How do you listen to music?

Scott and I have distinctly different ways of appreciating music. I didn't realize there could be more than one way. I really thought you liked certain songs or you didn't.

When I hear a song, I listen to the way the whole thing sounds. I sort of hear the whole thing at once and notice the feeling I have at the end of the song. Good feeling = liking the song. Bad feeling = yuck. Indifferent feeling = meh. My initial feeling can change through repeated listenings, either good or bad.

Scott, on the other hand, listens to all the components of a song right away. The melody, the words, everything. He'll hear something in a song that I never heard before, point it out once, then totally wreck the song for me.

He hates what he calls "playdough songs" For him that means a song that sounds like every other song out there. Like those songs that use that horrendous auto tune. You know the thing. The Cher-"Do-You-Believe-In Life-After-Love"-voice-distorter-thingie. Everybody seems to use that awful thing and every song sounds ridiculous. On that we both agree. Except for that new Kanye song. I like it there...

He'll pick out a crappy guitar break or keyboard section that I heard as a part of the whole and ruin it. It'll be the only thing I hear from then on and after that I start to not like the song too. Aargh!

Here is an example of the kind of song he loathes (because of the simple keyboard work and the fact that it sounds like the musicians are "unaccomplished") but I like because the whole song in general gives me a warm feeling: