Lives to listen to music, doesn't care about the history

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Anyone else live to listen to music. Listening to music is the most important thing to them. Without music they would be lost. But music history or even the bios of of artists don't matter. You don't care about reading a person's bio, just listening to them sing. Anyone else feel this way?

Not exactly, since my favourite music is live music or listening in public (been to a Bowie screening recently), so they both involve a kind of acquaintance with the artist. But the people's background is unimportant to me on another level - recently there had been a poster who said they need to believe what the artist is writing about and their personalities needn't contradict their songs, I'm far more laid back when it comes to content, and I don't feel like I always need to approve of what the artists are doing or writing about.

I had just been filling my world with sound until the first week of college when I was forced to endure a solid week of stillness and "alone" time (before all my shipped stuff - including stereo - and my roommate arrived). It was very educational. Now I ... LISTEN ... to music as opposed to having a constant background wall of sound. Which means that now I listen to music in a much more structured way, but I hear more. If that makes any sense.
The bio of the artist can be counterproductive. I've found that if I don't like the author, I can't continue to enjoy the work (for example, I dislike Henry Miller as a person and so I can't read his writing without adding "yeah but he's an a$$hat" to every other sentence. Seriously you guys, he's a pre-war douche. Or Between-War-Douche. Whatever. He was vile)

I'm not that way about music, but for some reason I'm like that about poetry. I have memorized many poems but I have no idea who wrote them. It never occurred to me to look.

I care about who wrote it, I just don't care about the history of the group/singer.

Well, as someone who pretty much has music on all the time, I guess I do live to listen to music. I very much enjoy it. I was away without any mp3 player or computer access, and I found one of the hardest things being away from my music I like.

As far as the artist histories, well I sorta care, but not really. My main music I love is like, 90s eurodance, eurobeat, and Italodisco. In those genres, it almost encompasses what you're describing. Many of the singers sung under pen names. I know in eurobeat in particular, some artists have like 15-20 different pen names. It's sorta just music made for the sake of music. The artists aren't really looking for fame from it. Some are much more famous in other fields besides eurobeat, ie, Fabio Lione from Rhapsody of Fire sang eurobeat. I like that, the sorta lack of ego in the artists with that setup. I'll look up an artist online, and generally come across some history, but for the most part, there's not much around. Especially in the case of the eurobeat/eurodance/italo, it really is just manufactured pop music in that regard. Like one group I like a lot (Sweet Connection) never released an album, switched out one of the two singers, and only released 4 singers, and lasted from like 1988 to 1991. Not much bio can be made on something like that. In a lot of ways, I feel bad, as I feel some of these people are magnificent singers and deserve to be famous, and they're not. Rarely, there will be some artists I really find their backstories inspiring or cool in some ways, like Ryuichi Sakamoto or Mari Iijima, but for the most part, yeah, a song is a song.

That said, to throw this thread into a loop, check out Charles Manson's music!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yI2aAwyzDeE[/youtube]

Having thought about it, I do care about who wrote the song, but I don't really care about what I listen to. I absoluely adore all music =. Does anyone else have a hard time picking the top songs/top albums because you love it all =?

If an artist really stands out and I obsess over them or their band, I will research what other projects they've been involved with.

John Lennon is the only artist whose life I've read about.

I find I go in cycles of sorts with music. It's like food. Some days/months I'll be in the mood to eat one thing, then the next month I'll have a "trend" of some other foods I wanna eat. As far as favorite songs and albums, you pretty much gotta use time for that, I think. What songs have you heard forever, and still totally adore today just as much as you did when you first heard them, or adore them more than when you first heard them?

Like for me, if I had to pick a favorite song, it'd probably be a tie between these two:
Dream - My Will
Vanessa Carlton - A Thousand Miles

Those two songs I remember from like...middle school, and I adored them back then, and still do now after all these years. They've stood the tests of my musical trends (some of which looking back I feel like an idiot for, like gangsta rap and metal) and remain today. They're also just completely beautiful songs. So that's how I'd judge what your "favorites" are. Remember the "make new friends and keep the old" kinda thing, I think it works that way.

As far as liking all music, that's a decent attitude to have, but it's disingenuous I think. Everyone has stuff they prefer to some degree more, and be proud of that. But at the same time, I think an attitude that's worse is like "I only listen to symphonic darkwave glitchcore death metal (or insert some other made up snobby genre), and all other music is for Cretans." Compared to food, there's "fancy" stuff you eat, and then "staples" and I believe music works the same way. Just like there will be 5 star chefs who'll eat at McDonalds, music is the same way.

This anecdotal, but a guy I skate with, once he found out I listened to jpop and techno mostly, he told me this story. He said there was a radio interview, with I think the guitarist in Megadeth, it might have been some other metal band. The DJ asked him "So what have you been listening to lately?" And then the guitarist replied "Well, do you wanna know what I've actually been listening to, or do you want me to tell you what you'd want to hear." And the DJ was like "Oh, c'mon, yeah, tell us what you've actually been listening to!" And the guitarist replied "Kelly Clarkson's new album."

I find it sad when someone says that they are saddened when they remember liking metal music.

I still listen to power metal and 80s metal occasionally.

I don't know, I feel it's too negative of a music type, in as far as the emotional vibes it gives. Things changed in my life, and I found myself less drawn to it, and more drawn, well, to girly pop music. I guess I just grew up I guess. Or was reborn. Who knows.

I say reborn into a flashdancer

That's at least 50% of all National Socialist Black Metal fans. I'm being conservative here, numerous right-wingers think it is a complete joke and think it's trash.

I count Drudkh as NSBM (this isn't exactly a fringe opinion), so don't get strung out on me because I brought this up. Tons of Drudkh fans don't seem to care about the band's history and listen to it anyway.

I think the music is the most important. If you like the bio then it becomes simply trivia and celebrity crap. I used to buy CDs and listen to the music and not even bother to look at what each track was called. Somehow it seemed much purer to just listen.

But when I was a kid I was obsessed with looking on record labels to see how long the tracks were. For some reason the minutes and seconds of the tracks made a different to how I felt about the song.

The biography may explain their style and influences. Those influences could turn out to be other bands I would like. So for that reason I would poke around in their biography.

If it lists their influences I might care but I am turned off by Metallica based on their screwing of Napster. Plus I don't need to know an artists political views.