I have bad taste in music
How will I help my kids have better taste?
I have bad taste in music.
While my Discman used to be an inseparable part of my wardrobe and identity, I wasted my teenage years listening to garbage that only made me dumber and less cultured.
Surviving through an industrial metal phase, a mall metal phase, a pop rap phase, an nausea-inducing emo phase, followed by a cringe-inducing ska phase, I eventually lost faith in my ability to control the aux cable.
I still have opinions, I’ve never truly enjoyed The Tragically Hip, and Kim Mitchell’s Patio Lanterns makes my blood boil. Kim Mitchell in general really, he used to have a segment when he was a DJ called “I Wish I Wrote That” where he’d list off songs he’d wished he’d written… like Stairway to Heaven. Okay.
While the friends I associated with in my pre-teen years are partially to blame, having bad taste in music is in my genetics.
My parents record collection consisted of a handful movie soundtracks and Beatles albums. My mom cited ZZ Top as a favourite, but later, when I’d asked her about it as an adult, she admitted she really only knew the singles. We listened to a lot of new country growing up, Shania Twain, Travis Tritt, a lot of Garth Brooks.
My dad fares much worse however. I vaguely remember listening to Nine Inch Nails’ Closer when I was too young to be listening to it. After my parents got divorced, my dad had a misadventure where he won a radio contest and won backstage tickets to see Savage Garden.
My grandmother on my mom’s side listened to strictly classical music, which is fine, but not representative of having taste in my opinion.
My early introduction to popular music should also cite my uncle’s affinity for bands like Korn and Limp Bizkit. Later, as adults, we sped down a snowy highway blasting Eminem well past his best before date.
For everyone, it would have been better for my friends to introduce me to smoking cigarettes over the array of trash music and silly identities I’d inhabit for the coming decade.
I’ve consistently bet on the wrong musical horse, with my tastes either being straight garbage or cringeworthy. With six months before the arrival of my first child, I’m in need of a serious auditory rehabilitation if I’m ever going to be a cool dad.
It’s time to break the chains of my genetic predisposition to shitty music so that my kids can grow up with a soundtrack that will enrich their lives and embolden their identities as people.
One challenge is that I rarely listen to music anymore. I work best in silence, occasionally tossing on Mouth Sounds by Niel Cicierega (though I hate mouth sounds of anyone else), or Vektroid’s Neo Cali, an album so obscure the only place I know of it’s existence is Youtube.
When I exercise, I rotate between rap/hip-hop or upbeat punk music from the Tony Hawk soundtrack. I also might queue up some house music when I play Rocket League, part of an experiment to see if faster music would help me play better. It does.
Another challenge is that while there are lists of “the best albums of all time,” they’re subjective. Some albums that are revered now, will seem ancient to a child born within the next year. Dark Side of the Moon, a great album, will be 48 years old when my child is born, but ancient when we can discuss it. Appreciating the classics are great, but having a taste is more than just knowing what was popular.
It felt like, growing up, that music was such a big part of your identity, but now that I’m older music is an accompanying role, and taste is subjective. I want my kids to appreciate music and to be able to separate the artistry and nuance from the bold identities foisted upon teens to sell merch.
What have you done to enrich your taste in music? How have you improved upon your own shortcomings to provide more for your children’s development?
