I agree with the exposure theory, but would add a couple of things. I think some of it has to do with where you grew up. In my early days in the inner city of Cleveland Ohio, all I really heard was Motown and various variations of R&B. I am sure the kids in Texas and Oklahoma grew up with a steady diet of country music. New Orleans and St Louis had the jazz, Chicago had the blues.... you get the idea.

It is also tied to your music education. In studying music, they teach a concept called "levels of listening". The more you know about the theory of the music, the deeper the level you can listen to it.

Listen to Yesterday. As you listen, count the measures of 4. Most songs have a cadence that comes out to "8", meaning 8 phrases of 1-2-3-4. Count them off in Yesterday. You find it is only 7. That's what makes that song unique. Your average Beatles fan hearing it on the radio has no idea what any of that 7 phrase movement means, and it doesn't matter that they don't, just that they like the song.

Listen to Beethoven's 5th. That signature line that phonetically sounds like dah dah dah daaaaaahhhhhh.... dah dah dah daaaaaahhhhhh.... It is very recognizable and people all over the world can tell you that they recognize it as Beethoven's 5th. However, what makes that signature passage musical? If you listen to the piece all through that movement, with any ear training at all you soon realize that you are hearing the same minor 3rd interval over and over and over and over, just with a different base note. Your average listener will not pick up on that, and it doesn't matter, just that they appreciate the piece.

Here we have a very fine outdoor venue known as Blossom Music Center. There is some pavilion seating and a big hill where people come and spread their blankets and listen under the stars. The Cleveland Orchestra does a summer concert series there. About 6 years ago, they were doing a Mozart program, and Mozart's "A Little Night Music" (Eine Kleine Nachtmusik) is my absolute favorite piece of music. I have the score to that symphony, so I bought my lawn ticket, put the music in a briefcase, and went to the performance. I got there, spread out my blanket, and got the music ready. It is all taped together accordion style so I can turn pages like the pleated bellows on the accordion. So 8pm came, they started the performance, and I sat there moving my finger along the score following along with the music. Everybody around me was looking at me like I was crazy. Except for one 40-ish woman who was watching very intently. Between the movements, she leaned over and said "You really know what all the means, don't you?" and I explained that yes I did. At the intermission we started to talk and she said how she always wanted to learn how to play the piano. My reply was "So why can't you? Nobody comes from the womb knowing how to play music. Or drive. Or cook. Or hit a golf ball. It is just repetition. If you are willing to put in the time, you can do anything you want to do." We exchanged business cards and I didn't give it another thought. The next year in about March, she called me. She had started piano lessons 2 weeks after that concert, and in just that 9 months that transpired she was playing piano in her church and having friends over for singalong nights.

Just because of that chance encounter at a concert, she developed an interest, and her "level of listening" changed.

Classical, rock, blues, jazz, country, rap, show tunes.... if you are not exposed to it, you have no chance to appreciate it. Whether you do or not is where the choice comes in, and how much you appreciate it is where the tangent points come in. I appreciate lyric writing, unique chord changes, and polyrhythms, things I might take for granted had I not studied music.

So after that dissertation, the answer comes down to "It's a combination of things."

I am using the new 1040XTRAEZ form this year. It has just 2 lines.

1. How much did you make in 2023?
2. Send it to us.