Rob Walker from The Art of Noticing recently highlighted the importance of being “open-eared”, or the exposure of one to new sounds. There, he cited the observation that people tend to get less curious about music over time – a pity, for the thrill of discovering new songs and sounds can enrich people regardless of age. To build open-earedness, Rob gave five suggestions, to which I’ll highlight two:

1. Make listening to new/unfamiliar music a habit, or even a ritual. 

2. Listen to music you don’t like. 

Since then, I’ve left the warmth of my usual Spotify playlists and ventured into unexplored territory. My first experiment was with hard rock. Next, I tried electronic dance music (EDM). My most recent genre was french pop. With these, I put on a one-hour playlist and listened while either studying, exercising, or commuting, and took notes on how I felt. And there have been some fun discoveries – not just in music, but in myself as well.

Music wise, I enjoyed hard rock more than I expected. The harshness of the singers was initially intimidating, but over time I appreciated the vocals and instrumentals as passion. Hard rock also doesn’t shy away from addressing difficult topics like mental illness (Evanescence – Bring Me To Life) and sexual assault (Nirvana – Rape Me). The combination of high-energy singing and generally engaging lyrics was a rollercoaster experience. With such a wealth of repertoire, I intend to explore this genre a bit more.

The musical highlight was discovering an amazing French artist called Stromae. While I don’t understand French, he combines the intrinsically elegant language with his unique pop sounds to produce some astounding pieces (I look up the lyrics later). My favourite is Formidable, a song on the passion and messiness of love, in a similar vein to Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. On YouTube you can find a wonderful music video with English subtitles that I have watched at least ten times.

With EDM, I discovered that I prefer music with lyrics. EDM did not suit me because there were no words to connect to, just a synthetic tone and upbeat rhythm which I found to be distracting. Classical music seems to be the only exception to this, the medium which I believe best captures Beethoven’s tenet that “Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.” That being said, I still intend to try other non-lyrical genres in the future, to see what fun creations lie in this world.

Next up, I intend to try Indian music, rap, and tribal music. More updates to come.