Taste is subjective

12/28/06

Music is a funny thing.  One person’s favorite most cherished song, artist, album, genre is another person’s most hated.  What sends one person to bliss sends another to hell.  Some people get it in their head that their biases are somehow better and more educated than another’s.  People who think their tastes are somehow “objective” and thereby should be the standard for judging quality for the other six billion human earth residents.  Whether these people have “good” taste in our eyes or not is irrelevant. It is obnoxious to be around someone who somehow thinks they were appointed to be the arbiter of good taste.
    

Unlike people who think there is such a thing as a “perfect” piece of art, I think there are a million things wrong with everything created by human hands.  The difference between something I love and something I hate is that the million things wrong don’t bother me in the former, but one or more do in the latter.  Any time I like something I know there are a million reasons someone else would hate it.  Its just that none of those million things interfere with my love for it at all.  Then again, there could be something that is otherwise perfect in my eyes, but all it would take is one flaw that happens to personally bother me, and I wouldn’t be able to stand it.  Nex time you are listening to your favorite music think of all the reasons someone might hate it.  No doubt you can find some, even if those reasons don’t interfere with your enjoyment, or are actually the cause of it.  I wish more people realized just how subjective their tastes are, and how its fine if you like it, but just don’t think there is anything wrong with the people who don’t.  Conversely, just because you hate something doesn’t mean it’s not A-OK for everyone else to love it.

 IK

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