See this
Here is some flava from the article (Esquire, Chuck Klosterman)(in case the link breaks):
But whenever I do find myself meeting a stranger for the first (or second or third) time, I'm struck by how often they ask me one specific question: "What kind of music do you like?" For many years, I did not know how to answer this. I experimented with a litany of abstract responses: "rock," "active rock," "hair metal," "disco metal," "girl metal," "everything," "nothing," or whatever I suspected the other person might not actively hate. But (I think) I've finally found a response that is both accurate and honest: Whenever someone asks me what kind of music I like, I say, "Music that sounds like the opening fourteen seconds of Humble Pie's 'I Don't Need No Doctor,' as performed live on their 1971 album Performance: Rockin' the Fillmore." Beyond being true, this reply also has the added bonus of significantly changing the conversation (or ending it entirely).
But I'm starting to suspect this seemingly innocuous inquiry (and my unnecessarily specific answer to this unspecific question) might be weirder and more complex than I originally assumed. When someone asks me what kind of music I like, he is (usually) attempting to use this information to deduce things about my personality; this is (usually) the same reason we casually ask people about what TV shows they watch or which NBA franchises they support or what political movements they align with. It's the normal way to understand who other people are. But here's the problem: This premise is founded on the belief that the person you're talking with consciously knows why he appreciates those specific things or harbors those specific feelings. It's also predicated on the principle that you know why you like certain sounds or certain images, because that self-awareness is how we establish the internal relationship between a) what someone loves and b) who someone is. But this process is complicated and (usually) unconsidered.... These explicit elements, it would seem, are (or must be) the sonic qualities that I most like about music. But why is that? (1) Is it because of something Peter Frampton has personally achieved? Is it because those chords are simply the clearest, most aggressive amalgamation of early-seventies boogie rock? Does my relationship to this piece of music have something to do with my own specific life experience? Is it because of the random anatomical construction of my inner ear? Even if I'm having a purely visceral reaction—in other words, if the only real reason I love those fourteen seconds is because "they rock" (or whatever)—there still must be something about the musical introduction to "I Don't Need No Doctor" that triggers the (normally dormant) part of my brain that longs to be rocked. It's sort of the ultimate question about being alive: What makes us love things? Is it possible to know?
The author goes on to list a series of songs (or more accurately snippets and parts of songs) that he likes including;
• The vocal sequence from Kelly Clarkson's "Since U Been Gone" where she sings and talks to herself at the same time, which starts at about 2 minutes and 30 seconds into the song.
• Pretty much all the bass playing on "Paperback Writer" and "The Ballad of John and Yoko."
• The closing 1:02 of AC/DC's "It's a Long Way to the Top (if You Want To Rock and Roll)," when Angus Young's playing devolves into an inverted riff-o-rama in response to the bagpipes.
• The way the vocals are mic'd on the Pet Shop Boys cover of "Always on My Mind," which sound as if they were recorded in an abandoned Vatican City cathedral.
• The combination (and separation) of all the instruments during the last 1:25 of R.E.M.'s "Nightswimming."
To end the article:
These songs' only unifying element is that I have written about them in this column; essentially, the sole unifying element is that I personally like them.
This is why I hate small talk.
When people at cocktail parties ask me what kind of music I like, I generally assume they don't care what my answer is. I assume we're both just killing time. But let's assume they do care: Even then, our conversation is doomed. I have been actively thinking about this question for nine consecutive days, and I've probably thought about it unconsciously for the last twenty years. I can isolate and answer this question more specifically than anyone I've ever met. Yet not only does my answer fail to reflect anything meaningful about my personality, it doesn't even reflect what I fundamentally like about music. Because I can't answer that question. Nobody can.
It has me wondering, what is on my list? What is on yours?
I am...
