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Why do we have a certain taste in music, different than others? – Shirya R., age 11
When you turn on the radio, you might hear songs you like and other songs you just skip past. But even the songs you don’t like usually have some fans. Maybe you don’t like older music, but your parents or grandparents might love it because they grew up with it. It’s familiar and comfortable. When you’re older, you’ll likely return to music you love too.
As a music education professor who teaches music psychology, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about music preferences and how music weaves its way through people’s brains.
Some composers produce music with cross-generational appeal. Look at the song “True Colors,” which artists have remade time and time again. It was originally released in 1986 by Cyndi Lauper.
Ten years later, Disney World’s Epcot used it as part of a pre-show video. Ten years after that, it made its way to our ears again as part of the “Trolls” movie. Now, if you scour the internet, you’ll find lots of covers of this song.
How can this one song appeal to many different people over time, while other songs do not? Why do some people have wildly different tastes in music, even while certain songs can unite people from a variety of backgrounds and generations?
‘True Colors’ from the movie ‘Trolls,’ starring Justin Timberlake and Anna Kendrick.
Researchers have looked at how music works in the brain. They suggest people like music with unexpected twists and turns, which sometimes cause pleasurable physical reactions or chills. This finding suggests that humans have created and listened to music over time because it is pleasurable or rewarding.
When you listen to music, you might get chills.
Emotions and personality
Some researchers suggest people experience emotions through music, or that they choose music based on what they want to feel. A 2011 study suggests musical preference may reflect the emotions people feel when listening to music, regardless of the music’s style.
Some people respond to mellow and relaxing music. Others’ emotions are triggered by classical-style music. Still others emotionally react to singer-songwriter music like country, folk and some pop music. Preferences for certain types or styles of music might come from the time and place they’re first heard, or it may simply be specific to each person, regardless of what’s going on around them.
Though people might like certain music at one point in their lives, their music preferences change over time based on their lived experiences. When you’re struggling through a tough time, you…