On Pickiness

Although it is most commonly used in the domain of food, pickiness can be equally applied to any other matter of taste. If a picky eater refuses Brussel sprouts, then a picky listener may eschew Country; a picky reader, Hemingway. And while dietary pickiness is often used as a stand-in for taste, it’s not clear to me if that carries over to other domains. That is, I would consider someone who only ate cheeseburgers and PB&Js to have poor taste, but I would expect someone who only listened to Jazz to have good taste (even if I didn’t share that taste).

I admit that I’ve never had such discerning taste when it comes to music. For me, familiarity trumps quality. When I played violin growing up, I mostly listened to classical music. I also watched a lot of musicals (mostly movie musicals) and got into that music. I recently tried to expand my musical taste, but now I repetitively listen to music recommended by my family, my Econ professor, girls I’ve dated, and James Acaster. I nearly always dislike music on the first listen, and only later Stockholm Syndrome myself into liking it by playing it on repeat. I can imagine people who know me reading this and objecting that I have good taste now. I’m glad I fooled you (in my imagination), but I’m afraid I’m as undiscerning as ever. “Good” music doesn’t sound so much better to me than “bad” music.

In a way, that’s very similar to the way I think about food. So I think that my relationship to music is similar to my relationship with food. I’m open to trying new varieties of each, and I generally find most everything I try acceptable and pleasant. Like everything lies on a Bell curve that is mostly above the threshold of acceptable. There are a few foods/songs or genres/cuisines that I would say I really enjoy and a few that I don’t, but most fall in the peak of the Bell curve above the acceptable threshold. I generally enjoy most music I hear and most food I eat.

And yet, while not being picky seems to suggest good taste in food, it suggests poor musical taste. I’m not ready to claim that pickiness and taste are uncorrelated, but it’s certainly possible for them to be disconnected. I have already offered myself as an example of a nonpicky person with poor taste. Everyone knows people who are picky and only eat bad, boring food. Gordon Ramsay is the most low-hanging example of someone picky with poor taste, and I would be shocked if he were an anomaly. The only case that doesn’t immediately present an example is nonpicky people with good taste, so I’m just going to handwave and say surely they exist, but they’re not as visible. Then let’s assume the same is true of musical taste.

Oh all right, but only if you insist. If I had to guess at what the difference is, it would be caused by the different ways in which people interact with music and food. After childhood, you’re rarely in a position where you’re forced to eat food you’d rather not which means that. It’s very easy to stick to familiar food. On the other hand, it’s hard to avoid being exposed to new music (and if you have poor taste, people won’t want to listen to your music), so people with poor taste are forced to accept music beyond their taste. It’s easy to go out to eat and order a burger while everyone else has sushi (depending on the restaurant), but it’s hard to hang out if you’re picky about music and have poor taste. So people learn that people who say, “I’ll listen to whatever’s on” don’t have good taste. I still try to avoid being in charge of the aux.

I think this account does discount the social effects of being influenced by the people you surround yourself with. More than likely, if you’re always listening to the music your friends are, you’ll develop a taste for that. But similarly, there might be social pressure to try new foods.