While testing Google Reader I discovered a site called Marginal Revolution and a piece written by Tyler Cowen about the musical tastes of presidential candidate Barack Obama. It appears that like most people of my generation, he was shaped and is still stuck in the 1970’s though he threw in some jazz for the elitists and a little Jay-Z for the under 30’s.
I have a fondness for the music of my childhood and pre-teen years myself. XM’s seventies channel is one of my favorites and I have plenty of oldies on my own iPod. But I have other genres and eras as well. Rob gave me a mini-drive for our anniverary and it took over twenty minutes to download my music files. Apparently if I were to play all the music I have collected from A to Zed it would take about a week.
My tunes list is mainly for running and yoga. Currently there is 80’s stuff playing but the Carpenters have snuck in as has a bit of Eminem, The Fray and Blink182.
So if you care to out yourself, what’s playing on your radio, iPod, stereo or computer these days?
As always, leave the comment here or link back.
anniegirl1138 
iTunes tells me I could go 51.9 days without repeating a track. I have a lot of music. I love a lot of music, in most genres, and always enjoy finding new stuff.
Well, on my computer you would find Tracy Chapman, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Sarah McLaughlin, Allison Crowe, Sherly Crow, The Chieftains, Mary Black, a lot of Celtic albums from Putumayo World Music, especially women’s Celtic. And now that I’ve grossed everybody out with my middle-aged chick emo and Celtic, I’ll move on.
Like Richard, my iPod has way too much on it to even attempt listing – but then I’ve simply synched it and not gone in to create playlists (who has the time for that??). If you looked at my top recently played selections though, you would likely find some Eminem (Shake That, White America, The Real Slim Shady and “Pistol, Pistol” from the Re-Up), Frank Black and the Catholics (Cold Heart of Stone and many more from that LP), Tool, A Perfect Circle (passing a barf bag to silverstar), The Gourd’s cover of Snoop Dogg’s “Gin & Juice” (if you haven’t heard that, give it a listen – a bluegrass arrangement of a hip hop tune is something you have to hear), and an assortment of mostly late ’90’s stuff from the MuchMusic (Canadian version of MTV) collection “Big Shiny Tunes”.
Mine contains Ryan Adams, Kelly Willis, Caitlin Cary, REM, Bob Dylan, U2, John Lennon, Prince, some audio books and a bunch of Howard Stern. The Ipod is TOO huge to list everything on it but the above is a good representation.
There is about about how we connect to music: the emotional binding age range and why we “stick” in the music of our youth, why so many of us like the music our parents did in some way, and so forth. I thought it seemed really interesting and explained a lot LOL. Like why I’m stuck in the 70s and still like crappy songs from the 80s.
Whatever the snobs said in the comments to that post you linked to —bah. I like knowing what music people like. Is it relevant? Maybe not but I like to know.
In some way it is satisfying to know that Obama also is a huge Stevie Wonder fan, and also likes Earth, Wind, & Fire and John Coltrane and Miles Davis.