I have no idea what my mother listens to.
My daughters have introduced me to some very interesting music, including but not limited to electro-swing and gypsy punk.
If left to my own devices I tend towards show tunes and crooner standards.
I can handle 8-10 heavy metal songs my kid likes before I need a radio station change. Then he puts on his earbuds.
Generation to generation: different music, same issues.
Yes. My parents were in college in the late 60s. I grew up listening to the Beatles, CCR, and Moody Blues in my dad’s car, and I still listen to it. My mom favored Billy Joel and Paul Simon, and I still listen to them, too.
I’ve moved beyond that into my own stuff, too, of course.
My daughter is 6. So far, she likes a lot of what I play in the car. Her favorite song right now is a tossup between Brass Monkey and Gangnam Style, though she’ll patiently sit through Norman Bates or Leo Kottke or Enya or Tom Waits or Fleet Foxes or whatever else I’m into that week.
My parents are gone, but long ago if they had their druthers it’d be Lawrence Welk or early country (Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynne). Oh, and polkas.
My kids are in their 20’s. I like pop music more than they do, but we’ll agree on classic rock. My daughter had to explain to me who LCD Soundsystem was when they were on SNl last week.
I’m 63. I’ve always enjoyed the music of the 20s and 30s (my father’s generation). I like a number of artists of the 90s (my daughter’s generation). But I do prefer music circa 1967-1973 the most (talkin’ 'bout my g-g-generation).
When I was growing up in the 50s, my mother always had the radio on, playing the old standards (Great American Songbook) from the 30s-50s. My father listened to classical and show tunes. My musical taste includes everything they listened to, plus a shitload more. They never got into rock, jazz, opera or operetta.
But once, about 15 years ago, when my mother was living with me, I came home late one night, and she was raving about this group on TV. She had never heard of them, but she really loved their music. It was the Mamas and the Papas.
My mother mostly listens to Hindi music and enjoys but doesn’t buy 60s-70s Top 40 stuff. My dad likes classic rock, particularly some progressive stuff (Pink Floyd, Genesis). I have a tiny area of overlap with Dad (basically just Pink Floyd) and none at all with my mother, except I Just Called to Say I Love You.
When I was young (in the late 60s and early 70s), I thought that my parents had horrible taste in music, because they’d listen to the “beautiful music” radio station when we were in the car – Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Mantovani, Percy Faith, etc.
Later, I realized that, at that time, there were really very few music formats available on the radio (particularly on AM): Top 40 pop, country, or that beautiful music station. And, they listened to the latter because they had no use for the other two formats.
I discovered that my parents (particular my mom) were folkies in the early 1960s, and they really enjoyed Peter, Paul & Mary, The Kingston Trio, Trini Lopez, etc., as well as Herb Alpert. My mom is also a Nina Simone fan. While none of those performers are ones that I listen to frequently, I enjoy them, and I do have a sampling of folk music on my iTunes playlist.
My parents don’t generally listen to any of the music that I prefer (mostly rock from the 1970s), though my mother has, on occasion, heard me listening to certain songs (for example, ELO’s “Shangri-La”), and noted that she liked it.
My parents were born in 1924 and 1926, and I was born in 1954. We were thus on opposite sides of what I think of as The Beatles Divide. They grew up on big bands and band singers, and when I was a kid they listened to radio stations that played current stuff from Sinatra, Crosby, Como, Cole and the like. They tolerated but did not like my sister’s obsession with folk and then Motown, and the British invasion stuff that impelled me to pick up a guitar was noise to them.
I was in the car with my father in late 1963 when I first heard I Want To Hold Your Hand. He was a semi-pro singer, he later told me that about a quarter of our family’s income came from his singing gigs. When I was so clearly blown away by what I heard from the Beatles, he went all analytical on me, something like “They’re singing in unison and then one guy takes the melody high and the other guy sings a low harmony, what’s the big deal? Your mother and I sing better than that.” Not to my ears, Dad.
I should add that the same station that played I Want To Hold Your Hand also played stuff like Nat King Cole’s Those Lazy-Hazy-Crazy Days of Summer. There wasn’t yet a rock station that I was aware of, but I was nine.
My parents listened to classical music and jazz, exclusively. While I learned to appreciate and love some of the pieces they liked, I rarely listen to either now that they are gone. They were very tolerant of my music when I was growing up, even inquiring about it occasionally, but they would have never sought it out on the radio.
My sons and I share an affinity for Motown, Led Zeppelin, and the bulk of the alt rock catalog from the '90s and early aughts. But they are heavily into rap and hip hop which I cannot abide, while I am still heavily into current alt rock, which they find ‘meh’.
Happily, though, we can usually find a radio station to agree on if we are all in the same car, f’rinstance.
And, happiest of all, number one son is starting to get into the blues recently, my greatest love. Educating him on artists and pieces has been a great, unhoped for pleasure,
My parents basically just listen to classic rock and blues, with some pop, folk and alternative thrown in on my mom’s side. I listen to all of that and more. My ten year old goes back and forth. Sometimes he likes my music, sometimes he tells me it’s boring old people music. Probably the same contrariness that made him become a Cubs fan after 9 years raising him to be a Cardinals fan.
You might be the only person I’ve heard of who dislikes Roy Orbison. He was Elvis’s favorite singer. Even the glue-sniffing kids from Gummo liked Roy Orbison.
I still have my card (sadly now expired, Mom’s gone) for The International Al Jolson Society. So, yeah.
I grew up listening to what my parents played on the radio, which was mostly Oldies (from the birth of Rock’n’Roll in the 1950s up through the early British Invasion of the early 1960s) to what Classic Rock was in the 1990s (psychedelic later 1960s up through the non-punk non-prog rock of the 1970s), which I still appreciate and enjoy, even though I’ve branched out a lot since then.
My parents are bit narrower, but my mom, at least, will listen to just about anything once except opera and the more esoteric forms of jazz, both of which I like. Now that she has Sirius XM in her car, she listens to a lot of 40s Junction, which is big band, traditional pop, and jazz from the 1920s through the 1940s. My dad doesn’t listen to nearly as much variety, focusing more on the 1970s music of his youth and early adulthood.
I listen primarily to classic rock, hard rock and heavy metal. So does my son (18 yo). Most of our music overlaps. There is a lot of music that’s 90’s and older (not categorized as classic rock) that he doesn’t appreciate and quite a bit of today’s music that is not my style, but when it comes down to it, I would say, Yes, we mostly listen to the same.
My parents listened to a lot of Irish music, a lot of Broadway soundtracks and a lot of early Sixties folk music. I still have a lot of affection for those genres.
My son loves hardcore rap. I’ll never have any affection for that.
Now you’ve heard of two. I fucking hate Roy Orbison.
Our 14 year old son plays flute, piano, and electric bass.
Last year I introduced him to Jethro Tull. It is now his favorite band. He plays that stuff 24/7!
When I was growing up I *loved *Black Sabbath. Still do. And now our son has taking a liking to it. We try to follow Geezer’s bass lines. 
Substitute 1925 for 1924, and that’s my family. My parents tolerated my sisters’ and my love of rock n’ roll when I was growing up, but that was the extent of it.
OTOH, the Firebug and I listen to a lot of the same stuff. (He turns 10 this year. I became a parent kind of on the late side, I know. :)) I’ve got a playlist of recent stuff we play a lot in the car that includes groups like Cage the Elephant and Florence + The Machine, and he loves most of the stuff on it.
Three.
A candy-colored clown they call the Sandman tip-toes to your rooms every night… and shits on all y’all’s pillows, for hating on Roy Orbison.
I mean, what other songs would you play at a creepy nightclub?