Music You Want To Listen To

A few weeks back, I came across this in a post by John Althouse Cohen as he marked his favorite posts of the prior year. Cohen was defending his choice to listen to music by Imogen Heap, music you might think is intended for sixteen year old girls:

Well, several years ago I was listening to an interview with Ben Folds on the radio, and he said something that made an impression on me: you should choose the music you listen to entirely based on what you want to listen to, regardless of whether it's a reflection of your personality. I try to live by that.

Folds has it right and I think you can expand that to any art you wish to consume: listen to what you want to listen to, watch what you want to watch, read what you want to read, look at what you want to look at, critics, and peer groups, be damned. Life's too short to waste on trying to enjoy art that someone else says is good for you.

And Cohen has it right, too: Imogen Heap makes some pretty good music, whether you're a sixteen year old girl or not.