Stop me if we’ve done this one before, but I am 51 with two kids 9 and 12 and they are listening to the same music I listened to at their age–Beatles, Who, etc. My son plays drums and this week is learning My Generation, Come Together, and Let It Be.
Why is the new crop of kids into classic rock but when I was a kid I would die before I would listen to Glen Miller or Tommy Dorsey? It seems that every generation uses music as a tool of rebellion except this one. Sure, there is new rebellious music, but I go into the music store and hear these teenage kids playing Stairway To Heaven and Little Wing. I just don’t think that’s ever happened before.
I don’t think this is all that new. I’m 23 and in high school, I liked new music, but I also listened to the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, the Who, the Doors, Dusty Springfield, Roy Orbison…etc. Now, I generally dislike new music more than ever and am going back even earlier to the older girl bands, Wall of Sound, etc.
I’m 22. I grew up listening to my parents’ music. Beatles, Neil Young, Led Zeppelin, Who, Rolling Stones, etc. I still love it and listen to it often. It’s familiar and it’s good. Maybe my kids will listen to Radiohead and Tool? Who knows, only time will tell.
I’m 28 and I always listened to “classic rock” music as a kid (Beatles, Who, Rolling Stones, Moody Blues, etc.) because my parents liked it. On the other hand, I also listened to (and gained a frightening affinity for) stuff like Bread, Chicago, Barry Manilow, etc. because my mom liked them and I was exposed before I was old enough to realize they were lame and I shouldn’t like them
I am happy for the influence of my parents, though, because the music I picked on my own was, let’s say, dubious at best at that age, and I needed guidance.
It’s been happening for a long long time actually. Sometime in the 90s, kids realized that good music is good music and forgot the whole “my music is my rebellion” bullshit. Except for the kids who listen to Marilyn Manson. No one listens to Manson except to piss off their parents.
Boomers have cooperated in taking the rebelliousness of their generation to the mass consumer market. Zep sells Caddies, Beatles sell shoes etc. ad nauseam. The best revolt makes you wealthy.
Since Boomers are now the prevailing power and like to bask in their nostalgia that era’s music is predominant. The electric guitar has replaced the piano as the family’s instrument. "Teach your children well "
I’m not really sure what the current generation sees to rebel against. There must be 30 million teens playing Stairway to Heaven on vintage Les Pauls at any given moment, all on YouTube.
Where were you went I went to my first Allman Brothers concert with my father - in 1997? New trend my eye.
I think the point about rebellion is pretty spot on. But it’s not like teenagers just stopped caring about rebelling or doing it through music. It’s that rock music isn’t rebellious anymore, it’s become establishment music. Kids looking for something too extreme for their parents aren’t going to listen to rock these days. The extreme stuff is in metal and hip hop and other genres. But it’s also true that the idea of music scenes has probably faded somewhat and it’s more acceptable to pick and choose what you like to listen to, regardless of when it was made.
Let the record show I’ve seen the Allmans almost 50 times over the years, and my father’s been to many more concerts. My youngest brother saw his first show at age 8, although he was really too young at that point and it was more of a novelty thing. He’s seen a handful or so since then, and at age 16 is into tons of classic rock stuff.
I listened to whatever was playing around the house. If my parents had played stuff from the 1930s or 1940s, I’m sure I would have found stuff in there I liked. One piece I discovered much later, on my own (covered here by a jazz band):
ETA: Here are some kids who discovered the same song.
I think you young’uns are missing the point of the OP, and it’s understandable because you need to be in your 50s to get it. When we were kids, we listened to what is now classic rock but was at the time radically different from our parents music. In the 60s, music from the 40s and 50s was laughably uncool (for the most part) and music from the 30s and 40s was background music in old movies. But something happened in the 60s. Rock happened, and it stuck!
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to appreciate music from all eras, but I wasn’t like that when I was a teen, and few of my generation were. There were always anomalies, of course - Sha-Na-Na reintroduced many of us to the 50s at Woodstock, folk music and bluegrass were still embraced, Do-Wop stayed around in one form or another, and of course classical music was electrified and updated (or popularized in Bugs Bunny cartoons). But the overwhelming soundtrack of the 60s was rock, and it’s never gone away. I think that’s what he’s talking about. The music isn’t there as camp, it’s embraced in its original form.
Is it possible that the intense dislike for the music of the parent’s generation was a strange phenomenon? I suspect that for the most part children grew up listening and enjoying music that was the same as what their parents listened to. Rock and roll came along and there was a pretty good generational split. Older folks didn’t like it much (yeah I’m generalizing) and younger people did. Now we’ve had rock music for over 50 years and many kids grew up listening to it while their parents had the radio on. I’m not surprised that people in their 20s enjoy the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, or Blondie.
I’m not saying the music we listen to today is exactly the same as it was in the 60s and 70s but it’s a lot closer then Elvis or the Beatles were to Lawrence Welk.
Marc
I’m 30, and I love Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey. I don’t listen to much classic rock at all. I like the Beatles and I love Elvis, but I can take or leave most other bands from that era. My father-in-law laughs that I listen to the same music his mother did.
I’m 36 and in high school I listened mostly to music from the 70s. Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, stuff like that. I also liked a lot of 80s things like Depeche Mode, Jane’s Addiction, etc.
My son will be 13 next month and he looks up Beatles lyrics and prints them off so he can sing along with his iPod. He loves Pink Floyd, loves Nirvana, loves They Might Be Giants. He has been to 2 Jethro Tull concerts and 1 Roger Waters concert. I’m very happy with his musical taste. I am also very excited that he is hitting the age when he is getting really into music and seeking it out and listening as much as possible.
Why is it that he likes mostly the same music I do? Probably because it’s what he’s heard growing up. He also likes classical music and enjoyed going to the symphony with me a couple of times. He hasn’t hit the rebellious stage yet, though I can see a glimmer of it. I doubt he will shun the music he likes so much right now just because he starts feeling rebellious, though. He may pick up some crappy new music to annoy me, but I bet he keeps the music he likes now as well.
Did previous generations not expose their kids to as much music when they were younger? I mean we sing in the car all the time along with CDs and stuff… could that be a difference? I wasn’t around in the Baby Boomer time so I don’t know what it was like.
The main reason is simple: rock music never went away.
If you listened to music in the 60s, you were hard-pressed to hear anything your parents listened to. There were some stations in New York City that specialized in showtunes, and a few that played modern jazz, but no one played bands from the 40s. And if you were outside of a big city, you most likely never heard any of that music at all on the radio. Radio always concentrated on current hit songs until “Classic Rock” format came along.
In addition, rock music used completely different instruments than in the 40s – guitar, bass, drum, and maybe keyboard. Pre-rock it was brass and woodwinds.
Nowadays, classic rock is still a very popular format, due to the Baby Boomers. Oldies was also very popular (and didn’t exist in the 60s except to play older rock and roll). People getting into music are introduced to it on the radio and TV, and current pop music uses similar instruments. In addition, other than rap, popular music is still very much in the same idiom as the 1960s.
Ultimately, kids get exposed to classic rock a lot more than they did to their parents’ music in the 60s, and it sounds similar to their current music (not counting rap).
I have always assumed that the kids of the 40s and 50s only listened to that music because there was nothing else. If you wanted to dance with a girl, you had to do it to the music that was available. Rock and roll changed everything and that old music disappeared very quickly. People who were past the age at which they were interested in seeking out interesting music still listen to it (like my parents), but anyone who was young enough when rock came along took to it instantly and never listened to the old stuff again.
Now, kids like rock music because it’s all there is. They start, generally, listening to the manufactured crap that is being shoveled at them. But then they hear something good. It doesn’t have to be classic. It doesn’t even have to be terribly good. It just has to not be Hillary Duff. It could be Green Day. It could be Coldplay. But it gets them to drop the lame stuff (just like what happened when rock displaced the music of the 40s and 50s) and then they start really listening. Then someone plays Led Zep or The Who for them and that’s it - they’re hooked.
I think this is a big part of it. I heard “Three Little Birds” by Bob Marley on the radio the other day. And it struck me that even though it was recorded in the 70s, it sounded like “modern” music.
This obviously doesn’t apply to every 50s/60s/70s/80s act, but it does to many of the big ones that resonent with kids today.
@Opal: I’m a bit older than you, being 45: I don’t know if my family was just poor but isn’t it generally accepted that music sales are driven by teenagers? As we’ve become more affluent as a society, kids have more money in their pockets, and they’re the ones who buy. I remember when my favorite song would come on the radio, cranking it up: I couldn’t afford the record so this was the big chance to hear it. My parents (b.1921 & b.1924) might have bought a dozen records in their lives, combined, so there weren’t any artifacts to discover via them.
Related: I don’t like most rap music…I figured it was a fad that would last a few years. I wonder: if something comes along to replace it, or if people just plain tire of it, and rap takes a dive like disco did—will kids 20 years from now will “re-discover” rap? I figure part of what keeps a style of music in our consciousness is how we use it to celebrate, e.g. what song did you have at your wedding? "Oh honey, listen: they’re playing ‘Beeyotch, yo my ho’ on the radio…remember when we had our first dance to that at our reception?!
Or is rap like country music, i.e. not to my taste but quite durable and unlikely to disappear any time soon…like, I don’t know, herpes or Gilbert Gottfried?
