My taste in music was awful when my daughter and her friends were 11. Honestly, this was not how I perceived it.
Admittedly, I couldn’t define “good music.” I believed I had a diverse taste that transcended genres and eras, meaning I knew what I liked.
It just wasn’t enough. Despite my best efforts to enjoy teen pop, the boundaries of taste were constantly shifting, and I remained on the outside, like Tantalus in Greek mythology, reaching for the branches of untouchable fruit.
Once, when I was asked to choose music for a book club, I asked a DJ friend to help me choose the songs. I couldn’t narrow down 8 billion songs to a 90-minute playlist, but he could. The music was in good taste. No thanks to me.
But that was a long time ago. We now live in the information age, with instant access to all of human knowledge and history.
In my quest for musical self-improvement, I turned to an artificial intelligence whose mission is to give me musical tastes that are popular, trouble-free, time-saving, and presentable.
The AI was helpful and very thorough. Too thorough. It wrote me a lifelong schedule of immersive listening, reading, joining groups, learning an instrument, and it also gave me the open-minded advice to join a band (anyone?).
Thank you, I said (always polite with machines), but I need my musical taste by tomorrow.
It was said that it would be challenging, but possible.
Version 2 involved immersing yourself in 12 genres throughout the day, starting with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 and finishing with Joni Mitchell, Queen and 2Pac before bed. World music was broadcast in a short slot in the evening, with an emphasis on music from the 1960s and ’80s. But the problem was, you were still left with a choice. Tell me which genre. I want to have good taste by noon.
After further refinements, I created a crash course plan to cultivate my musical tastes in four hours, from 8am to noon, and I now know that the most tasteful genres in the universe are jazz and indie rock.
The third genre? K-pop, which is popular worldwide and has high production values, beat out C-pop, but blues was classier than both. (The AI couldn’t release the dataset for these judgements.) I listened to 10 AI-recommended jazz tracks, a streaming playlist, a documentary, and alternative rock.
Task accomplished. Now you know my taste in music and you can too. Take a listen.
As AI signed off, he said, “Enjoy your musical journey!”
