But here's the real question: I'm wondering how much of the appeal of a decade's music lies in its intrinsic worth and how much actually depends on your life at the time? Do you think that we all are prone to prefer the music of our teens and 20's?
Discuss, while I try to catch up on all the stuff I didn't do this weekend. Also? My Anna had an epiphany yesterday, which in itself was music to my ears:
Me: What are you planning to do this afternoon?
Anna: I'm cleaning my room. It's a mess.
Me (acting as nonchalant as possible): You think so?
Anna: Oh, yeah - there's all this junk in there!
So she spent a few hours sorting out her hoodie collection and discarding the flotsam and jetsam of the past 4 years while I contemplated the truism that the kids really do grow up. Not a bad way to spend a Sunday, really...
Maybe we are--I'm trying to indoctrinate my kids' ears to alternative and rock and classical. But they keep turning the channel to hip hop and rap.
ReplyDeleteWell, Daniel Levitin, a scientist who studies the neurology of music, in fact says (in his fascinating book, "This Is Your Brain On Music") that most people's musical tastes are formed in childhood and adolescence. So, don't feel alone, you've got lots of company. (That's not to say that people can't learn to like different things in adulthood. Just that most of us don't.)
ReplyDeleteI totally think we're nostalgic for the music of our youth. My husband and I are from different generations. He loves '80s music, and I can't stand it, think it's the cheesiest stuff I've ever heard. I'm a '90s girl, which he equates to grunge and hard rock, which is partially true and partially just getting past the use of a synethesizer for everything. Music moves on.
ReplyDeleteI'm looking forward to the day when any of my kids decide to clean his room on his own. Also, my husband hopes the same about me (we both know where they get it).
ReplyDeleteYour theory is sound (ha!) from my viewpoint. Anyone want to go to a Rush concert with me?
omgomgomgomg...you mean there is HOPE for daughter? Let's see...she just turned 16 and your Anna is 17 so in a year daughter MIGHT figure out that living in filth is not so great?
ReplyDeleteYAHOO!!! *happy dance*
I may not have to rent a back hoe after all. ;)
aehm, well, don't know what to say. i only had my teens and am in the middle of my twenties so far but yes, i like the music of my teens and 20s ;-)
ReplyDeleteur welcome for the list. it had some eye openers in there i think. who would have thought that shinead o connor and eminem were stars in one and the same decade?! i sure did not.
anna cleaning her room? oh, wow. mark this day on the calendar!!!!
While I love to turn on the "oldies" station or hear "classic rock" o fmy youth, I am also addicted to the music of my Kids' teens (happening now). There are some fun dance songs out there and I swipe their CDs whenever I can! (Sh don't tell, they always blame each other!). So I'm not sure I'm totally buying that theory.
ReplyDeleteI am absolutely sure that we love the music our late teens/early twenties the best--it seems to be programmed that way.
ReplyDeleteIt's not that I don't know music since I've had kids--I generally listen to the local alternative station out of Brown (and yes, roll my eyes at how young the DJs are)--but I can't name bands and songs anymore. I know the songs, but I usually can't tell you who sings it or what the name is. Partly this is because I don't buy CDs anymore, and I don't download, and I rarely use the MP3 (I ask my husband to put stuff on it, though). So I'm out of the loop that way, whereas I used to know current CDs by heart. I don't spend my money on music anymore.
ReplyDelete(How could I not have mentioned Jane's Addiction? Ritual de lo Habitual--I think that's actually very late 80s, though.)
Anyway, as for your theory, I think music probably speaks to us most when we're young and going through so many life changes, because the best music, in my opinion, is the music for that demographic. That's not to say that certain bands don't have longevity. But when I was in my early 20s, oh how those tortured musicians spoke to me! I'm a 37-year-old mother of three. The days of drinking SoCo and smoking a Marlboro Light while melodramatically singing along to "Disarm" in my kitchen and cursing what some awful guy did or didn't do had best be LONG GONE. Y'know?
But that doesn't limit my musical tastes to one era. The soundtrack to the first half of high school was, for me, Led Zeppelin and the Doors and the Who and Boston and Journey. Why? Because my entire high school was fixated on stupid pop (dear god, stevie b comes to mind) and I was rejecting it, along with the big hair and the aquanet and the gold chains. Meanwhile, I got myself an education in classic rock.
I think I could write a small book here. I'll stop now.
I am knocking on 40's doorstep (literally on the 27th) I listen to top 40, I always have. I never get it when friends go crazy for the music we used to listen to in HS, I can take a few songs at a wedding or once in a while on the radio, but other than that I have to have my Lady Gaga, Rhianna, Sugarland...whatever if popular right now.
ReplyDeleteI don't know maybe I am weird!! LOL
Ruth
Well, how do you explain that my dear darling and I watch mostly 40's films and listen to big band music and Frank Sinatra (I can't explain it)? We both think we were born too late.
ReplyDeleteHOWEVER, that doesn't stop us from listening to Fleetwood Mac, Sting, The Moody Blues etc. because, yes, there are memories there. But the music of my high school years was for the most part, pitiful!
I often tell my oldest three kids that they were the only good things to come out of the eighties :)
Wait, does this mean the end of all the "petulant Anna" stories? because those are my favorite.
ReplyDeleteAnna does seem to have a fan club of sorts among the readers of this blog. Don't worry, I have 2 more daughters to get through teenhood with...
ReplyDeleteYes, we're all prone to enjoy the music of our youth. That's pretty much it, really. Tell Anna my daughter's room is trashed, while she's at it.
ReplyDeleteI think music has very strong ties to where we were and what we were doing at the time.
ReplyDeleteAlso Anna cleaning her room on a Sunday.....it is a sabbath miracle!!lol.
Definitely the music of my late teens and early 20's, and I was [almost] mortally offended when they started referring to it as "oldies". Everybody knows that oldies are the early 60's and before... (Which I also love: doowop rules! whereas most of hiphop drools.)
ReplyDeleteI like the stuff of the mid90's, when my older girls were teens, and I love "'Pon de Replay" and the "put a ring on it" song.
I love the music they play in my supermarket (because I'm the middle-aged shopper who spends the most money in their store, demographically speaking - so they picked that music to keep me happy and keep me overloading that cart).
ReplyDeleteI was in college when disco went big. The horror. Do NOT make me go back there!
ReplyDelete