I am curious to what extent the musical tastes of older Dopers have changed over the years: do you listen to new music–or do you mostly listen to music popular when you were in your teens and twenties?
I’m 61. My father’s hidebound attitude towards 60’s pop & rock & roll affected me to the point that I’ve tried to keep looking for new musicians and styles all my life. I still listen to Simon & Garfunkel and Yes, and always will. I also listen to Adele, Mumford & Sons and Robin Thicke. However, most of my contemporaries, I note, have gone over to Country music as they’ve aged. (I’m in Central Indiana.)
- I now listen to far more classical music than I did in my teens and twenties.
Nobody listens to new music. Check the sales figures.
My dad is 64 and I’m always surprised at his musical tastes versus that of my mom - who is 63. They both grew up in the same place and went to the same high school, but dad favors late 50s and early 60s stuff, while mom is definitely later 60s and 70s.
I think it had something to do with dad’s tour in Vietnam (70-71) but I’m not sure. They do both enjoy Motown sort of equally.
Anyway, dad (64) barely listens to stuff that was popular past his 21st birthday but mom (63) has always liked pop radio. She’s got an equal sampling of decades on her workout playlist I’d say.
I am much more open minded now. I still mainly listen to classical and jazz, but my eclectic tastes include Daft Punk, Royksopp, Vampire Weekend. As well, Country and Roots, World music, chill, EDM, and anything else.
What I tend to avoid, however, is popular top of the charts stuff. And anything too “in your face” like most Rap.
I don’t quite qualify, but I’m 59 and I still listen to the same shit I listened to when I was 19.
- I like the things I liked when I was in my 20s, plus revisiting the showtunes of my youth (and new ones like Avenue Q, The Book of Mormon, and The Drowsy Chaperone). I’m also listening to more classical.
For newer groups, there’s the White Stripes and the Reverend Payton’s Big Damn Band.
Not interested in modern pop: no varietyor unique sounds.
I pretty much got over new music by about 1992 (when I was about 45), and started moving more heavily into jazz and also world music (particularly Brazilian, Cuban and African). In the car, I keep the radio on oldies (60s-80s), but at home it’s on a local all-jazz station or our iTunes library is playing. There is some 90s and newer music that I don’t mind, but it just became boring and uninteresting to me.
I am 66.
I unfortunately find myself listening to “classic rock” tracks from the 60’s and early 70’s but I think this is due to a somewhat perverse desire to remain entrenched in the past and not move on.
I like listening to classical music which I absolutely hated when I was in my 20’s through 40’s. I have also had a great liking for jazz but that has remained fixed in the music from the 50’s through 70’s.
When I was in my teens and 20’s I listened to classical and opera mostly; except for a few months when I was on a graveyard shift and the only music station I could find played contemporary pop/rock, so I have a few months of that in my memory. That would have been in the early 70’s.
In my 30’s I got more interested in movie musicals, which segued into jazz, especially jazz vocals.
Nowadays (65) I don’t listen to music that often, but when I do it’s still mostly jazz, instrumental or vocals.
Once I like a piece of music, I don’t ever stop liking it.
When I was a kid, my father listened to classical and some Broadway. My mother always had the current AM radio on, singing along with the Great American Songbook. So I’ve always liked that music . . . plus opera, choral music, classic jazz and pre-1970 rock.
I’ve got about 2000 CDs (27,556 tracks), comprising about 60% classical (including opera), 20% Broadway, and 20% pop and miscellaneous. Like I said, I never stop liking anything . . . but I’m always discovering more music in the categories I already like.
Oh, and I’m 69.
I won’t be 60 till the end of the month :eek: but will jump the gun.
No, I’m always listening to new music, but it’s usually music that’s just new to me. I’ve gotten way more into jazz over the last ten years or so, also listen to a lot of world music, etc.
Artists currently putting out new stuff – probably Andrew Bird is the only one. I was a huge Derek Trucks fan for many years, when he was doing more jazz/world-flavored stuff, but don’t care for the Tedeschi-Trucks retro thing, alas, so have parted ways with him.
I’m with you. I also listen to the oldies station on the radio, in addition - the 50’s and 60’s. The 60’s covers such a wide range of musical styles. I do love the 80’s (my heyday) and smoooooooth jazz on Sirius radio. I am happy to be entrenched in the past and not move on, it’s not like I have a big group of friends who go to concerts, out to hear bands or go dancing. We oldies don’t leave the house after 6 p.m., lol.
I’m a lot more tolerant of Disco than I used to be. I don’t know if this is due to expanded taste or to simple nostalgia.
I listen to more Classical music, but that’s because I have a better familiarity with it now, not because I disliked it before. It takes years to learn about different periods, styles, composers, and so on. I also didn’t have the Internet to play around with.
My musical tastes have always been pretty eclectic. I don’t think I’ve ever abandoned or embraced one genre due merely to my age. Though I do go through periods where I want to listen to one in particular, depending on my mood.
Ditto. I’m sure I’m missing something super subtle but pop music today just sounds like what we used to call “bubble gum.”
I’m in my 50s, but I’ll answer anyway. I still listen to the stuff I did when I was in my teens, but I listen to less classical, and more early music. I also listen to popular dance tunes and other stuff on the radio today, as well as rock from the 50s-80s that I liked when I was young.
My kids listen to pretty much exactly the same music I do, except that my son is into some modern folk music that I don’t mind, but don’t seek out.
I asked an older friend (now late 60s) about the “generation gap”, and he said there wasn’t one when he was a kid, everyone listened to the same stuff, much as they do now. (Well, everyone from his age on down.)
I talked to another friend about that, and his hypothesis is that the great divide in musical tastes was between music that was intended to be amplified, and music that could be played without amplification. Amplification was a significant technological advance that opened up a lot of new styles of music, and many people whose tastes were set before that advance never developed a taste for the new stuff. There hasn’t been any comparable innovation in music since then, so “modern” music is readily accessible to older people again.
I think most people retain a fondness for the music they listened to when they hit puberty, but many people continue to enjoy new tunes in similar styles all their life.
Age 60. Still listen to new music, as well as a lot of the stuff from my teen years and every time in between. My soul just needs regular infusions of good new music. So I listen to current artists/bands like Lorde, Vampire Weekend, Mumford and Sons, and the Decemberists, along with the stuff that was popular in my teens, 20s, 30s, and 40s.
Most of my friends from my younger days stopped listening to new music in their mid to late 20s. I remember having to practically wrestle one of my closest friends from high school into listening to some cuts from Graceland: “This is Paul fucking Simon! You were listening to his stuff when we were, like, twelve, dammit!” But practically all of my HS friends had already stopped listening to new music by then, even new music from familiar artists. Kinda sad, really.
I will officially qualify to comment in this thread in three months.
So, unofficially, I’ll say that I still love stuff like Quicksilver, early King Crimson and Floyd, the Allman Brothers, and, especially lately Steely Dan and Supertramp. Yet I find myself listening mostly to Godspeed You Black Emperor and Radiohead more than anything else. In other words, I’m stuck in the 60’s to 00’s;)
ETA: And, Eno! Always Brian Eno (and Philip Glass)
I’m in your demographic, but…
I don’t really listen to music anymore. My audio entertainment is podcasts or NPR.
Actually, I’m surprised no one else has mentioned this. I don’t think I’m that uncommon.
J.