"Everything" is a Lie

I think one of my biggest pet peeves (ever of all time) is when people respond to the question "What kind of music do you listen to?" with something like "Oh, everything" or "I like everthing." My inner response is generally something like "No, you do not listen to everything. Nor do you like everything. Thank you for your meaningless response to an otherwise meaningful question."

Call me a literalist or overly technical, but nobody listens to everything--all genres, all styles, all artists, all songs. Besides being impossible, I've never met anyone's whose tastes were actually that broad. But even besides the literal meaninglessness of the answer, my bigger frustration is the fact that people who respond to such questions with "everything" have told me absolutely nothing. "Everything," as it turns out, means something different to just about everyone. Normally people ask these types of questions as a means to get to know someone (the music someone listens to can be extremely telling about who they are, but that's a subject for a different entry) and if you tell me that you listen to "everything" all you've really said is "I listen to all the music that I listen to" or something equally inane.

Usually I make it my goal to see how fast I can name something they do not like or have never listened to, and/or wouldn't want to once you tell them about it. Usually it doesn't take very long because no one ever really means "everything". More often than not any given person will have some aversion to either country or rap (or some broad genre) in its entirety. Even more often than that they simply mean that they like Top 40 hits, i.e. all the popular songs and artists on mainstream radio (which, granted, may constitute generic variety, but by no means everything). Whatever the case, it's not hard to find something that the person doesn't like or has never heard of. Yanni, Neil Diamond, and Kenny G are good, well known go-to artists in such situations, or, in terms of genre, bluegrass, scream rock, "oldies", and new age. Of course I (as well as many others) could choose instead to name artists the vast majority of people have never heard of, but that would be less useful to the point.

What I'd prefer to get in response, ideally, is specific artists that the person listens to the most. But if that's too much, at least give me the two or three genres to which you most often lend your ear. There's a huge world of music out there, people, and any given person probably listens to but a tiny fraction of it. So tell me you listen to hip-hop, early jazz, classic rock, contemporary Christian (sigh), folk, celtic, techno, or simply enough, Top 40. But whatever your response, let it be something that at least starts to mean something. And if you still wish to be vague, then say "I have a broad taste in music" or "I listen to lots of different things" and we'll go from there. But please, oh PLEASE do not tell me you listen to everything, because you DON'T listen to everything and we both know it.