What My Playlist Says About Being an INTJ

I’m no longer allowed to be the DJ when hanging out with friends and family. Occasionally my friends will love a tune and ask who the artist is. But usually, they roll their eyes at my “eclectic” preferences and ask me to put on something less weird.

People assume that since I constantly have music pumping through my headphones, I must have good music taste. But, as an outside-the-box-thinking INTJ, I don’t really believe there’s “good” or “bad” taste in music. Our music tastes are as messy and diverse as we are. I personally love complex music that’s had a lot of thought put into it and has a message that gets me excited. I couldn’t care less about the genre, decade, artist or any other tidy categories people pack their musical likes and dislikes into.

Since Truity is a place where different Myers-Briggs types congregate, and since no one in real life seems to appreciate my tastes, I thought I’d play DJ to an audience that might actually enjoy my playlist for once. If you’re a fellow INTJ, you might hear what I do when you listen to these songs and find a new one to love. And if you’re not, well buckle up, this might be more your speed than you think. 

Here’s the playlist on Spotify if you want to listen along.

“Gratitude” by The Beastie Boys

I still remember bouncing around my living room floor at age ten to the “Intergalactic” music video by the Beastie Boys. That super fun song was all I really knew of the band for years, until I encountered “Gratitude” and learned these guys could play! Many just know the Beastie Boys as decent rappers with a good sense of humor, but they were truly talented musicians through and through. That drive to master multiple domains runs deep for INTJs. We collect skills and interests, refusing to stay in one lane.

“Centuries” by Fall Out Boy

My high school friends and I did not align when it came to Fall Out Boy. I loved Pete Wentz’ voice (despite never being quite sure what he was saying) and found myself singing their songs wherever I went. My friends, however, did not. Well, at this point, I don’t care what they said about Fall Out Boy being a trash emo band. This song makes me feel like I can take over the world. It’s on my “Badass” playlist, and I often put it on a loop when I’m writing what I hope will be an exciting action scene in one of my novels. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be remembered for being awesome, as long as you live up to the hype.

“Blue in Green” by Miles Davis (featuring John Coltrane & Bill Evans)

This is a beautiful song to be alone with. Back at NYU, life could get pretty crazy with so much going on and a vibrant city humming all around me 24/7. For an introvert, it could be a lot to take. So I would cuddle up with a blanket and listen to “Kind of Blue,” watching the raindrops trickle down the glass. Some might see this behavior as lonely (and perhaps a bit loser-ly), but sometimes, time by myself with some of my favorite jazz is the perfect way to recharge.

“Uprising” by Muse

I sort of knew about Muse prior to college, but it was my boyfriend Dan (a fellow INTJ) who really got me excited about them. I set everything out strategically—plans for writing a book, my upcoming weekly schedule, any other project I might cook up. So a song that plots out a revolution is right up my alley. I also wrote a dystopian novel and listened to this track on obsessive repeat to get in the right mood.

“Psycho Killer” by the Talking Heads

I have a crystal clear memory of my cousin coming down to visit from Vassar when Dan and I were at NYU and showing us Stop Making Sense. I thought I would get bored watching a movie without a narrative that just documented a concert. Instead, Jonathan Demme’s direction and David Byrne’s brilliant conceptual design (the slow build from lone performer to full band, the iconic Big Suit) pulled me in completely. I didn’t realize it at the time, but that meticulous, architectural approach to performance is deeply INTJ. I’ve been obsessed with Talking Heads ever since.

“Clubbed to Death (Kurayamino Variation)” by Rob Dougan

There’s so much for an INTJ to love about “The Matrix,” including the film’s brilliant soundtrack. It takes you right into an ultra-cool world of leather, sunglasses and kicking ass. This particular track is my favorite workout track since there’s just so much going on: classical elements weaving in and out through electronic beats that make me feel like I could conquer anything.

“Merry Go Round of Life” by Joe Hisaishi 

This lovely tune is from the Miyazaki film, “Howl’s Moving Castle.” While writing a scene in my dystopian novel between the protagonist and her love interest, I must have listened to it about a hundred times. In the scene, the two characters are discussing how music makes them feel, and the protagonist says this song gives her the feeling of dancing, as if she’s spinning and spinning but knows someone will catch her. This song helped me get swept away by the emotion of the scene (such sweeping is not always the easiest thing for an INTJ!) and bring those two characters closer. Music can become the bridge to our emotions when we’re struggling to connect with them. 

“Smash the Funk” by GRiZ

When I started working as a researcher for the game show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” in my twenties, I worked in a bullpen with several other researchers, which was fun, but also very noisy and distracting. I found myself in need of music that would get me pumped to work, but also didn’t have words that would potentially be even more distracting. I came across this track and fell in love with the EDM style combined with smooth saxophone. “Smash the Funk” is one of the reasons I don’t get to DJ anymore—my taste stops making sense to people when they learn I like music like this.

“Because” by The Beatles

You may have thought from my talk of my “weird” tastes that I only like off-the-beaten-path sort of music. Not true at all, my friend! I love all sorts of popular music, including The Beatles, arguably the most popular band in history. While I enjoy many of the not as well-known songs The Beatles recorded, there’s a special place in my heart for this tune’s meticulous harmonic architecture (it’s a great one to sing along with) and philosophical musings. I loved it even more when I learned that it was born when John Lennon asked Yoko Ono to play “Moonlight Sonata” in reverse. That he was able to take a classic and turn it literally on its head like that is precisely why the Beatles are my favorite band, mainstream popularity be damned.

“Zelda’s Lullaby” by Koji Kondo and Aaron Grubb 

I could be the odd one out in the INTJ club because I’m not really into video games. It may just be that I’m lazy and prefer books, TV and movies that do the narrative heavy lifting for me. But one aspect of video games I do love is the music. Particularly, the music from “Ocarina of Time.” From the first moment I hear the flute on this track, something in my throat wells up. Some may think that INTJs lack emotion, but I, for one, am a very emotional INTJ—I just sometimes need the help of a good song to process them. Turns out even INTJs have a soft spot. Mine just needs a Nintendo soundtrack to find it.

“I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times” by The Beach Boys

I’ve been a Beach Boys fan since childhood, partly due to one too many viewings of “Look Who’s Talking” as a child (Bruce Willis voices a baby’s thoughts, it’s a great time). But I delved deeper into their catalogue a few years back and was drawn to this tune from “Pet Sounds,” arguably one of the best albums ever made. The lyrics can make the song’s protagonist sound a little arrogant—a desire for friends he won’t leave behind, lamenting how hard it is to be so much smarter than everyone else. I can’t help but relate, though, to the difficulty in finding people to truly sync with when your mind works a little differently. That theremin solo toward the end is also just my kind of strange.

“The Sound of Silence” by Simon & Garfunkel 

I’ve talked a little about well-constructed harmonies so far, and there were no greater masters than Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel. Their voices meld together beautifully on this track. As songs often do with me, “The Sound of Silence” brings me back to a film—”The Graduate,” in this instance. It was one of the first movies to use a pop music score, leading to many ingenious uses of songs with lyrics in the films that followed (just try to imagine “The Departed” without the Rolling Stones). The way Simon & Garfunkel’s music enhanced the story in “The Graduate” reminds me of how I use music while I write and how fun it is to fantasize about my books maybe becoming movies someday.

“Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall” by Ella Fitzgerald and the Ink Spots

This is another song that will get me a few surprised looks when it comes up on my playlist. It is from 1944, after all, over forty years before I was born. But, as said, I don’t really care when or where music comes from—just the level of mastery involved and how it makes me feel. This tune features a unique formula that features multiple artists taking turns singing or speaking the same verse. You might think this would get repetitive, but each rendition of the lyrics offers a fresh spin that makes the melancholy message cut even deeper. The stripped-down arrangement of this piece, with its focus on the vocals and feeling, would never hit the Top 40 today. And that’s just what I love about it. 

“Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen

I have a shirt that says, “There is a silhouette of a man on my shirt, on my shirt, and he’s holding a mango,” and it, of course, features a silhouette of a man holding a mango. A friend noted the shirt and wrinkled his nose. “I like Queen, but that has to be their worst song.” It was hard for me not to enter into a tirade on how the complicated harmonies, inventive lyrics, and guitar solo that sounds nothing like the rest of the song yet fits perfectly make “Bohemian Rhapsody” a masterpiece. I have learned to pick my musical taste battles, after all.