Queen is everyone’s favorite band, or Led Zeppelin, or Nirvana, or some other acclaimed classic rock radio station approved Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame inductee. At least that’s what everybody says. When asked their favorite band or singer, no one ever seems to say Hootie and The Blowfish or Justin Timberlake, they always seem to rattle off a list of indie bands and artists to impress the other person. Or even worse recommend an immensely popular one, as if the other person had never heard of it and then act like they are doing the other person a great favor by recommending a few songs (looking at you, Pink Floyd fans). 

But why? Why do we feel the need to impress people we barely know, or try to make them feel bad about themselves based on their taste in music? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, right? Apparently not when it comes to what we listen to. Music is a part of everyone’s life, from classically trained musicians to people who sing along to the radio. But instead of bonding over how our tastes differ, we form rivalries over who’s favorite genre or artist is the best. 

This is called musical elitism, “the process of viewing all forms of music that doesn’t match one’s taste as inferior.” Sounds familiar, right? We see people like this every day and are often guilty of it ourselves. For example, if you like pop music and being annoyed by someone around you liking metal. Or seeing a person wearing an alternative band’s shirt and immediately asking them to name 3 songs.  We’ve all been a part of musical elitism in some way or another, and hopefully we all want to fix that, But the question is how? 

How do we fix something that we didn’t even know we were doing? Well, it’s hard to boil it down to one thing, but the common denominator of all ideas is open mindedness and tolerance. We should acknowledge that we all have our own musical tastes and that’s okay, being open to the idea of others enjoying the same type of music, even if they enjoy it differently. And above all, we are tolerant of the fact that some people will not like the genres and artists we like and enjoy the ones that we don’t like.