What appeals to you about Music?

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The very best music for me says something musicly AND lyricly.

Sedaka, that visualising the beat thing sounds amazing. Wow.

I've never really analysed my taste in music, but lately I've been sorting out the random jumble of files om my MP3 player, and yes, there are some common themes there.

1. I like repetition. A lot of my high-rotation songs are very repetitive, from techno of various sorts to more unusual suspects like The Day Before You Came and Give Peace a Chance. I've actually got a cut-down version of Give Peace a Chance, because I like the chanting stuff at the start, but the last two minutes are too repetitive even for me.

2. I need to know the words. If I can't follow along with the lyric while I'm listening, it drives me nuts. If I can't figure out the words after a few listens, I'll go and look them up online.

3. I generally don't like high-pitched stuff, but having said that there's half a dozen Scissor Sisters songs and Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights on my playlist, so there's obviously some leeways there...

4. I'll go through a period of listening to the same song over and over again, then suddenly I'll be sick of it (sometimes that means turning it off mid-song) and I'll probably never listen to it again unless the 'random play' option happens to bring it up.

I enjoy 80's music: duran, duran. Go west, human league and almost every other.
I agree with some people here who prefer the instrumental part of the music rather than the lyrics. I don't listen to the lyrics, I't wouldn't really bother me if the lryics didn't make sense since I include my own imagery to the music.
What makes 80's music great is the electric keyboard/excessive use of the drums, and the overall style of the music. It just drives me crazy, it is intelligent music..
I can even dance like a 80's pro, the music fits well with the dance. 80's music to me is the music of the future, it never seems to fit well in the era it was conceived, I blend the music with images of today.
I even like the new music in the 118 advertisement, it is really catchy.

I also enyor listening to classical music: jupiter, the planets. Mahm (not sure about the spelling, the music is very elegant). Fantasia. Andagio, sparta. Aquarium.

Aha, I'm certain its called mahler. Again, I'm not sure about the spelling.

I enjoy the music that I listen to but I never seem to know who sings it or what it is called. I don't bother to find out either.

When I listen to classical music I can keep track of every single insrument playing in different tones and passing each other creating different tones, I can recreate in my mind the the whole piece timed to perfection.

For instance, in Jupiter:the planets, I enjoy the tone of the trumpet starting at a high tone (slowly) and gradually getting lower and lower and lower(I often move my hand below my ankle to simulate the lowest base that the trumpet can reach). It is overpowering beyond belief and I can feel my whole body tingle with excitment, it is difficult to listen without moving my head or body. Whilst the flutes in the background play at the jolly familiar tune, like birds singing.


I enjoy the out of tune instruments that plays different to the other parts of the instruments, I enjot listening to out of tune intruments in 80's music as well.
It is very difficult to express music in words since music is music and not words.

I like grunge, indie, post/prog rock, bosa nova, cool, fusion, Indian classical, sell out, new wave.

Not sure. Stuff I like is almost annoying but really beautiful. Like ravi Shankar its an acquired taste. You could say it is the worst sound ever if you just turn it on. But really it is amazing absorbing music in its most direct form. You can get lost in it.

My favorite music is whatever makes me crap my pants, go "what the hell is this!?!?!" As in, I stumble upon it serendipitously and the result is a total bowel-emptying paradigm shi(f)t.

In 1989 I was 11 years old and while watching MTV I just happened to stumble upon the video for "One" by Metallica.

Up until that point I thought Motley Crue was as hard as it got. I stood there, slackjawed. Just the speed and ferocity and symphonic intensity of the music. And it was just a simple black and white video, interspersed with clips from this [bleep]ed up movie about a human vegetable who had gotten blown up in World War I but who has enough sense left to want to die, and is desperately trying to find a way to communicate that. And Metallica themselves... I might have heard the name mentioned before seeing the video, but it didn't mean anything to me until that point. They had long hair but there was no makeup or spandex in sight, and there weren't any chicks in the video (aside from the nurse that mercy-killed the guy in the movie clips). And they were angry.

The looks on their faces... it was as if they were going into battle. James Hetfield looked like this Germanic chieftain from the 5th century leading his warriors into battle against the Roman Legions. Jason Newstead looked like the angry six-foot-five pale-skinned trench-coated guy that the jocks and bullies dared not even look at. Lars looked like he was beating someone to death in a rage... and I had never even fathomed the possibility of someone doing a double kick on two fusion bass drums while playing it all superfast and crazy! And Kirk Hammet, he had this look of concentration like he was performing brain surgery when he would do the fills and solos... and that last finale solo... holy crap!! !

It was then that I realized the true meaning of metal, and I would forever be changed. It was everything that hair metal wasn't. I begged my dad to buy me the album "...And Justice For All", which unfortunately was their last good one, ever!! ! (Fortunately they would maintain their purity for two more years until that Black Album crap came out.) He went "oh great! You're already getting weird on me!! !" I guess he was still hoping I'd grow up to be a normal football jock, or would at least hold off on turning "weird" until age 14 or 15.

Then one day I saw the video for "Liar" by the Henry Rollins Band. I saw that and at first I was like "what the hell? It's like this muscle-bound jock doing angsty poetry and screaming his head off while doing it?" But after a while it grew on me and I wanted to grow up to be like Hank.

And then... Napalm Death, the founders of grindcore and the granddaddies of everything that's come after it since. When I was in the 9th grade back in 1992 I was in this class where if you were well-behaved enough for a long enough time, you would get to play one of your tapes on the boombox for a class period. At lunch my friend handed me their album "From Enslavement to Obliteration" and declared "dude, you gotta hear this sh**! !! It's crazier than any metal we've ever [bleep]in' heard before!! !" And I was like "huh!? How can that even be humanly possible!?"

So I put on the tape... holy crap, I nearly crapped myself!! ! "Rarrr arrrr WOOOOAARRRRRRRRRGHHHHH!! !! Roaaarrrr Rarrrrr *grunt snarl grunt snort* WoOOOOooooooARRRRRGH!! !! !" I would later play it for my dad, and he said "it sounds like a grizzly bear getting raped." And it wasn't just that. The jackhammer machinegun-like blast beats on the drums, the guitars detuned and distorted and sped up beyond anything I could have ever previously fathomed, and all the songs were about the most horrible dreadful cruelties and miseries ever perpetrated or experienced by modern mankind. I was irreversibly altered.

The best part was, the other kids in that class - including the ones who were into Metallica and Slayer - started begging and screaming at the teacher to make me turn it off. And I literally cackled with glee!! !

A few years ago I discovered Merzbow, the king of Japanese Noise. I read about it somewhere and said "I just have to hear this for myself", so I immediately logged onto Limewire and downloaded the track "Cannibalism of Machine."

It is fundamentally impossible for human sensory capacities to process anything that could possibly be any more anti-musical. I heard Merzbow and realized it was the pinnacle of man's musical inhumanity to man... the furthest extent possible that music could ever realize "the sublime", and in a way that would have made Kant die on the spot of an aneurysm.

It was glorious.

Here's some other bands that made me go "whoa!! ! Crazy!! !!"

Most recently, there's this metal band in Finland, all I know is that their name translates as "Reinforced Concrete." It is the most gloriously cheesy example of power metal I've ever heard, and their singer makes Bruce Dickinson (Iron Maiden) look like Ian Curtis (Joy Division). Holy crap!! !

The Locust.
Melt-Banana.
The Flying Luttenbachers.
Peelander-Z.
Mogwai.
Aphex Twin.
Four Tet.
M83.
Telefon Tel Aviv.
The Avalanches.
Zao.
Rhapsody.
Dragonforce.
Apples in Stereo.
Stereolab.
Of Montreal.
Khlyst.
Squarepusher.
John Coltrane's "A Love Supreme."
Sonny Sharrock.
Iron Maiden, way back when I first heard them (c. 1991).

So yeah... that's what I dig!! !

One of the best piano passages I've ever heard was Keith Emerson's piano improvisation in
"Take A Pebble" from Emerson,Lake, & Palmer's first Album.

for the most part i dont care for lyrics either... but due to my language intersts... i find i pay them attention often

lyrics in particular that i like are in the hiphop genre (not hip POP or rap... but the good stuff: blackalicious, lyrics born, bro ali, binary star, the roots, ect)) as i find they use colorful metaphors and unique dictions and word selections and they tickle my literal imagination for language use in general... and they have CADENCE and if they speaker can form a UNIQUE relationship that mingles with the beat...

i just love it and sing to it and play the song ALL DAY like a regular parrot

1 yep LOVE techno... i used to rave it up for a few years a while back

2 i find that words are easier for me to understand when there is music.... i think this comes from me liking music where the words have a good rhythum correltation with the music... like the beat actually emphasizes the sounds of the words... but only if they fit well together... which is why i dont care for lyrics for most types of music... but for the specific genres i do care about the lyrics for... it just makes me wish people would speak to music... think i could understand them better. i have often found that some people, i have a hard time understanding, but once i come to be accustomed to their verbal speech pattern... i can better anticipate what they're saying... like when i learn a language, it's easiest for me to keep with the flow of the sentence and stumble over syables, but as long as i can keep the pace... then i get better at mouthing and pronouncing... the flow seems most importanct to me (think this learning style is what allowed me to tranlate easliy for my parents, what my lil bro would say when he was young and had a speech impediment)... so that's kinda why i do like lyrics.

3 yep i listen to the same stuff a lot... epsecially since my whole CD collection got jacked a while back and i've had to rely on my small selection on my old-as-dirt MP3 player (cant add new stuff)... i must say, it doesnt bother me that much...

The best music for me must be either lyrically interesting, or musically phenomonal. If it is both, then I have trouble getting it all and my brain kind of shuts down.

here's my favorite bands:
Flogging Molly
They Might be Giants
Type O Negative
Social Distortion
Brian Setzer Orchestra
Metallica (the older stuff)
Jim Brickman
Suicide Machines
Tenascious D
Johnny Cash
Nine Inch Nails
Tom Petty

I like a lot of individual songs, but these are the bands that I consistently enjoy.

Its mathematical perfection.

I'm a musician myself. Music brings me to a greater place. It allows me to try to express myself without the use of words. Plus, I love that music can be interpreted so many different ways, and when I play it, I can create a work of art through my rehearsals/performances.