Why do you listen to the music you listen to?

[DIRTY_DEEDS_93]

I personally love Avenged Sevenfold, I know some of their songs are religious but I still really like the sound of them. I actually know... uh... every word to every one of their songs...... But not because I agree with what they mean but because I like their sound, they have no songs that disappoint me... instrumentally at least.

So why do you listen to the music you listen to?

[Napoléon]

I just listen to songs depending on what mood I'm in. My 3 favourite bands are SOAD, Prodigy and Rammstein.

I guess I'm usually angry.

[JesusHChrist]

I'm a long-time amateur musician (piano, guitar, bass, synths) with a deep interest in music. Ran a small recording studio for a while.

My tastes are broad and tend to go in cycles. Everything from Beethoven to Bartok, Beatles to Soundgarden, Radiohead, and a heavy heavy helping of 70s-tinged stoner/doom/metally stuff. Playing a lot of 70s style guitar myself, I just love those Black Sabbath-influenced guitars. I like a lot of retro bands doing 60's influenced music, but with a modern sound. Brianjonestown Massacre for example. In some ways, better than an authentic 60s sound.

For rock/pop, I suppose it is the power of the sound, the driving nature of that sort of music when it all comes together in synchronicity.

For classical (or more precise, Western art music), it's the incredible skill used to create great works of art. Some are transcendent. I still remember hearing Carlo Maria Guilini conducting the LA Philharmonic in Brahms 4th Symphony. It was so intense and passionate, like a religious experience I suppose. Live, large orchestra, playing something like Stravinsky's Firebird or Rite of Spring, up there in intensity with a metal band in some ways.

That's the beauty of art forms. Something for everyone. I do like angry music. Seems to put me in a good mood. Like the blues can cheer you up.

[Alex K]

I love both "classical" and extreme music. My favourite early and baroque music, which I sometimes also perform in as a singer, is often necessarily sacred, like the Monteverdi vespers, cantatas by Buxtehude, Schütz, Bach, the St. Matthews passion, but also the great Mozart et al requiem, but later there are more large secular works like the Beethoven, Brahms and Bruckner (5+8!!!) Symphonies. I also love much early 20th century music (see avatar). The sheer complexity of construction of some bach fugues, or a schoenberg concerto, is mind boggling, even if I lack the education to appreciate them completely.

In extreme music, mostly dark, death and tech death metal.

Why? Good question. I listen to both for much the same reasons - it makes me feel good and it is interesting. It completes or helps induce a certain emotional state and outlook on life. It lets me have different thoughts, and it allows to have emotional-"spiritual" experiences which otherwise are inaccessible

[TheRealJoeFish]

I think most people listen to bands A, B and C for reasons D, E, and F, so I'll narrow the scope a little.

Why I listen to my favorite band: GORILLAZ

1. Damon Albarn is awesome. Like, his voice, and his lyrics, and his brain.
2. They're extremely experimental/artistic. Dramatically different genres and sounds are laced together intelligently throughout each album, which has a clearly defined concept. Progression of mood and song order are important to me on an album, and Gorillaz does it better than anyone I've heard.
2a. They're animated. This means they don't have to follow the same rules as other bands. Russel had a ghost inside of him, Murdoc exchanged bullets with Bruce Willis, and Noodle grew up from a ten-year-old girl shipped in a box to a hardened killing machine capable of bringing down jet fighters.
3. So many guest artists, and used to brilliant effect. In fact, I believe Plastic Beach had more guest artists than songs. This includes such luminaries as the late Bobby Womack (Stylo, Cloud of Unknowing), Lou Reed (Some Kind of Nature), and Dennis Hopper (Fire Coming Out of the Monkey's Head), plus Snoop Dogg, Mos Def, Mick Jones & Paul Simonon, as well as - quite famously - De La Soul.
4. Most importantly, they're fun to listen to. Underlying what I consider to be brilliant music and vision is simply a bubbly kind of funk, a weariness tinged with optimism that just sort of says "things are going to hell, so, fuck it, let's just groove".

[JesusHChrist]

I love both "classical" and extreme music. My favourite early and baroque music is often necessarily sacred, like the Monteverdi oratorios, cantatas by Buxtehude, Schütz, Bach, the St. Matthews passion, but also the great Mozart et al requiem, but later there are more large secular works like the Beethoven, Brahms and Bruckner (5+8!!!) Symphonies. I also love much early 20th century music (see avatar).

I was thinking we need a "classical" music thread. There might be three or five or ten who would participate.

I don't run across many who would put Heinrich Schütz on list of music they like! Not for lack of quality, as he was a master. Perhaps a bit obscure, but not I suppose if you are into pre-Baroque stuff. I like me some Schütz as well.

Def prefer Bruckner over Mahler, particularly his 8th and unfinished 9th.

[Esquilax]

Sometimes it's just one thing, one little element of a song, that'll keep me coming back. There's actually one Japanese metal song that I don't even like, but I keep listening to it because the final repetition of the chorus contains a like five second flourish from a backup singer that works really well.

Speaking of Japanese music, I also like listening to music sung in languages I don't speak, because when the lyrics don't have any meaning to them I can concentrate more on how everything sounds. Japanese and French, in particular, can have some particularly nice sounding lyrics, whether they work as actual sentences or not.

Just generally, I really enjoy complex, unified music, where each individual instrument is distinct and skillfully played, yet combine into something equally wonderful. That's why I like classical music too; a well placed violin flourish or brass kick can help transform a piece I otherwise might not enjoy so much.

With rock, I need momentum, a consistent sense of speed or inertia, if that makes sense. Music has a sense of physicality to me, the rock stuff especially; I've always thought that if a song can make me design an action scene or narrative beat from what I'm currently writing around it, it has succeeded. It's something I've always done, imagined little diegetic scenes around pieces of music that particularly strike me.

Conversely, a lot of my own music comes about the same way in reverse: here's a scene, it needs a soundtrack.

[Alex K]

I love both "classical" and extreme music. My favourite early and baroque music is often necessarily sacred, like the Monteverdi oratorios, cantatas by Buxtehude, Schütz, Bach, the St. Matthews passion, but also the great Mozart et al requiem, but later there are more large secular works like the Beethoven, Brahms and Bruckner (5+8!!!) Symphonies. I also love much early 20th century music (see avatar).

I was thinking we need a "classical" music thread. There might be three or five or ten who would participate.

Please do!

I don't run across many who would put Heinrich Schütz on list of music they like! Not for lack of quality, as he was a master. Perhaps a bit obscure, but not I suppose if you are into pre-Baroque stuff.

I love the sound of renaissance music, so I looked around what there is in early baroque as well. But you run into Schütz quickly if you sing in a choir and you're in Germany.

I like me some Schütz as well.

Def prefer Bruckner over Mahler, particularly his 8th and unfinished 9th.

Oh yeah!

[JesusHChrist]

But you run into Schütz quickly if you sing in a choir and you're in Germany.

That work of Schütz with just brass, maybe just trombones, and a baritone(?), Fili Mi Absolon I think, is one of my favorites. Dark and sad.

He doesn't seem to get much air time in the US unfortunately.

[pocaracas]

I like instrumentals...
I noticed that a few years ago, when my music collection became mostly Vangelis albums and movie soundtracks... and movies consisting mostly of songs didn't rank too well on my taste... I just wanted to have some nice pleasant sounds in my mind to let it spread its wings and attempt to review the movies portrayed musically.
Of course, some songs are mandatory, The Lion king features some nice ones and so does Shrek.

I'm not a fan of angry music... I may have enough of angry sounds in my head and I just want to soothe them with nice melodies, even if they are these:

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I think this soundtrack is awesome!

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Simple, yet powerful

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Hmm... now that I think about it... Vangelis's albums are mostly soundtracks...

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Oh yeah... classical music too... duh!