Investigating Everything
Columnist attempts to discover if people really mean it when they say they like all kinds of music.

By Nate Adams
Collegian Reporter
November 15, 2006

It’s happened to me countless times. I’ll find myself in a situation where I am meeting new people, and sooner or later the question of musical preference will come up. “What kind of music are you into?” I’ll ask, hoping to strike some common conversational ground. No matter how many times I ask this question, there is always one person who gives the one answer that causes every opening on my body to close in an instant: “Oh, I like everything.”

We’ve all said this to people before, myself included. We are all such complex people that our tastes are too intricate and detailed to be explained in any reasonable amount of time, but those three little words sum up our tastes exactly. But we all know that deep down inside, it’s impossible to like everything. Or is it? I decided to find out.

Over the last few days, I perused Facebook looking at the profiles of my friends, trying to find those three little words next to “Favorite Music.” I found three women and three men who fit the bill.

The next step was to make a mixed CD of songs to play for them. The CD consisted of all critically-acclaimed artists from various genres, including hip-hop (Aesop Rock), country (Old 97s), pop (Wilco), electronica (Matmos), rock (The Dillinger Escape Plan) and indie rock (Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Man Man). Each song included is challenging, but surely, I thought, someone who likes everything should find merit in challenging songs by acclaimed artists. However, that wasn’t the case.

Some songs were liked more than others (Man Man and Wilco were both appreciated), but no single person liked everything. One girl thought that Aesop Rock was too slow, one boy described Man Man as asinine and most people agreed that The Dillinger Escape Plan was awful. Thus, no one liked everything.

I am no scientist, but based on my small sample and my simple experiment, I feel like I’ve proven what we all knew all along: we can’t be all things to all people; we can’t like everything.

But what does this evidence prove? What does this say about our society as a whole? Are we, as a people, so afraid of offending someone else that we choose to state no preference over anything so everyone will feel welcome?

Are we so afraid of being pigeon-holed that we choose to tolerate everything and in doing so, tolerate nothing? Are we so stunted and frightened of commitment that we cannot even pledge ourselves to something as trivial as music so we pledge ourselves to everything, and in doing so, pledge ourselves to nothing? Or is it just that I am a fanatic and that normal people aren’t that caught up in something so stupid?

Well, for whatever reason (my money is on that last one), I say it’s time for a change. It’s time for us to stand up and let our music be heard. The time has come to scream the names of our favorite bands from the mountain tops, not to separate us, but to unify us in appreciation of music!

Here, I’ll start the revolution: my name is Nate Adams, and I like alternative rock, indie pop and underground hip-hop.

And you are?

adamsn1@lasalle.edu