If you're anything like me (and let's face it, you probably are), you know what kind of music you like, and what kind of music you think is the audible equivalent of stabbing yourself in the face repeatedly.
But, for most of us, it wasn't always this way. You likely have significantly different taste in music than you did when you were, say, five (though I have to admit that "Old MacDonald" is damn catchy). It's even likely that your musical preference has changed from even when you were in middle school, high school, and (if you're old enough), college. And while most of us will still listen to the music we grew up with (yay for the '90s, the greatest musical decade of them all), our taste for music that is currently on the radio is probably a lot different than it used to be.
There are several factors that influence our taste in music: Age, location, exposure, hearing ability, peers, family, etc. When you were five, your parents and peers were exposing you to "baby music", things like "Mary Had a Little Lamb" and the "Alphabet Song". Back then, that shit was all the rage for you and your limited understanding of the world. "Itsy Bitsy Spider" was number 1 on your iPod "Favorite Mix" list.
You probably didn't start developing real taste in music until you started school at around six or seven, when your parents or the bus driver would have the radio playing on the way to school. But, even then, you ended up liking things that your parents / bus driver exposed you to. Depending on where you grew up, it could've been anything from country to grunge. And, in those same years, you were probably seeing advertisements for different music on T.V., which was helping to shape your fragile opinions.
It wasn't until middle school that your friends, whose parents exposed them to different music than yours did to you, started forcing their music upon you. And you probably went with it, because you wanted to be "cool" and to "fit in". This continues all the way through college, with the genre changing every couple of years. Riding with your boyfriend / girlfriend in his / her car? Now, either "Barbie Girl" or "American Idiot" is playing on repeat in your head. Working in a place that has Muzak stations playing over the sound system? You're suddenly mouthing along with Macy Gray's "Try to Walk Away". Often, you don't even notice that the change has occurred.
When I was very young (around six), my grandparents were playing "American Pie" and "Horse With No Name", and other classic rock songs in the car and the house. If you had asked me, I would have said that this music was the epitome of awesome, and that, if other music existed, it paled in comparison with these audible chocolate wonders. Then, when I started taking dance lessons, my instructor was having us dance to show tunes and dance music, and I refused to listen to anything else. When I was a bit older (around eight), I moved in with my mother full-time, and she loved the Barenaked Ladies. It was almost all I heard, all the time. So, naturally, I grew to love them as well (I still do, as well as the classic rock from earlier, because, let's face it, they're great). I'd also get to listen to '90s alternative, which I really enjoyed. Right before my ninth birthday, we moved down to Florida, right in the panhandle, A.K.A. the "Deep South". The only thing anyone listened to down there was country. I was bombarded with "Songs about Rain", and all the boys wanted to be Kenney Chesney and tell their friend that "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy". I shudder at the thought of how much they corrupted my poor innocent mind.
When I got to high school, I moved out here to Arizona, so I started listening to more alternative rock, which I liked a lot more than country. I still preferred '90s alternative, but new rock was overtaking my tastes as well.
And now I'm in college, and I don't have my own car. Since my freshman year, I've been getting rides from my friends and now my roommate, and ALL THEY WILL LISTEN TO IS RAP AND HIP HOP AND POP. So one day I'm being awesome and headbanging with a Slayer song, the next day I'm bopping along to Ke$ha, wondering where the fuck my life went so wrong.
