How do we account for musical taste?

The person able to happily listen to a long string of bad songs does so from an inability to process the messages inherent in the music itself.

This may sound dangerously akin to the teachings of some fundamentalists who claim heavy metal has the power to dissarrange one's very soul. Far from it, actually: these fundamentalists assume music has some reason-defusing power over individuals, and that there is no way to hide oneself from the deleterious effects of bad compositions.

In actuality, however, there is good heavy metal and bad heavy metal, good folk and bad folk, good opera and bad opera; all stands or falls on the rational propositions inherent in the compositions themselves.

Notice that I'm not talking about lyrical content of songs. A piece may have excellent music and awful lyrics (not likely), in which case I'd toss it out based on the lyrics. Here, however, I'm speaking strictly of the music itself, the notes and the instrumentation.

Why are pop songs so perennially popular? Some would say it's because they're easy to dance to, but I'd counter that complex jazz and a lot of folk songs are just as easy to dance to. Others might say it's because they're catchy and fun to sing along to, but there are many superior songs that are just as catchy and just as easy to sing along with (many even more so than their pop corollaries). The reasons supplied might be endless, but I'd assert that the popularity of pop songs is due to their anti-rational nature.

A "good" pop song is generally considered to be one with a strong beat and maybe a catchy hook, the two most basic elements of music. While I'm in no way opposed to music with a strong beat or catchy hooks, I am opposed to music that offers nothing else. Would we be satisfied if a builder stopped when the framing was done and called his building a house? Do we call a skeleton a human? Why then are we so ready to call the bare bones of music a complete song?

People accept these songs because there's nothing much to wrestle with. There is a rational presupposition undergirding such songs, but it's so simple that it can be easily ignored or just as easily accepted. The message is generally (still speaking of the music rather than the lyrics) "do what your body tells you to do," and that's a message most people like to hear, so they accept it.

The idea that music is somehow divorced from rational thought and experience has led a lot of people to reject the corollary idea that there is music that is inherently good or bad, that music itself has a moral attitude or element. Hence, such ludicrous statements as, "I only listen to Notorious B.I.G. for the beats." If music itself has no moral quality, it seems people would argue, then its lyrics are equally benign if simply ignored.

Modern man is obsessed with his supposed primal nature. Taking a cue from Rousseau, the modern everyman seems to see deep within himself a noble savage given more to instinct and action than to rational thought and reflection. Seeing this mirage, modern man makes himself in that image, thus relinquishing one of his greatest assets and most intrinsic elements: his rational mind. Wherever he can, he finds emotion trumping reason, even in his music.

Therefore taste, to the modern man, trumps all else. If a certain song compels me to a specific emotional response I don't like, I simply avoid that song; likewise, if I like the response, I will listen to the song. This is seen as taste. In the old days, however, taste was monolithic, something you either had or didn't have. If you liked a good song, you had good taste; if you liked a bad song, you had bad taste. The first step toward recovering the proper use of reason as opposed to resigning ourselves to an evolutionary instinct is to regain the concept of taste as an objective standard capable of measuring all music, and all those who listen to it.