When We Grow Older...

[OGpistolpete]

And we are all in our 40's and 50's, what kind of music will we be listening to?

I'm not talking about what the younger generation will be listening to 30 years from now, I'm talking about the music you will listen to when you are older.

Our parents grew up in an age where rock and roll was in its prime, emerging as the sound of a generation. Now you can find your parents listening to the same classic rock songs they did as a kid, and it seems to match their age and generation. But when we are older, those who grew up where the number one hits were club songs such as Usher and Lil John, along with artists such as Justin Timberlake, Nelly Furtado, Rihanna, Kanye West, and so many others, will we be listening to the same music in the way that our parents listen to classic rock?

Seriously, when older peoples listen to classic rock, it doesn't sound weird; but when you here a 40-year old guy in his car with Soulja Boy blasting, it really looks odd. But will it look odd in 30 years when we are listening to the same type of songs, only because we grew up on them? Or will our taste in music change as we get older and we become more accustomed to the same sort of slow, classic rock our parents listen to?

[Lowerdeck]

I actually switched music tastes in recent years - from rap and club shit to something far more ecletic.

[YI]

I'll be like my girlfriends dad...honestly, I will be, he's awesome...only I wont think "Hi-Fi Serious" by A was the best album of the 2000's.

[METALMAN]

I thought he was a paedo.

[Toe]

I've already seen my taste in music change radically. I used to like punk rock but now I can't stand it. I used to hate most pop songs right away, but now I think some are actually pretty good.

[Emperor Fuckshit]

Yeah, I think about this sometimes too. I guess there's no single answer, both in the sense that we won't all end up listening to the same genres, and that we won't all either stay musically "static" or become one with the kids.

To take a few examples: my Mom actually listens to a lot of stuff wot "young people" are supposed to like these days. After going through a phase of enjoying standard Radio One-sanctioned guitar pop (The Kooks, The View, Kaiser Chiefs, etc.) she has branched out into some less soulless shit (Johnny Foreigner, Dananananaykroyd, Dismemberment Plan, even Sunny Day Real Estate who don't really fit into this grouping). So she has maintained essentially a life-long interest in guitar-pop, but has branched out into slightly more obscure aspects of that broad genre.

On the other hand, my Dad was majorly into punk, ska, reggae and oi when he was growing up, and now he barely seems to listen to any music at all. I guess for him music was more of a social thing than something that he would just sit back and enjoy privately. As the "scene" with which he was associated has died (and he is in any case incapable of partaking in such a thing), his interest in music has waned quickly and almost totally too. He does like Oasis, though.

My parents are in their early forties, and so arguably belong to the first generation that has grown "old" whilst still having been young during a period of really diverse and accessible popular musicianship. To compare them to two of my university tutors (both in their mid sixties) is kind of interesting. One of my tutors was in the sort of autumn of his youth when the Beatles came along, was a big fan of theirs, and they remain his only real interest as far as popular music is concerned (he's a big classical fan). The other guy actually kept a pretty strong interest in popular music until well into the eighties -- he'd probably know as much or more about that milieu as my Dad, despite being twenty years his senior.

As for myself... I've already given up on a lot of contemporary music. Maybe that will change, and I'll use my middle years to get into 90s/00s bands that I've unfairly dismissed, since they will no longer possess the crude vulgarity of novelty (and won't be being shoved down my throat either by the industry or by fan-bases). Or maybe I'll still basically consider the 90s to be some kind of arbitrary cut-off point. I've been meaning for a long time to get into more reggae and hip-hop, though, so I'll probably do that. And even within the parochial pastures of (post-)punk/indie/etc there's always new ground to be uncovered.

Edited October 26, 2009 by Emperor Fuckshit

[METALMAN]

On that note - back in the 80s my mum was really into "indie" music. You know - Smiths, OMD, Gang of Four, Orange Juice, Aztec Camera and stuff like that. She does listen to modern music however, but 90% of the time it is just stuff from the charts. SHE IS A SELLOUT. >_>

My dad is really into music. He's a massive jazz fan and he was massively into folk rock - he seems to know pretty much every obscure guy that recorded in a shed throughout the 60s and 70s. I mean, some of the folk music my dad listens to makes Nick Drake seem like Led Zeppelin or something. He does take an interest in modern music but is generally only things that I or metalwoman () recommend to him. And he generally likes about 5% of that.

You might have also noticed I have inherited a lot of both of my parents' tastes.

[Mr Evil Guy]

probably still hipster music

i'm cool with it

[Gazz]

Hopefully, like my 54yo dad who still listens to the stuff he grew up on in the late 60's / early to mid 70's (which he also incidently brought me up on) and not like my 51yo mom, who grew out of her Bay City Rollers obsession and now listens to Galaxy FM (current day RnB and Rap) :/

In short, Trivium's 17th studio album, to which I'll exclaim there not as good as they were in the old days.

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

I'm 28 and have made the jump away from even knowing what the latest music sounds like. I dip in from time to time if there's something that interests me.

I'll be listening to 90s Brit music and seeing everything through rose-tinted glasses, just like everyone who remembers older music.

There's no reason to think otherwise. My grandparents still listened to Perry Como or whatever with a few random newer CDs thrown in (like those pop opera singer lads) and my dad (55) listens to Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull, Fairport Convention and similar folk-rock groups with the odd new group (like Arcade Fire) tossed in, usually when introduced to them by me or my brother.

So I'll be listening to Blur, Elastica, Radiohead, Sleeper, Chemical Brothers etc with some modern suggestions from my kids (as well as the older stuff I like such as Clash and Kinks).....And that's fine by me.

[K]

In short, Trivium's 17th studio album, to which I'll exclaim there not as good as they were in the old days.

They're already not as good as they were in the old days.

[hackerjack]

Things are different now to when my dad was growing up. For most of his life his prime access to music was his own record collection and whatever was aon TOTP/Radio 1 until I was onld enough to go out buying stuff myself. So it kind of stands to reason that his tastes will still be based mostly on his older stuff, though he has developed a liking for some of my collection as well, the gap in the middle where he was 20-40 years old, had no money because of us kids and couldnt go to gigs anymore is abuot as obvious as you could get.

For us though the way we get access to music has changed so much, pretty much evey band is on myspace or other free streaming sites so we will probably not get that gap from it in the same way.

Also as I get older (and it fits for him as well) I find myself being open to more and more genres even though I had a pretty wide ranging collection before. My listening swings from electronica to classic rock to easy listening to folk to pop depending on my mood and I wouldnt expect that to change too much.

[K]

There was this chick at my old work who was like forty, and totally listened to Linkin Park and Lostprophets and stuff. She was hot too.

[Herr Matzat]

I´ll annoy people by telling them who i have already seen live.

[stokeriño]

My musical taste seems to be moving backwards (chronologically) as I age. If we extrapolate this development, clearly by the time I reach my 50s I shall be heavily into anything recorded pre-1948.

[hackerjack]

I´ll annoy people by telling them who i have already seen live.

MY uncle does this by constantly reminding me every time a Queen song comes on that he was at Wembley and I was too young to go. The Bastard.

[Jayzon]

I´ll annoy people by telling them who i have already seen live.

MY uncle does this by constantly reminding me every time a Queen song comes on that he was at Wembley and I was too young to go. The Bastard.

Yeah, I know people who do this thing, too. Like my friend's girlfriend, seven years older than me, who constantly reminds me that she saw Metallica in their prime in the early 90s, and that she also saw Nirvana.

Edited October 28, 2009 by Jayzon

[hackerjack]

At least I can annoy people who missed out on seeing Oasis live now :\