Confessions of a Music Snob: I Don’t Date People With a Basic Taste

Is judging someone by their playlist too harsh, or is it the most honest red flag test out there?

This is the part where I should probably say “no offense.” But honestly? Offense kind of comes with the territory.

Everyone has a petty dating dealbreaker. Some people won’t date anyone under 5’10”. Some refuse to swipe right on people who use too many emojis. Mine? Basic taste in music.

If you think all songs should be under three minutes, come with a TikTok dance, and rhyme “love” with “above,” I wish you well, but I’m not your guy.

How I Came to Be

I wasn’t born a music snob. I was just a kid with a burned CD wallet and bad taste like everyone else. My idea of deep was Coldplay’s Parachutes and the Garden State soundtrack on repeat.

Then college happened.

One night, on a whim, I followed a friend to this sketchy basement show that reeked of cheap beer and damp drywall. The band didn’t even have a name on the flyer (just a blurry photo of a goat smoking a cigarette) but they tore the place apart.

No stage, no lighting, no pretenses, just noise, sweat, and something that felt like truth.

I remember walking around campus afterward with my ears ringing and this weird clarity in my chest, like I’d just unlocked a secret level of being alive. That was the night it started.

Pretty soon I was blowing grocery money on secondhand vinyl and refreshing obscure music blogs like they were gospel. While everyone else pregamed with Pitbull, I was dragging friends into my dorm to dissect an entire Neutral Milk Hotel album over warm beer and a lava lamp.

I became that person. Pretentious? Definitely. But for the first time in my life, I felt like I had taste… and it felt powerful.

The Necessary Disclaimer

I should say I’ve mellowed out. Kind of.

I’m not the person who’ll roast you at the office party just because you queued up Shake It Off. I’ve learned to keep a straight face when friends proudly share their Discover Weekly picks like they unearthed buried treasure (even if it’s the same algorithm-fed hits from two years ago).

I get it. Music is personal. Nostalgia hits hard. And not everyone wants to cry to a seven-minute Icelandic ambient track about snowflakes and despair. Fair enough.

These days, I save the judgment for my internal monologue.

Outwardly, I nod, smile, and say things like, “Interesting choice!” Inside, though? I’m building a full psychological profile based on your playlist.

If it’s 90% chart-toppers and whatever Spotify shoved into a random playlist called Vibes, I’m making peace with the fact that we’ll probably never connect on a soul level.

I’m also not above guilty pleasures. I’ve screamed the chorus of Mr. Brightside at 2 a.m. like it’s a spiritual purge. I’ve danced to Toxic. But there’s a difference between enjoying pop and thinking it’s the height of musical achievement.

I don’t say any of this out loud anymore. But, yeah, if your music library looks like Billboard threw up, I’m judging you. Silently. Harshly. But with love. Kind of.

My Dating Disasters

Dating is where my music snobbery stops being a cute quirk and starts ruining things.

I don’t need someone to have memorized Bowie’s entire discography. But if your favorite artist is whoever’s currently doing a collab with Starbucks, we might have a problem.

Here are a few examples:

• The country girl
• The chart zombie
• Other flings

The country girl

There was the country girl. I met her at a housewarming—great laugh, great smile, devastatingly attractive.

When she mentioned her love for country music, I figured, “How bad could it be?” Hot people can’t have bad taste all the time, right?

Wrong.

Our first vacation was a road trip. Six straight hours of songs about beer, heartbreak, and the sacred bond between man and pickup truck.

I tried to slip in some Bon Iver to test the waters. She called it “hipster background noise” and asked if we had to listen to “guys who sound like they’re crying into mason jars.”

I nearly opened the car door on the freeway.

It wasn’t just the music. She turned out to be the kind of “open-minded” that comes with weird red-flag opinions about therapy and gender roles.

By month four, it was clear: her playlist was the least of our issues.

The chart zombie

Then there was the girl whose entire Spotify Wrapped looked like a TikTok For You page.

I once put on some ambient jazz while we were cooking. She asked, dead serious, “Why would anyone listen to music without words?”

And suddenly I understood why all our conversations felt like they were stuck in the shallow end of a pool.

She wasn’t dumb… just allergic to curiosity.

Every date was about going to whatever restaurant was trending on Instagram. She didn’t want to explore, she wanted to perform. Her music taste was just the intro slide to a whole PowerPoint of basic.

Other flings

Look, not every fling was a disaster—but they didn’t fare much better.

There was the girl who only wanted to go to loud EDM parties when all I wanted was to stay in and dissect a new record over wine. Or the one who called The National “whiny” and Nick Drake “that sleepy guy”—which, I mean, is accurate, but in a loving way.

Those nights taught me something: if we can’t connect over music, we probably won’t connect over the quieter stuff either. Like doing nothing. Like sharing a silence that feels like a song you both know by heart.

Music Taste as Red Flag

Over time, I’ve realized music taste doesn’t just hint at compatibility—it straight-up flashes warning signs like a Vegas billboard.

It’s not about liking the same bands. It’s about how someone listens.

I’ve noticed that when someone says, “I listen to everything,” what they often mean is, “I let the algorithm decide.” And sure, there’s nothing wrong with passive listening. But when that passivity seeps into everything else? That’s when I start backing away slowly.

Like when someone says they “don’t really care about music.” That’s not a cute quirk. That’s a red flag shaped the size of New Your City.

If music doesn’t move you even a little, what does? Do you also eat plain toast and cry at sitcom finales? Where’s the fire?

Worse still are the ones who actively dismiss entire genres.

Say you like hip-hop, they roll their eyes. Mention experimental jazz, they laugh. Tell them you cried to a folk record once and they look at you like you confessed to writing Twilight fan fiction.

That kind of knee-jerk judgment usually signals a deeper resistance to anything that challenges their comfort zone.

And no surprise—those same people tend to play it safe in every area of life. Same opinions, same routines, same Spotify playlist from high school they’ve been recycling for a decade.

Basic Doesn’t Get a Second Date

At this point, I just ask about music right out of the gate.

Not to judge (well, okay, maybe a little) but mostly because it tells me a lot. Not what you listen to, but how you talk about it.

Do you light up when you describe a live show that changed your life? Do you have an album you keep coming back to because it somehow still hits the same?

Or do you just say “I like a bit of everything” and then name three artists from this week’s Hot 100?

That kind of answer isn’t a dealbreaker on its own. But it usually comes with other things: no real curiosity, no emotional depth, no opinions beyond what’s trending. And I’ve done enough first dates to know where that road leads.

I used to tell myself it didn’t matter. That liking different music wasn’t a big deal.

But when your idea of a romantic night in is looping Dua Lipa’s greatest hits and mine involves an obscure folk record that sounds like a breakup in a cabin, we’re probably not building the same kind of life.

Because it’s not just about the music. It’s about who you are when you’re not performing for anyone. What you reach for when no one’s watching.

If you’ve never felt totally seen by a song (or wrecked by one) you might not get the way I move through the world.

So yeah, I’ll keep asking. I’ll keep noticing. And if someone makes fun of what I love or can’t name a single album they actually care about, I’m not sticking around to see if it gets better.

I’ve done that. It doesn’t.