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Originally Posted by Alfred
Now you might be wondering, how does this relate to music? Well, as I said before, her favorite bands are Rise Against, Mariana's Trench, All American Rejects, and 3OH!3. On paper, I should hate these bands. They're produced and appeal to a shallow-minded mainstream audience. Yet they produce the kind of hooks that you cannot help but enjoy. On a good day, you'll hear a song on TV or the radio and nod and hum along. On a worse day, you'll despise them, hate their guts. And when I add it all together, weigh all the positives and negatives... I dislike these bands. Such are my feelings towards this girl. For some reason, I've been attracted to her for a couple of years now, despite all the grief I have been put through. Now, after all this time, I don't want this anymore. She's not the kind of person I want. "Hooks" are decieving, substance is needed for truly good music, and truly good people.
I know this all sounds ridiculous and juvenile coming from a young teenager, but I don't really care. This is the only way I could relate music, my current emotions, and my even hatred towards society and pop culture. The bottom line is: you can tell a lot about a person by the music they like.
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You can tell what kind of music they like.
Musical taste can tell you something about a person, but only the most shallow generalities, nothing that cannot be gleamed from one minute of small talk. And even this crops up mostly because of any stereotypical personality traits they have that caused them to associate with a particular subculture, not the best things to form a character judgement from.
I appreciate what you did with the story, introducing the personal element is what made it compelling, but what you described is a rather common type of teenage girl who enjoys the music enjoyed by the majority of teenage girls. It's more a matter of probability than insight, and offhand I could offer a multitude of counter examples.
I think as music fans who tend to eagerly seek out new sounds and explore genres, we tend to attach greater significance to taste than people who passively let the background pop music soundtrack their lives. We like to think we are perhaps more conscientious, but truthfully music is just a passion, and one that still works on primarily a visceral connection that can't be mapped to a person's deeper character.