I’ve had this question posed to me a dozen times or more. Just a by-the-way question because “everyone ought to have a favourite and we want to know what yours is”, or back in the day during a ‘how well do you know your future spouse?’ quiz when my wife and I were dating. Actually, we totally expected that question so we actually prepped for it. So what ‘was’ and ‘is’ my answer? Frankly, I have no idea! Please don’t tell me I’m supposed to have a favourite song and even worse than that, please don’t expect me to have a favourite band! I don’t know how many millions of songs are out there, and given I’ve not heard a fraction of them, I’ve heard enough to know that I simply like too many of them, and they are NOT by the same artists. They are no-ways from the same genre either. If you saw my music collection at home, you’d only be able to tell what I don’t like, by the obvious lack of certain genres. Sorry to all East European accordion music fans!
Perhaps there is another way of telling my favourite. Let me look at my music collection, and see which artist is represented more than any other. If this is the measuring stick, then the answer is U2. I almost have their entire discography distributed across cassette, CD and mp3 so perhaps it’s the men from Ireland. Maybe it only represents a phase? I bought almost all that was available when I was in high school, maybe even in just 1 year. The rest followed out of a near obligation but I’ve never been disappointed; with the exception of that Green Day collaboration maybe. The next closest is Hillsong but that was only because we won their entire box set!
Maybe it’s simply music that I’m so crazy about; The diversity of the back beats and the heart behind the myriads of different lyrical content, the cultural differences of all the instrumentation and the hairstyles of the different lead vocalists!
The question has morphed now I think. It’s no longer who or what is your favourite, but something a lot more rhetorical. ‘What’s not to love about music?’