What would Sunset Shimmer listen to? · 9:12pm May 28th, 2017
If she ever encountered it, I think Sunset Shimmer would enjoy the British Folk Revival: old Border and Scottish songs about love, war, rebellion, and heartbreak, performed with a mix of traditional and modern instruments. I've even got a playlist, built up with Pandora's help.
Unfortunately, I've lost access to the account I created it with, or I'd remove some of the neo-bluegrass that crept in, and add several more songs: Tibbie Fowler O' the Glen, arranged and lifted up from obscurity by the Old Blind Dogs; the Tannahill Weavers' arrangement of Gloomy Winter's Noo Awa; the Duhks' quick-stepping version of The Trooper and the Maid; the Chieftans' The Frost is All Over, an absolute classic of the genre; and at least two harp pieces by Alan M. Stivell. The link to Cara Dillon's "Bonny Bonny" in my playlist is dead, but the song's still on YouTube, and she's well worth listening to in general; her arrangement of Black is the Colour is revolutionary.
Most of these songs are from the 1700s and earlier (for some of them, the best source of sheet music is an 18th-century book in the University of Edinburgh library!), so it's easy to imagine that counterparts to them exist in the pony world: memories of old wars in the east, between the Shetlands and... whatever Pony England's called. Imagine what Princess Cadance thought of Sunset's taste in gramophone records -- and the tricky part was that she couldn't just write them all off. There are some songs that she'd get a kick out of (or even bond with Sunset over), but most of them she'd just want to kick -- once she could follow the lyrics.
(And maybe all those songs about forlorn lovers and soldiers dying in distant lands shaped Sunset's decision to more or less solo Equestria, and not kill anypony in the process. British Folk Revival music paints a vivid picture of both the glories and the sorrows of war...)
I'm of the opinion that she'd be fond of something like Pat Benatar's music, but you've presented a compelling theory.
4550119 I'm afraid I hadn't heard of Pat Benatar until now, but you're right; I could really see Sunset going in for her music.