Several years ago I decided to package my life within a monstrous mix CD made up of songs I adore.

My friend and I had always mailed each other mix CDs (previously tapes) to chronicle each musical phase of our lives. Friends since high school, we were only really familiar with our semi-refined, post-adolescent musical tastes. All of the formative chapters our musical lives had been ignored. This little endeavor would address that.

My life as a playlist wound up being 7 CDs long.

I realized after the fourth song selection that this was a futile effort. Music has been my lifeline since my saggy-diapered days as a toddler bopping around the house to “Hotel California”. Compiling such a compendium would be a lesson in sheer madness.

The difficulty lay in being able to take a snapshot of the music that truly represents me. How can a mere handful of songs represent each stage of my life? I was having a hard enough time nailing it down to a few dozen.

My lifelong devotion to music didn’t allow me to omit particular songs or genres. Each song, each musical innovation, each 3-min drug fix was something that ultimately shaped me. I connected with it. I felt it. I let it seep into my soul. I felt as if a little of me died with each song omission.

Music transports you. Music liberates you. Music consoles you. Music educates you. Music inspires you. Music completes you.

You get what I’m saying. In some way, everyone connects with music.

But why? Why do we develop such a bond with it? And why do we connect with the songs we connect with?

…

“What kind of music do you like?”

Clearly, one of the most difficult questions ever posed. I would rather explain the quadratic formula to you than to figure this question out.

Chuck Klosterman wrote an interesting article about this bizarre conundrum.

He, too, was baffled at how this question could best be answered:

I experimented with a litany of abstract responses: “rock,” “active rock,” “hair metal,” “disco metal,” “girl metal,” “everything,” “nothing,” or whatever I suspected the other person might not actively hate.

But (I think) I’ve finally found a response that is both accurate and honest: Whenever someone asks me what kind of music I like, I say, “Music that sounds like the opening fourteen seconds of Humble Pie’s ‘I Don’t Need No Doctor,’ as performed live on their 1971 album Performance: Rockin’ the Fillmore.”

Beyond being true, this reply also has the added bonus of significantly changing the conversation (or ending it entirely).

…

Joe Strummer sings about this as well in his 2001 song “Bhindi Bhagee”:

So anyway, I told him I was in a band
He said, “Oh yeah, oh yeah – what’s your music like?”
I said, “It’s um, um, well, it’s kinda like
You know, it’s got a bit of, um, you know.”

He then launches into a list of every music genre he can think of. Because that’s just the type of guy he was. Into everything. Musically indiscriminate.

How do I sum up everything that I like? One genre doesn’t cut it. And saying “I listen to everything” really does sound like a cop-out sometimes.

…

At the suggestion of the Klosterman article, I bought Daniel Levitin’s book This is Your Brain on Music. In it, he explores the connection between music and the human brain and why we emotionally attach to music. He argues that music is fundamental to our species. “No known human culture now or in the recorded past lacked music.”

What better hope for the human race?

“The only proof he needed for the existence of God was the music.” – Kurt Vonnegut