I may have bad taste in music

23 Mar, 2026

I listen to a whole lot of music. While working, driving... It's been a companion for many many years.

I remember my parents gifting me an iPod Nano for my birthday when I was a teenager. 2GB, red, very cute, I still hold it dear to me, even if it doesn't work anymore. "You can get something engraved on it if you want" they told me back then. My little 15yo brain came up with the perfect sentence.

Music is life
Life is music

Man, I was cheesy¹.

Back then I used to listen to a lot of rock, pop punk and emo. And I was happy. Those songs made me happy. They spoke to me. I may not have been able to understand fully what those songs were telling me, but that didn't matter.

Enter an important person in my life. They did not like the stuff I used to listen. They made fun of those pop punk artists, those songs, those sounds I enjoyed. That person is no longer in my life and I don't want to blame them for my insecurities, but even if their opinions mean nothing to me now they mattered back then. It also seemed like the whole world would tell me that that stuff was bad, chilidish. And it still does, not limited to alternative millennial playlist kinda music. I lost count of the times when, reading about a song, an artist, a composer I like I get comments like "it's childish", "the lyricism is bad", "the instruments sound terrible", as if liking them was a certified mistake.

You see, as I said music has always been important to me, but I never really studied it. I never even learnt to play any instruments². Not that I didn't want to, mind you. I just couldn't find the way.

"But Laxy," you might say. "it's never too late to start learning new stuff!" I'm also very lazy and my free time is sadly limited.

Anyway, everytime someone tells me stuff regarding music theory, I'm like that Popuko reaction pic where she says "Oh, yeah, I understand everything now" (doesn't get it at all). I am VERY interested in those stuff, but my basis are shaky at best.

And that might be the reason I feel so insecure about my music taste. I don't know what makes good music good music. I can't explain WHY something resonates with me. It just "sound good". It just "give me that emotion". In a very STEM graduate mindset, I kind of want to know the formula behind it.

Thinking about it, there's actually an exception to this reasoning. And I feel like it's an exception that proves the rule: I know a thing about music theory, actually. For the most part, I can recognize leitmotives³. I LOVE when I recognize leitmotives. It makes me appreciate the composer even more when they're used purpusedly. And that's it, that's something I can consider a formula. It gives me a solid argument in defense of what I like. But not all music is made of leitmotives, a very small part of it is, actually. It doesn't help me all that much.

In the past, when confronted with people who despise and look down on what I liked listening to, I would stop listening to that and started listening to something more appropriate, more refined. I left behind a lot of artists that made me happy or, if I hadn't entirely left them behind, I would treat them as some kind of guilty pleasure. But I didn't grew out of it. I still remember all the lyrics of The World is Black by Good Charlotte after all those years since the last time I've put it on. I still consider We're all to blame by Sum 41 a banger. Tutto è possibile by Finley still puts a smile on my face⁴.

Are those refined music tastes? Probably not. I'm sure someone would find something to dislike about that. Someone could tell me I have bad taste in music. But, you know, I think I'm ok with that now. I don't know why I love flawed things, but I've finally realized it's not something to feel guilty about. It would be sad if we all liked the same perfect things.

I may have bad taste in music and I'm not ashamed about it anymore. Even if I don't understand why I like what I like. And neither should you.

#music