The Art of reccomending music to other people

Do you ever show your friend a band you think is awesome, and they seem underwhelmed but then a few weeks (months or years!) down the line they suddenly say "Dude, have you heard xxxx? They're awesome!" and you say "Yeah...I said that to you ages ago"?


I'm guilty of being the person you were talking to. Its a weird thing I have where I don't like to submit myself to hype (even if its just one person doing the hyping). If you reccomend me something, I'm more likely to give it a thorough listen if you just mention them in passing and say you think I might like them than if you went "DUDE CHECK OUT THIS BAND YOU WERE BORN TO LIKE THEM!!!!"

Everybody's different. I think its just a human psychological behaviour, nobody wants to be seen to be told what to enjoy, but at the same time you just want to share the music you love with as many people as possible! Or sometimes its just a case of changing tastes - someone might not be into the band that you're telling them about now, but a couple of years down the line they'll be more into that particuar style or genre, and then they'll unknowingly come back to that band you told them about ages ago and 'get' them.

I'm sure we've all shared this experience. I'm not proposing a solution in any way, other than maybe to say if you really want someone to listen to something you love, don't push it on them excessively. I do this a lot. Its just like over-hyped movies; you hear all the hype and go in with raised expectations, and then it doesn't quite match the hype. This mechanic works exactly the same with music, which is why I'm generally wary of music which is getting a lot of hype at a particular time.

This is probably why I'm late to the party with a lot of bands. I only just started to enjoy Deftones, for example, after years of only digging a couple of songs. Changing tastes, changing situations and times, you can't really dictate when certain music is going to appeal to you or not.

As unpredictable as this is, its another of the beauties of this enigma we call music.

Make sure you keep loving that enigma,
Vinnie