An honest answer is “all kinds,” but that's also an annoying answer because then you are stuck wondering

“So is this guy a music fan or is he just undiscerning?”

I think a better answer is to say something like

“When I was a teenager I became obsessed with music and that’s never really changed. I liked Queens of the Stone Age and a math rock band called Hella. Now I listen to all sorts of things. I've been listening a lot to a folk musician named Hannah Frances recently.”

There. That gives lots of threads to whichever son of a bitch that's trying to get to know me.

But the honest answer is also interesting to me, because as a teenager, I wasn’t as omnivorous as I am now. I once had a stronger sense that there was music I didn’t like, and it was important to signal as much.

It also felt important to recite genres in the way I’d learned to monastically catalogue them.

“Oh, you know, avant-garde hip hop, breakcore, tuvan throat singing.”

Reflecting on this, I think I was genuinely hopeful that people would continue to want to talk about music with me after responding in such a way. I just didn’t realize how pretentious it sounded (or maybe I did and I was simply a snobbish scoundrel.)

What’s changed?

For one, I don’t need my taste in music to make me feel unique among my peers. I moved to a country far away so now I’m unique for free!

I’m also just a lot more eager to find things to appreciate in any particular piece of music. Not because of some striving-patrician insecurity, but a curiosity about what it’s doing and how. Being a musician is a gift in that way. I love listening to music with someone and pointing out little details in the composition, arrangement, or production that make the music special.

That’s not to say I’ve obtained aesthetic enlightenment and love all music equally. Plenty of tunes I encounter make me go “Hm, kinda boring,” but I take that as a skill and/or effort issue instead of a reason to look down on it.

Is this all just some subtler flex? Some more impressive sensitivity? I don't fucken know, man. I've been listening to Hannah Frances a lot lately. All kinds. There's so much music to love.

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