Why Do We Like What We Like?

It might have started in the womb. Maybe it's life experience. I'm skeptical.

Why do we like the kind of music we like?

I think it's just a click - click on, click off - but mostly on. Our brain synapses zzzt on something and they we are - hooked.

I'm a rather eclectic music lover. I love lots of things, and I don't know why. I love big bands, and I surely wasn't around during their heyday. I love sixties rock because, yea, I was around then. I'm not completely in love with sixties rock, though; maybe because it's too familiar. I used to love it, but now I say I love it because - well, that's what I'm supposed to say.

But the topic of why we pick what we pick fascinates me. I should have been some kind of scientist, or at least a sociologist, but I have no discipline or ambition. Really, I have neither. I just like to "wonder" about things.

I like to play the game (sometimes) that if I was suddenly catapulted onto a stage with a live band, what songs would I sing? Well, first of all, as a known failed singer, I would gravitate toward something that was within my vocal range. I would also lean on the songs that are waaaay familiar - you know, like something by Merle Haggard, or any three-chord song from the sixth decade of country music - again because I am lazy and insecure.

But say my voice could magically wrap around any song.

I believe I would choose something like this:

Or:

I'm a sucker for those classic songs - maybe I'm just old, or maybe my taste has improved with age. When I was a kid and Sinatra would flick onto the TV screen, I would stomp away. My dad wasn't a Sinatra fan, either, so I took my cues from him. One has to become old before they appreciate Sinatra, maybe. But I watched this movie - "The Joker Is Wild" - on my portable black and white TV and I folded that memory inside my skull - it was a sad, melodramatic movie, trust me - but kids gravitate toward melodramatic things - emotions that are "out there" - because our brains aren't fully formed and we have to be hit over the head with stuff before it registers.

On the flip side, maybe I would sing songs like this:

Because that would just be fun.

I suppose I could channel Mike Love, because this is a song that I will fold into my heart forever. I even, at ten years old, wrote alternative lyrics for this song, because girls couldn't sing about "California Girls". So I titled mine, "English Boys" (I was heavily into the Beatles then,)

But honestly, I'd probably just do this one:

And no, he doesn't say "pickles in my head", but I'd probably sing that, just for fun. And everybody would get it. Because that's what everyone hears.

Yea, Dwight. I mean, if I'm going to spend my teeny vocals on one song, this would be the one.

But I'm open to requests.