My enjoyment of music got much better as soon as I got my head out of my arse and learned that there’s very little bad music out, just music I don’t like (and there’s a big difference between the two).
I heard Nile Rodgers tell a great anecdote about complaining to his jazz tutor about performing top 40 records during a show.
“I’ve got to play these bullshit songs like, ‘sugar, sugar, ohhh honey honey’—it’s all lame stuff,” Rodgers recounted telling his tutor. His jazz tutor answered that any song that sells and gets to the top 40, top 20 or top 10 is a great composition. Rodgers asked him, how can you call, “Sugar, Sugar” a great composition? “And he said something that changed my life. He said, ‘Because it speaks to the souls of a million strangers.’”