Growing up in a very music-centric household, with my dad being a band member and being highly involved in the city's music scene, that music, mostly rock and metal, were the first ones I was exposed to when I was very young. Even when we moved to the UK, and I began to be exposed to a lot of music in English it was pretty much the same thing. While I definitely liked it, it's also the only music I ever really had any exposure to. I also didn't really seek it out myself. While there were one or two songs I really liked at the time, mostly early 2000s emo rock type of stuff, it wasn't until about 2012 or 2013 when I began actually just playing music myself on things like YouTube, instead of just waiting for my dad to put something on in the living room or whatever was on the car radio.
While I still didn't listen to a lot of music at the stage, while I was finally able to look for my own music, I didn't do much with it, mostly just listening to songs I already liked in my own time. The only thing that threw a wrench into things was music from various games I liked, which I also started looking up and listening to at the time. At this point the exact kind of music I like began to establish myself. While there were some main genres I liked, I mostly just enjoyed anything with some power and emotion behind it, that was very rhythmic and had a good flow, which lead me to pick up a few extra songs from different genres in the following years. Pretty much the only thing I learned about my tastes at this point is while I very much like a lot of rock and metal like my dad, I don't really care for some of the ultra-heavy stuff he listens to.
Then, from a mix of just no longer being a baby and being able to get to music myself, exposure from my parents, and a pretty strong homesick wave, I began listening heavily to music from my home country of Poland. In fact, nowadays I'd say I maybe listen to 9 songs in Polish for every 1 song in English, or maybe even more than that. On top of classics everyone knows, I also began to keep up with the modern Polish music industry a lot more. While I never really exposed myself to current Polish pop culture or events or topics of interest on the Polish internet, mostly through peer-pressure from YouTube or Amazon Music to give certain popular artists I tried, I ended up discovering so much more music I liked. One album that was life-changing was this electronic, cyberpunk-esque one, called Wojny i Noce, which when I heard for the first time, I was in shock. I never thought an album could be so perfectly suited to my music tastes before, as it were made specifically for me. While that kind of music is something I liked before, I never sought it out as much, that is until I played Cyberpunk 2077, and realised yet again how much I love that music and the atmosphere with it. It also has some songs in English, but in general I highly recommend checking it out just for the extremely solid atmosphere of the album as a whole.
Another weird category I can't live without in recent years is sung poetry. It's a genre that definitely a lot more popular in Eastern Europe, and one that isn't really understood elsewhere. Again, it's one I liked and had some exposure with before, going to some concerts and even inviting sung poetry bands we know to perform in the UK, however it wasn't until I discovered another popular modern Polish artist, Sanah, that I had that revelation, and realised how much "for me" her music is, and now it's something I listen to almost exclusively. Like I said in another post, I love some depressing media, be it games, music, or otherwise, which is also probably why I like sung poetry and more cyberpunky electronic tracks as well.
What really solidified to me what genres and artists I liked was when I finally decided to take the plunge and start buying vinyls recently. And the ones I went for first were all these more contemporary artists I never thought I would care about so much.
So that's where my music tastes are at right now. Mostly focusing on Polish music, with rock still being a large part of it, but also sung poetry now also being another huge chunk. Basically, my music tastes are all over the place.
