I play some instruments (for fun) and take music seriously, though that phrase implies less pure enjoyment than analysis, it's really not the case for me. I get extremely strong dopamine hits from simple meledic "hooks"--as they are called--and stronger and deeper emotional involvement also with complexity and challenges to melodic expectations. For me, popular music has gone wrong (not really talking any specific time frame here) when it only meets simplistic expectations, as I think the key to how music rewards is both expectation and surprise. This problem has advanced over time and created a lot of listeners who have developed a kind of culturally induced musical agnosia. They don't seem to even hear music with a lot of different notes, chords and time signature changes as music at all. Rick Beato and others have examined this, and I hope the pendulum swing of cultural shifts moves back the other way again in time.
Anyway, back to what this combination of what I like emerges into, is that my favorite popular music artists are The Beatles and Rush. What elevates them is the combination of creativity, musical skills, and a large collection of great songs. There are many other artists I like a great deal but they do not seem on the same level in all of those qualities combined to me. Other than that I most favor classical music with a heavy lean towards Romantic and Modern Classical music. Favorite symphonic pieces are Beethoven's 9th, Rachmaninov's "Symphonic Dances," and Richard Strauss' "Also Sprach Zarathustra" (quoted in my favorite film, 2001: A Space Odyssey").
To offer something if anyone has an interest, I will just pick a favorite Rush song, one with a surface of grand musical hooks and as always with them, beneath that extreme complexity in foundations of rhythm and underlying harmonic motifs, and meaningful symbolic lyrics, these about a good and and meaningful life as analogous to running a marathon.
It's not how fast you can go
The force goes into the flow
If you pick up the beat
You can forget about the heat
More than just survival
More than just a flash
More than just a dotted line
More than just a dash
It's a test of ultimate will
The heartbreak climb uphill
Got to pick up the pace
If you want to stay in the race
More than blind ambition
More than simple greed
More than just a finish line
Must feed this burning need
In the long run
From first to last
The peak is never passed
Something always fires the light
That gets in your eyes
One moment's high
And glory rolls on by
Like a streak of lightning
That flashes and fades
In the summer sky
Your meters may overload
You can rest at the side of the road
You can miss a stride
But nobody gets a free ride
More than high performance
More than just a spark
More than just the bottom line
Or a lucky shot in the dark
In the long run
~
You can do a lot in a lifetime
If you don't burn out too fast
You can make the most of the distance
First you need endurance
First you've got to last
This should be experienced on the best system you can find:
