to prominence don't exist. in simon's book it's all about technology, but it's plausible that it's demand-side

DO YOU EVEN MUSIC BRO

My tastes are VERY eclectic; I like both Adele and The Weeknd

http://i.giftrunk.com/dzjmv2.gif

I prefer to think of my musical tastes as 'interesting'. But also 'intelligent'? They certainly aren't 'run of the mill'!

No way am I eclectic. All I like is jazz and new wave.

I'm not sure how much it has to do with retromania, although I think there's a probably a bit of crossover. but yeah I think historically, a lot of celebrated styles have benefited from conservative obsessives; hardcore punkers, ravers, metalheads, indiekids who don't just listen to lots of different music but define themselves and their lifestyles around their chosen obsession, perhaps even turning it into a career or long-term project.
I love eclecticism and listening to lots of things and being smacked in the face by new things but I also kind of miss the fun of when people used to wear band t-shirts or the theatre of tribalism or the idea that a scene with a specific sensibility and fashion could spring up around a particular nightclub. If everyone's a dabbler, it naturally gets harder to recognise these subcultures. instead you end up with much more ephemeral microcosms that form around a blog maybe and tare much harder to to pin down.

I mostly just play the Jordy album on an eternal loop.

75% - 80% of the music that I listen to sounds remarkably alike if you know what it is that I am listening for. It's just that those specific qualities, textures, effects that really scratch my itches are very, very poorly predicted by "Genre".

I fully admit that I do not entirely understand "Genre" and how people use it. The stuff that people carve genre up by often seems to me very superficial and not necessarily what attracts me to music. But I know it gets me into arguments quicker than almost anything else on ILM when I say I don't really believe in genre. It's just not a meaningful predictor to me.

I don't consider my musical taste 'eclectic' because I'm not drawn to newness or unfamiliarity. I'm drawn to things that capture some distinct element (texture, harmony, etc) of this kind of platonic ideal of music I have in my head. That ideal has changed as I've got older, but I'm just not particularly interested in listening to music that falls outside those parameters.

But I also think that Retromania is a book based on so inherently flawed a proposition that I bought it in paper form just so I could throw it across the room when it pissed me off. But that's an argument for another day.

i think the term "genre" can be useful in describing music in terms of form rather than style, but people tend to use it to mean the latter nowadays

"i only listen to one type of music: the Music That I Like" - bran

virtually everyone on ilx has eclectic taste in music imo, one of the good things about this place

It's a little more specific than "music that I like". I really enjoy phase-shifted drone sounds, though whether it's a synth or a guitar or a flute (hallmarks of genre) does not matter to me. I really enjoy people singing in open fifth harmonies where you cannot tell whether the completed chord would be major or minor. That's something that occurs in many different styles of music! When I say specific, I mean highly specific, but that just isn't the way that "Genre" is typically constructed.

god I'm going to be that person, aren't I? The person who says that eclectic is relative, and thus, eclectic compared to whom? IRL friends and acquaintances? Our parents? What we imagine the "average person" to be?

That said, I'm pretty much in agreement with flopson re ilx and eclecticism.

i love music

you know what i really do too

i love music in theory, but some of it sucks and some of it is really boring

in college i would deliberately get into genres i had no previous interest in, mostly because i was encountering perspectives on them from people whose taste and ideas i really respected and trusted. so i got into metal, techno, dancehall... like, everything i could get my hands on, bc there was something other people saw in them, so i wanted to find that thing they saw, or find my own thing that i saw.

this has contracted considerably over the years bc eventually i kind of just focused on the music i got the most out of, which was like: boogie/electro funk, emo, death metal, house, jazz, jazz fusion that anticipates smooth jazz, '70s prog bands who tried to have hits in the '80s, etc. a lot of these genres have interrelated qualities that i respond to in each; for instance the way i respond to the lopsided rhythms in afropop is v v similar to my response to the same thing in death metal. idk if it's useful to refer to it as dilettantism, bc i really try to know as much as possible about everything i listen to bc context is paramount for me. but it's also probably dilettantism lol

i think a good test for eclecticism is half of your favorite records at any given time could not be connected to each other kevin bacon-style with less than 3 or 4 hops.

god I'm going to be that person, aren't I? The person who says that eclectic is relative, and thus, eclectic compared to whom? IRL friends and acquaintances? Our parents? What we imagine the "average person" to be?

That said, I'm pretty much in agreement with flopson re ilx and eclecticism.

― sarahell, Tuesday, January 5, 2016 3:14 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i was almost this person too, i even typed this up in just as many words and then didn't post it

yeah i'm sort of reluctant to refer to my taste as "eclectic" bc i'm always going to think i listen to a relatively narrow range of music

fwiw brad i think of your tastes as highly eclective even relative to the ilx median. maybe not quite skot level but up there

I only like good music

omg me too

idk i had a blast listening to the Worst Of 2015 playlist last night

i guess i didn't like the music tho

it'll be an interesting experiment to compare the two once the Best of 2015 is decided.

what is snow? we don't know. but snow is lots of fun, we know.

vonnegut had a similar line that i prefer: "genius is as common as daisies"

this thread is a trap

I think eclecticism entering the mainstream is a positive development, and it connects well with postmodern & poptimist "relativism". Like so many other aesthetic preferences eclecticism could be used for social positioning, but I don't think that's too interesting. I do find it interesting that it seems like most people are able to enjoy most music. Maybe it points toward some shared qualities in all music.

I don't think eclecticism necessarily reinforces conservative genre constructs - eclecticism could just as easily be seen as a critique of genre rigidity, since it makes the case that genre doesn't matter much.

Instinct is to say 'no' because I know people - mainly online - with much broader taste than me, and I feel like my own taste is ossifying as I get older, in that I know the kinds of things I'd like better and better. But then I also feel like I know nothing of any depth about any particular area when compared to genre specialists, and that I flit about ridiculously from one taxonomical category to another as far as some people are concerned. So I'd probably refer to myself, pejoratively, as a dilettante.

But then I read BraNwell's posts, and basically, aside from the fact that I don't really understand my own exact triggers for enjoyment (not playing an instrument / knowing music qua music as a language), that pretty much sums up where I am.

Compared to some people I have super limited musical tastes. Some of my friends have encyclopedic knowledge of genres I would never know. Then again I think I enjoy music from a much wider variety of music than the average American. I paid close attention to Pitchfork and the music industry up until the White Stripes hit, and which point I was more or less involved with local music from that day forward, and knew and cared far much more about music made by friends and people I knew. Of course during this time I rediscovered and discovered a lot of things I never knew or gave a chance.

The internet has kind of changed it all, making it easier for a post-genre musical landscape. Everyone can like metal or pop. There was some ad on a youtube video the other day and it showed a rhythm video game soundtracked by Britney Spears' "One More Time" and the camera panned to reveal ... a bunch of dudes who should be into something more obscure. This is fundamentally different from when I grew up, I feel. Then again maybe not. I am sort of on the cusp of millenial so while I discovered Nirvana through MTV I learned about MBV, Pixies, Fugazi, etc. from Allmusic.com and sites like this.

We kind of all have eclectic tastes now in 2016, The Future of Infinite Music. The real question seems to be comparing/contrasting.

The internet has largely encouraged a Race To The Obscure, universalizing hipsterism, so now your Aunt may post some mind-blowing 80's European kitsch accidentally.

i just listened to some jazz then some heavy metal, feeling vv eclectic RN guess what? now i'm listening to rap!

for xmas I received records from my loved ones by Arca, Oval, Sunny Day Real Estate, Jawbreaker, The National, Joyce Manor, The Beatles, Courtney Barnett, Phil Spector, Howling Wolf, Fred Neil, Justin Timberlake, The Grateful Dead, The Smiths, Bully, Cream, and The Feelies.

serious question to flappy: Did you have a wishlist (or a penchant for dropping hints)? Because otherwise, wow...

I have eclectic tastes in the sense that I am v enthusiastic about genres that have mostly non-intersecting audiences, but there are also vast musical territories into which I never venture, so, what was the question?

Related observation: I tend to dislike eclectic (or poly-stylistic) music.

serious question to flappy: Did you have a wishlist (or a penchant for dropping hints)? Because otherwise, wow...

― aka styx (paul santa cruz), Wednesday, January 6, 2016 3:15 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

nope, completely unsolicited

i think it's mb instructive to look at this the other way round; what 'schools', genres, scenes, communities or little kingdoms do people think they have a special connection, affinity and knowledge of

as 'consumption' has become easier it is less significant in itself, but there are other things in play, and not everyone hears the same grab bag of stuff the same way

guys? can we get back on topic please? i think one of the main things is how the internet made it faster to hear great music and the whole social media thing had a big effect

― missingNO, Tuesday, September 2, 2014 9:31 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Matador is very eclectic, and yet somehow is held together, often with the help of his growing collection of analogue synthesisers, that not unexpectedly, give the recording a certain depth and warmth that digital just can't achieve…

To add to the overall sound vibe, there's a stream of consciousness here and there, an extension of the absurdist philosophy that informed his previous album. As Coombes has previously said: 'I find the contradictory side of life fascinating', as he tries to tie everything together, in attempting to make some kind of sense of our contradictory ways.

@paul - actually i forgot a couple, The Wild, the Innocent, & the E Street Shuffle by Bruce Springsteen and Beauty Behind the Madness by the Weeknd.

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In a very general sense, anyone who regularly reads and participates in music criticism/music boards like ILM has eclectic taste compared to the average person. Compared to the rest of ILM, I have fairly narrow tastes, but I wouldn't visit this site if all I was interested in were a small handful of genres. I assume most of you are the same in that respect.

Too many people on this thread conflating "the community of ILM as a whole has eclectic tastes in music" with "ergo, all the individuals in that community have eclectic tastes."

No.

Peace

excited to find out how many ILXors have eclectic taste in music

I don't really know what the norm in music currently is since I tend to pick up bits and pieces from various places constantly.
Not very sure what is current anyway. Think most of what i'm listening to is normally several decades old but am pickking up current live sets from torrent sites.

Assume that means it's eclectic to some extent.

& do wonder how well known anybody I'm into actually is.
BUt then again if it is possible to find the pre-remaster Beatles Rubber Soul cd put in a record shop rack under R I wonder how well known anything actually is generation to generation.

what if there's a silent majority of people with eclectic tastes who just don't think it's anything to crow about

think i need to make some coffee in anticipation of this poll's results

I am so excited about this impending poll result I just nipped off for a quick J Arthur and my hands melted

https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4102/4859727161_504cee7e02_b.jpg

POLL closes: February 01 (in 1 second)

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

lol

50 Rubes, a new comedy by Alexander Payne

strong showing from joke response, i <3 ilm forever