Well, do you?
Vaderling and I listen to music together while in the car. Sometimes we listen to “his stuff”, sometimes “my stuff” and sometimes, where our tastes overlap, “our stuff”
Do you other doper parents have overlapping musical preferences with your children?
I think it’s great you can share the pleasure of listening to music with your kid! I only listen to music with them while driving. With my daughter we share, sometimes hers, sometimes mine, but there is little overlap. With my son it’s always mine, because when I offer to have him play his stuff, he passes.
With the whole earbud thing, and now wireless headphones, almost no music is heard in the open in our house any more.
#1 daughter and I have some overlapping taste in classic rock - Fleetwood Mac, The Who, etc. #2 daughter listens to Taylor Swift and Broadway show tunes, so not so much with her.
My children are grown now but this does remind me of them coming home from school furious with me. Maybe 4th or 5th grade. They were teased because they like ‘old people music’ as me and hubby were very much VH1 Retro Soul at the time.
My grown daughter and I listened to Dylan and The Band’s Before The Flood and Zappa’s You Can’t Do That On Stage Anymore" on a road trip not long ago. I have a very good memory of my 10 year old son coming down to the basement and asking if I wanted to listen to Who’s Next with him.
I didn’t mention nowadays, I ride in their cars and listen to their music. Which is my music too. She tends more towards R&B and Pop and him towards electronica and rap. Both will listen to anything and both love old school. Although now they both bitch that today “old school” is House of Pain and Matchbox 20.
I think I have mentioned it before, but my kids like “pop music” - I suspect partially because I do not. At all.
They are 5 and 7 years old now. I cunningly convinced them about 2 years ago that The Beatles and The Rolling Stones are pop music (technically true) so my frequent long car journeys are enjoyed by all. The kids (especially my 5 yr old son) revelling in making Dad listen to pop, myself enjoying music I like.
It is going to be a bit challenging when I try to convince them that progressive psychedelic trance (which I also like) is pop music, that subgenre of Electronic Dance Music might not convince them.
I’ll stretch the definitions here.
I watch 80s music videos with my step-kids, who are adults, but did not experience the 80s. I have a huge collection of videos and I think they get a kick out of how much I enjoy them. They must like the videos and music at least a little because they (a) don’t flee the room, (b) make intelligent comments about the music and artists, (c) remark on which ones are better, and (d) hum or sing some of the songs after viewing.
It’s not unusual to watch for several hours at a time, or for them to request a specific video/song.
My kids (12 and 15) and I listen to music together all the time, mostly in the car. We have a huge overlap in taste - the younger one is into grunge right now, and the oldest spans a range of genres and eras, and is starting to introduce me to new music. I love that.
Yes! A beautiful memory from my childhood back in the 70s is sitting at the record player with my mom and listening to Santana, Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin, etc. I’d do it with my own kids except I never had any.
Yes, a lot.
My daughter has gotten me into K-pop and I’ve gotten her to appreciate the Beatles.
Kid Cheesesteak (14) is totally into 80’s Rock, and a lot of classic rock going back to the 60’s, so I let him be the DJ on drives. The only downside is his obsession with AC/DC songs, occasionally we have to institute a “No AC/DC” rule. I’m also allowed a number of requests, which I usually use to try and get a non-AC/DC band into the rotation.
Yes. Mostly because I listen to a lot of new pop anyway. There isn’t a lot of overlap with the old portion of my music tastes (and by “old” I mean 80s/90s alternative & pop, not the dinosaur rock Dopers adore so much).
Since I don’t have kids (by choice) I’m going to answer the reverse, in that I absolutely did listen to music with my parents! When I was a pre-teen especially, on long (10+ hour) car drives, we listened to ‘their’ music, which ended up informing my tastes, although with some variation. So in the mid 80s or so, a long car drive would include the soundtrack to Flashdance (current), Fame (current), John Denver (lots), and Pirates of Penzance (dad is a huge fan), and (gasp!) soundtrack of the musical Hair.
As well as best of albums by Peter, Paul, and Mary, Joe Cocker . . . lots of good stuff.
All of these things I still listen to and enjoy! And have copies (digital and otherwise) of as well.
We homeschool (need to disclose: No, we’re not fundie weirdos). I’m currently doing a popular music appreciation unit with my kids (which includes researching the bands, songs and albums they most enjoy, and writing a decade-by-decade book with them). So this year, we’re listening to music together even more than we normally do (which is a fair amount). We started with 50s pop/rock (they weren’t fans), and we’re moving through the decades. We’re at the 70s now, and the stuff they’ve liked the most so far are the Monkees, Beach Boys, Queen, Beatles, Simon and Garfunkle. Not huge fans of Elvis, Led Zeppelin, Buddy Holly, Stevie Wonder and Motown in general; they did really like the Supremes and Jackson Five, however. I was hoping they’d dig Marvin Gaye, but alas. They were split on the Rolling Stones. We’re hitting things like live performances, top acts, smaller acts, one-hit wonders, etc, We’re listening, discussing, comparing, reading wiki pages on everything we’re listening to. I think they’re enjoying it because they get to spend several hours on Amazon Music and YouTube a couple days a week, and they get to follow-up on the stuff they actually like.
And while the 90s are “my decade,” I do listen to a lot of today’s stuff too. I always hated it that my parents never made any attempt to appreciate music I liked, so I’ve gone out of my way to listen to today’s popular music, which I’ve found I enjoy quite a bit: imagine dragons, taylor swift, sia, dua lipa, harry styles, ajr, maneskin, greta van fleet, nathaniel rateliff, etc. The stuff I know the least about is the late-00s and early 10s. That’s when my kids were babies/toddlers, and I honestly didn’t have much time to listen to new stuff then.
I’m also a Beatles nut, so my kids (for better or worse) probably know the Beatles catalog, bios and trivia better than any 14 & 12 years olds on the planet. They’ve been raised on the Fabs since they were infants, and still seem to appreciate it.
We also have our own playlists on Amazon Music, which we’ll rotate through when we’re at home. My son is mostly today’s Top 40. My daughter is a mix of Beatles, Top 40, but mostly Disney songs. My wife is 2000s country, Jack Johnson and Ed Sheerhan. And mine are 90s rock, Beatles, Paul McCartney and Puddle Pity Party.
These types of discussions always make me think of this Onion story, though:
My tween daughter sings along when I play 101.3 KDWB, a newer pop station in the Twin Cities. It’s cute so I do it all the time. My music is too hardcore for radio stations, but the lighter metal I’ll play in the car with them occasionally from CDs.
I’m 55, and when she was a teen I introduced our daughter to the stuff I like, which is mainly 1960s/1970s rock. Within a couple years she became obsessed with The Beatles, The Doors, Led Zeppelin, and The Who.
I always had music on in the house and car. My ex liked easy listening type stuff, but I’ve been a rocker all my life and always had on the music of the day and oldies. So they grew up on Abba, Queen, and a lot of other 70s-80s stuff. All of them are the same way with their own kids, and my oldest boy’s children all play instruments (bass viol, French horn, trumpet and guitar).
Yes, I listen to music with my kids. In the car, but also in the house. Mostly what we mutually love. That is, only a little stuff from later than 1997 or so. My kids are 13 and 16.
When my daughters were young, it was easy to share music with them. I’d lock them in their bedroom and blast Beethoven’s 9th Symphony over and over. But one day, the youngest yelled through the air-vent, Dad, this music is giving me and my droog sister something of a pain in the gulliver! So, I stopped.
Just kidding.
My daughters (20 and 22) and I share little appreciation for each other’s music. I do like my oldest’s Skrillex, and my youngest’s My Chemical Romance, but that’s about all I like (all that throat shredding stuff they like sounds like fingernails clawing a blackboard to me).
And they sort of like my Beatles, and Bowie, but that’s about all they like (the rest sounds like Pat Boone’s Greatest Hits to them). I share more common ground with my daughter’s boyfriends. They at least like Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin.
And it’s not like they’re not familiar with my music. They recently fessed up to borrowing all my albums from the 60s and 70s when they were quite young. That accounts for all the scratches on my precious vinyls. It also solved the mystery of why my weed supply kept diminishing.
I do try to sneak some classical and jazz into the mix once in a while, but they run screaming out the door when I do. For that affront to good taste, they’re both getting Polka’s All-time Greatest Hits for Christmas.