I am quite proud of how awful my music taste is. In the first place, I don’t particularly have a complete sense of what kind of music I actually like, and all of my playlists are quite a bit closer to being ragtag collections of various songs that I’ve simply crossed paths with over time rather than being well-refined sets of tunes designed to fit a specific mood or purpose at any given point in time. I’ve once joked that my music taste will have a song like “Paranoid Android” by Radiohead (which, FYI, is my favorite song of all time) followed shortly after by something like Die Very Rough by Mario Judah (gay parody).

This is not to say that my music taste was empty, however. You can get a fairly good idea of what I was listening to before over on my other article.

HOWEVER, MY FRIENDS! THIS MUSICAL INDECISION SHALL CONTINUE NO LONGER! I SWEAR UPON IT!

In order to understand my present situation, let’s first go back a bit to the past. Roughly two or so months ago, I bought my first ever records at a store out in Spring, Texas for next to nothing on a complete whim, and after listening to them for the first time, I was absolutely hooked. Less than two weeks later, I had my own record player, an admittedly pretty dogshit little Amazon turntable that I used to cause all-out auditory havoc with in my house. Most of my records were dollar-store thrift picks of music originating from anywhere between the later half of the 1800s to, at earliest, about 1970, so my music taste was heavily antiquated compared to type of music I had been listening to previously.

My Record Collection

From that point on, I’ve since garnered a small, but content collection of records. I currently have all of the following:

• Dave Brubeck’s Greatest Hits
• The Bobby Darin Story (includes Mack the Knife and Beyond the Sea)
• Minecraft Volume Beta by C418
• Sinatra: A Man and His Music
• The Best of Bobby Darin
• Classical Jazz by Gershwin
• Jazz Guitar Bach
• Bert Kaempfert’s Greatest Hits by Bert Kaempfert and His Orchestra
• Italian Reformation Symphonies, composed by Mendelssohn and played by Arturo Toscanini
• Days of Wine and Roses by Andy Williams
• The Romeo and Juliet Original Soundtrack by Franco Zeffirelli
• The Guitar Artistry of John Williams (Bach), compoased by Bach and played by John Williams
• Ragtime Melodies by Joann Castle
• Liberace Plays the World’s Greatest Music by Liberace
• Beethoven Violin Concerto (in D), composed by Beethoven and performed by Heifetz, Munch, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra
• Cavalleria Rusticana by Simionato del Monaco, Mac Neil and Serafin
• I Like Tchaikovsky, compoased by Tchaikovsky and performed by Carmen Dragon, The Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra, and the Capitol Symphony Orchestra

Now, we skip to present day. I’ve actually garnered something resembling a music taste, but by god, it’s sort of all over the place. With no real playlists other than one gigantic megamix of every song I’ve ever even taking a slight amount of interest in, it is undoubtedly more than a bit late to finally explore some new artists and develop some real playlists.

Records I Would REALLLLY Like

I basically want everything listed on this article on vinyl, but I especially want the following in particular:

• Twilight by Boa
• Life by The Cardigans

This Cannot Continue: Moving Forward

Moving forward, I’ve actually got a bit of a plan as to how I’ll work to diversify my music taste a bit. I’m slowly taking suggestions on the kind of music that I listen to, but it’s undeniably difficult to really feel sold on new music for the first couple of listens.

For a picture of what I’ve been trying to listen to, here’s a list of some of them alongside my thoughts surrounding each band/song/album/etc.:

• Aurora Avenue
  • I actually quite like it. I’ve listened to a good amount of their songs now, and I can say for certain that I’m a fan.
• Lamp
  • I’ve actually been listening to Lamp for a bit prior to when they were first recommended to me. I actually just never properly got into them, quite like Massive Attack. I like the vibe of their music, and in particular, one of my favorite songs of theirs is “Hatachi no Koi.”
• Tom Odell
• Gang of Youths
• Sufjan Stevens
• King Crimson

I’ll post reviews for everything eventually! Feel free to send me more!