As a teenager I never told people I liked classical music. Even now, I don't tell people, I admit it to them, and as an admission it always feels somewhat shameful, like confessing a taste for schoolgirls' uniforms, or Edwardian porn. It's fair to say the music has a severe image problem, especially among my generation.
I suspect a lot of this is to do with the name. 'Classical' implies a set of rubberstamped 'classics', approved by the official guardians of culture; music with a civilizing influence, morally improving music, music that's 'good for you'. To this end it's often a pastime adopted late in life, like Christianity and high-fibre diets, and indeed many of its listeners approach classical music with the same enthusiasm, and much the same facial expression, as they approach a bowl of grapenuts in the morning. But for those of us untroubled of conscience and bowel, such music can have no appeal.
And then 'classical' lends a dusty, fossilised image to the music, as though listening to it were primarily an exercise in paleontology. "So you listen to the classics?" a sweet-voiced companion asked of me one evening. No, my dear, I don't listen to 'the classics', and I think anyone who does should go soak themselves in formaldehyde as a speedy aid to the embalming process. The music I listen to is not a dead thing, preserved forever in stone, but a living, exciting, and often sexy and well-toned creature. 'The classics' I leave to the gerontophiliacs.