What musicians play vs. what they listen to
 

I always found it curious when there was such a disparity between what some musicians listen to and create themselves. Infernus of Gorgoroth doesn't really listen to Black Metal, but instead prefers 80s heavy metal. Julianna Barwick enjoys pop, especially Rhianna and Drake. Do you know of any interesting examples? I wonder why, with some artists, there's such a disconnect, but then for others it's almost the complete opposite. Like a pop star being a fan of Michael Jackson or U2.

Speaking from a musician's standpoint:

Usually as a creator, your influence is to make the music that you hear in your head.

You may like, even love, a lot of music but simply not have the building blocks in your brain to be able to create it, and/or you may simply gravitate to certain sounds and elements, or there may be a disparity between the listening and the playing of certain styles.

For example, I adore Ambient Psytrance like Shpongle. But in terms of what I like to play, I have the most fun with funk, blues, or metal styles, where my interaction with the instrument is more direct, more rythmic. I have greater control over the sound of a guitar when I'm taking it back to basics and making it scream with just some distortion and volume.

On the contrary, if I use my guitar to make an ambient sound, I feel like the effects pedals and plugins I'm using to create that sound, are doing the work instead of me, and I get bored. The same applies if I'm playing something very repetitive, so I don't tend to be able to create in my head or with my hands, approximations or compositions that utilise or rely on those elements of psytrance or ambient music.

Make sense?

I think it also has to do with what instruments the musician plays vs what instruments are common in the music they listen to. I play piano and I don't listen to a lot of music with piano. The music I play tends to be very mellow and ambient, but the music I listen to isn't that mellow. Ambient music is also easy for me to play.

Boards of canada really liked my bloody valentine but they chose to be an electronic band. Theres still a little nit of shoegaze influence showing through, though. Panda bear loves daft punk and I don't really hear any of that influence on any of his solo albums.
Those are the only things I can think of but I think if I were to make music, my influences would be clear as day.

There are definitely instances, though, were musicians listen to pretty much the exact genre they make (like me and my band).

I think listening to out-of-your-genre music serves as a protection to some songwriters.

I've heard of a few artists who have written a complete song so quickly that they question whether or not it came from some internal place or if they just heard it somewhere and accidentally copied it from some other artist.