Dino connection, music discovery.
Why do your musical tastes get frozen over in your twenties? - Lary Wallace | Aeon Essays
Why do your musical tastes get frozen over in your twenties? - Lary Wallace | Aeon Essays
Some of us are more susceptible than others, but eventually it happens to us all. You know what I'm talking about: the inability to appreciate new music - or at least, to appreciate new music the way we once did. There's a lot of disagreement about why exactly this happens, but virtually none about when.
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The reason we don't like new music is that a lot of it isn't really good. But the thing is, that was true "back then" also. When we listen to the "oldies" or throwback channels we're pretty much only listening to the cream of the crop. This is called selection bias.
So what are we to do? Find one of em ar youngins and steal the playlist off of their iPoodle? Maybe but try to understand that you're not going to like it all and some of it is experimental stuff that's still in the lab.
The other thing to realize is that there's a lot of social inhibition around music. The harsh social environments we grow up in pretty much insures that we only like what a certain popular, "in," crowd likes. Those that have rejected such notions can be found feeling liberated and listening to punk rock. :D
Would you where purple polyester bell-bottoms? Now answer honestly, how much of that inhibition is rooted in your own social inhibitions? Art, regardless of form, is social.
Or listen to music radio. I follow NPR Music and KEXP. They often showcase new, up and coming bands. I've found a lot of my favorite groups that way.
Well personally, I stopped listening to the radio for a while from my mid 20s so didn't encounter that much new music - but in the last year or two I've been listening to the radio again (specifically Radio One) and while it was a bit difficult at first to get back in to the current music, I've found that I really enjoy it now :)
Do you follow KEXP and NPR Music's YouTube channels? They post a lot of live performances which are a great way of discovering high quality new music.
No I don't, but thanks for the recommendations :)
I'm 40 and have a lot of friends from a lot of different age groups. It's weird to see the different taste in music that all my friends have. I visited my 40 yo friends a few weeks ago. They are still listening to Pearl Jam.
I don't have any friends with the same musical tastes as me. I started out in the 90's loving yoyr standard dance music and happy hardcore. In my 30's my taste kind of moved into Trance, DnB and Dub Step. I still really enjoy Trance including all of the new stuff that's coming out.
There's an interesting cracked article that deals with the issue of our musical tastes freezing. http://www.cracked.com/article_19722_7-scientific-reasons-youll-turn-out-just-like-your-parents.html
“If you're reading this and are somewhere in between the "kid" and "grownup" stages, you're probably thinking that you'd never just let your musical tastes freeze in time. You'll keep finding new bands as they emerge, staying on the cutting edge until the day you die.
But Over Time ...
As you get older, your brain becomes more and more unable to handle dopamine, which, as we've pointed out before, is a big factor in making us feel "the chills" when a new exciting piece of music comes on.
Because nothing you hear will have that same effect on you as the fresh exciting sounds of your youth, it will become harder and harder to get fired up about new music.”
Honestly, I fret about this a lot. I just turned 30, and don't want to become that person, but music from that period of my life feels like comfort food.
I'm 33 and I only kind of fear it happening? I'm honestly not sure that this phenomena is one that will keep happening. I think the big reason it ever became a phenomena was the difficulty of accessing media - at least in part. Odds are you only ever heard a song when you were lucky enough to catch it on the radio, live, or pony up the dough for every song on vinyl you ever wanted to hear more than once. But now, I can burn through a hundred songs on Spotify a day. I think it was riskier before to try to engage in new stuff than it is now. I mean, I didn't get turned on to rap and hip hop until after I was 30. Suddenly, that Wu-Tang I heard at 17 that sounded like garbage started sounding pretty good.
Reading this article about these people hearing X music at 14 makes me shudder. I liked some pure fucking garbage at 14. There might be... 3 things I listened to back then that are still any good. And I know you described music you like as comfort food (and some of it is - I can't stand to sit through a whole Buckethead album any longer, but I dip my toes back in every so often), but I think a big key to not having your musical tastes frozen in time is the willingness to be suspicious of nostalgia: was Korn ever any good, or did I just think it was good because 13 year olds are stupid?