March 20, 2023
I enjoyed this podcast with Susan Rogers who’s new book This is What it Sounds Like digs into why we like the songs we like.
Susan unpacks the seven dimensions of music and how they show up along a varying spectrum in every song. She explains how everyone has an individualized taste for the configuration of these dimensions, and that how closely a particular song aligns with this pattern of sweet spots accounts for whether you like it or not.
Part of me is like awwww bummer my super hip brain what with all its complex and esoteric tastes and be distilled into a seven-spectrum graph?? But there is all sorts of nuance to this. This is just an interesting way to think about it all and perhaps deliver a bit of insight into who we are.
I do have a fear of my musical tastes atrophying to the point that I only like the old stuff and this new stuff is just insolent noise. It’s already happened to some degree, but fortunately, I’m hanging on by a thread discovering a handful of new-to-me artists each year still that do it for me and I get quite into.
My favorite of all this was Susan’s first spectrum that she talked about on the show, and one that is the least possible to apply science to: authenticity. That is, how authentic the sound of the music sounds to you. Unlike some of the other spectrums, this isn’t a two-sided thing where some people like authentic music and others like inauthentic music. Everybody likes authentic music. The weird thing is that what sounds authentic to me might not sound that way to you and vice versa. That’s what has stuck in my brain. Like I can imagine some real modern country lover’s brain going man that guy just rhymed trucks with fucks, that’s good down home authentic stuff where my brain goes that’s just silly trite manipulative inauthentic garbage. And that same fella thinking did that cityfella just sing “I’ve come to test the timbre of my heart”? because he’s just singing fake inauthentic jibberish that I bet he doesn’t even understand and me going now that’s beauty in music — that’s authentically tapping into your emotions and turning it into melody.
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