My Spotify playlists are at http://open.spotify.com/user/geirhong

My musical taste will always be all about genre. If it has certain stylistic elements, I will love it. If it has certain stylistic elements I prefer music not to have, I will hate it. Simple as that. So anything that has interesting (but catchy) melodies and harmonies that go just slightly beyond the typical harmonic structures, I will love, particularly if it also has a polished production, perfect playing and beautiful vocal harmonies mixed all the way in stereo. Plus as few rough edges as possible.

On the other hand, music that is noisy, has little or no sense of melody or harmony, screaming or growling vocals or any other kind of exaggerated express of emotion (anger or depression in particular) I will probably hate. This goes for virtually all hip-hop and most of today's metal, for instance. Plus the majority of acclaimed "classical" music from around 1920 or later.

Otherwise, my lists tell more about my musical taste than the ratings do. But to make the best impression, read the year lists from the top and don't care too much about the albums near the bottom. An album that makes #92 in my year list is usually not an album that I consider to be particularly good, at least not unless it was an unusually good year for music like the first half of the 80s tended to be.