Levels of Music Appreciation

There are, I believe, different levels to enjoying music. I will here attempt to quantify these levels, starting at the bottom and moving up.

We start with the lowest possible level: Music you do not want to listen to under any circumstances. Let's move up from there:

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  Music you do not want to listen to, but will tolerate under certain circumstances. You may hate Nickelback, but your significant others likes them, so you'll grit your teeth in their car while you wonder why you're dating a Nickelback fan.
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  Music you enjoy under certain circumstances. Admit it: You like “Macarena” at weddings. It's OK. We're in this together. Are you listening to it at any other time? Of course not. But you have your arms out on the dance floor at your cousin's reception.
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  Music you enjoy when you're in certain moods. The best example I can think of is “The Wedding Singer,” when Adam Sandler he mentions he's been listening to The Cure a lot after getting dumped. We all have those bands we turn to in moments of emotion. When we don't need them, we put them away. And if we hear them, they remind us of those emotions.
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  Music you like... but not enough to seek out. You might ask your friend to turn it up when they play it or when you catch it on the radio, but you're not buying their album. For me, Sigur Ros fits the bill. Whenever I hear them, I think, “Oh yeah, this is good stuff.” But so I ever write them down when making lists of music to obtain? No. Yet I still like hearing them whenever I happen to.

OK, that covers music you don't have. We have to differentiate for music in our collection. They break down thusly:

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  Music you have, but you're not sure why. It's not checked on your playlist or you skip it often when it is. But when you go to purge songs, you keep it.
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  Music that you underrate in your own mind... or so you think. It's not really your favorite, and you don't listen to it often, but when you do, you wonder why you don't listen to it more often.
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  Music you prefer to listen to involuntarily. If it comes up on your computer or your player, you're skipping it more often than not. When it comes on the radio, not because you chose it? You listen to it and enjoy it. I feel like half of Rush falls in this category.
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  Music that you really like. You'll nod your head to the rhythm, turn the volume up perhaps, but you don't seek it out. When you go to play music, you don't pick it first, and it's not in your mind when searching through your collection.
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  Music that is your favorite. You make special playlists for it, it's the first music you pull up, you go out of your way to see it performed live if you can. You recommend it to people whenever you're able.