Bet you a tenor that this boffin is out of tune!
After years of research involving 356,649 volunteers from 53 countries and six continents, an academic study has concluded that our personalities are reflected in the music we enjoy.
thus, those who exhibit rebellious traits are likely to enjoy Nirvana or rage Against the Machine, while more easy-going types prefer ed Sheeran or the Carpenters. the study found that sophisticated, sedentary, university-educated people will probably enjoy classical music. Not only that, but young, sporty go-getters will prefer energetic dance music with a strong beat, while more bullish types will go for punk rock and heavy metal.
these preferences were found to be universal, or, in the dreary language of academia: ‘the patterns of correlations between musical preferences and gender differences, ethnicity, and other sociodemographic metrics were also largely invariant across countries.’
these findings have just been published in the Journal Of Personality And Social Psychology. I can tell you that their scoop came as a blow to its key rival, the Journal Of the Banal And Wholly Predictable, the newsletter of the IBO (Institute of the Bleeding Obvious).
Oh, for the benefits of a university education! Without this ground-breaking study, who would have known that excitementseeking extroverts would plump for dance music? Or that quieter, more introverted types would shun the dance-floor for the quieter, more introverted pleasures of Leonard Cohen or Chopin?
So, for example, before conducting his survey, Dr David Greenberg might have thought that a sad, lonely person might want to dance to Agadoo by Black Lace. But now he realises that something suitably downcast from Billie Holiday would be more the ticket.
Dr Greenberg and his volunteers could have saved themselves an awful lot of time by simply clicking on radio 4’s Desert Island Discs archive. this lets you know the favourite music of more than 2,000 very different people — introvert, extrovert, sporty, bookish, happy, sad, etc — across the past 80 years. the first thing to strike you is the unpredictability of the castaways’ choices. Cressida Dick chooses Me And Bobby McGee by Kris Kristofferson. Deborah Meaden picks ride A White Swan by t. rex. Marlene Dietrich picks (there’s) Always Something there to remind Me by Sandie Shaw. Keith richards picks Spring from Vivaldi’s four Seasons. the military historian Sir Antony Beevor picks two songs by Blondie — Union City Blue and Dreaming. this all suggests that there is no clear correlation between anyone’s psychology and their choice of music. And to make it even more complicated, each particular individual invariably picks a huge range of music: cheerful, sad, intense, carefree, classical, rock and so on. for instance, David Cameron chose the gloomy this Charming Man by the Smiths, but he also picked Benny Hill’s saucy ernie (the fastest Milkman In the West). Among other Conservative leaders, theresa May chose both Dancing Queen by Abba and elgar’s Cello Concerto, while Boris Johnson chose Pressure Drop by the Clash and Bach’s St Matthew Passion.
MOVING away from Conservative leaders, the contrasts are just as vivid. the actor rupert everett’s Desert Island Discs included feed the Birds from Mary Poppins and Wagner’s Parsifal. Lady Diana Mosley, wife of Sir Oswald, chose Wagner, which one might have predicted, but also Procul Harum’s A Whiter Shade Of Pale, which one would not.
At the other end of the spectrum, Barbara Windsor chose elvis Presley’s Suspicious Minds and also elgar’s Pomp And Circumstance. the laconic disc-jockey John Peel chose teenage Kicks by the Undertones, and also Zadok the Priest by Handel.
this suggests that every individual is, at heart, unclassifiable, his or her moods and tastes so varied that they resist all attempts to squeeze them into academic categories.
Multiply this by 356,649 and you find yourself with a tangle to resist any sort of simplification, even by a Cambridge academic with time on his hands.