When do people's musical tastes stagnate?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I don’t know how this thread’s going to go, so I’ll put it in IMHO and hope for the best.

My basic question is this: At some point in most people’s lives, they decide that they don’t like the new music coming out and stick with their old stuff, or new stuff from the same old groups. This is one of the causes of every teenager thinking their parents listen to boring old music. Well, when does this happen? Why does this happen?

I wonder if it’s not age-related, but more related to having kids in some way and listening to too much Barney and friends.

I’m 27, single, and though I don’t consider myself old, I can definitely see my musical tastes starting to diverge a little from my friends. I still like the new stuff (Linkin Park, Staind, etc.), but also a lot of the older stuff - I have a wide range of tastes.

I am curious as to why this phenomenon occurs.

2

As people get older, they probably discover that they have more and more other priorities competing with their desire to seek out new and exciting bands.

I’m 28. I had already found all the bands that I hold dearest by junior year of college. I looked at the contents of a mix CD that I burned recently – vast majority came from late '80s and early '90s.

3

My musical taste started to stagnate when I started to become older than the new popular musicians out there. I guess for me its an ego problem. I just feel stupid jamming out to something some kid wrote about his views on life; Becuase hey, I’ve already been there and done that.:wink:

4

Premise: ‘new’ music arises from disaffection / alienation / the ‘us’ vs ‘them’ viewpoint

theorem: As you and I grow older, and take our place in the system, our sense of ‘us vs them’ diminishes: god help us, we become ‘them’.

Proof: Eminem is more disaffected than his audience.

5

I think most people stop liking the “new music” when it becomes something different from what they like. I’m 26 and my favorite bands are The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Rush, Boston, Pink Floyd, Neil Young, that sort of thing. I also really like a lot of new(er) stuff like Alice In Chains, Stone Temple Pilots, Collective Soul, Tonic, Nickleback, Staind, Mazzy Star, and sundry other artists. However I most emphatically do not like things like Marilyn Manson, Kid Rock, Korn, and that sort. So basically I think musical tastes don’t stagnate, you like what you like, and as long as stuff that you like keeps being produced, you keep liking “new” music. as long as you keep exposing yourself to it.

If that makes any sense.

6

Genseric, I guess you’re saying your tastes have already stagnated. At 26. :slight_smile:

Hmmm, perhaps folks’ tastes start to stagnate when the ‘new’ stuff starts to sound mightily like the old. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve heard some ‘new & daring’ sound/band/song that sounded exactly like something I’d heard that was fairly popular a decade or more before. At this point, one starts to wonder why you’re listening to new songs that aren’t new.

7

I don’t think I’ve ever encountered this. I was raised on Classical music, still like Classical music, still own all the recordings I listened to as a kid. And I still listen to them. I do enjoy getting new recordings of the same Classical pieces, though.

I like discovering other genrés of music, though. Like the Celtic phase I went through (still love Celtic) and my Jazz mood comes and goes. Stlll like it all, though.

I feel fortunate, I don’t look at my old recordings and think “Did I ever really like that?” I still like it all, and I never get rid of anything.

8

There is a general feeling – and not just among the old farts – that popular music just isn’t what it used to be. Too much of it is written to a formula, and it’s style and image more than the music. Musicians are aiming for an audience that either hasn’t heard the originals, or which likes a certain type of music and, like a young child who keeps asking his parent to read the same story over and over, want to just hear that.

And a lot of the alternative stuff is also a reworking of themes we’ve heard before. (With an extra dollop of grossness).

Rock music may be at a dead end. This happened in the early 60s (when folk was beginning to take over), until the British Invasion revitalized it. Something like that needs to happen.

I do notice that as I age, I tended to prefer more melodic music. I suspect that may be a part of things, too. Still, I do like a certain portion of new music and don’t dismiss it all.

9

Limiting yourself to one genre of music is almost a sure way to atrophy. Of course rock is almost dead, we’ve been making it for 40 years. Keeping your ears open for new styles is a good way to keep music interesting. And it need not be new, popular music. I just recently really listened to some Dean Martin/Frank Sinatra era music. Some of it is really cheesy, but some of it is really good. I will now put an effort into searching for more of this type.
If you like 70s era rock, and you listen to nothing else, not only to you risk burning out on it, but you limit your horizons, missing out on a world full of amazing music, new and old.

10

I’m with Snooooopy on this one. I just don’t have the same amount of time to listen to music, go clubbing, read up on the indie/student press that I did at university. I still buy new music, but I find my opportunities to hear new bands are limited by irritations like working full-time…

11

I don’t think my musical taste has stagnated, in fact, I think it has taken off in the last few years. A few years ago, I would only listen to punk, hardcore, metal and some hard rock. If it was on a major label, or touring the large arenas, I didn’t want any part of it. Yeah, I was a music snob.

Now, I still listen to that stuff if its around, but don’t search out only underground stuff. I’ve found myself listening to classical, celtic, just about anything except teeny bopper pop and country. My problem now is that I have to sub-catorgorize music, like is Limp Bizkit new metal, rap metal, metal, or corporate rock. Yes, I realize, thats very stupid, I need help.

12

Apparently right about . . . NOW. I’m 27. In the last year or so, I’ve found that when I tune in to the same modern-rock/alternative station that I’ve been listening to for five years (though mostly I listen to public radio), I’m like, “What is this crap?” Every now and then a new song comes out that I really groove on, but more and more the rest of it is degenerating into unpleasant background noise.

But at the same time, I’m discovering new types of music, like folk, for example, that I was never interested in before, and I think I’m more willing now to give a fair chance to other types that I dismissed out of hand in the past.

13

This thread really interests me since I play at a dueling piano bar, and I am constantly on the lookout for ‘new’ or interesting songs to keep the audience coming back. Trying to find music for audiences that range in age from 21 to 91 is a little challenging.

I’m a fan of funk and R&B, but I find myself liking the new stuff that has a really good groove, or tells a great story.

As far as stagnating, do you think that it’s a reflection of other elements in your life settling down, too?

And I have to disagree with my very esteemed other posters: I do NOT think rock is dead, or dying. It may splinter, and god knows there are some varieties I don’t care for, but good ol’ rock-n-roll is healthy and kicking from what I see.

14

My taste stagnated when I stopped listening to the radio (about two and a half years ago when I moved to LA, where the radio stations suck). Now I feel out of touch, yet I still can’t be bothered to listen to the webcast of my favourite Toronto radio station more than once a week. I have found, however, that the Princeton campus radio station is a fount of styles I’ve never heard, without pandering to the masses.

The problem I have is that most current music doesn’t affect me at all. Why would I want to listen to somebody whine about their love life, when clearly they’re an idiot? Most of the music that appeals to me is political, and there’s not much of that being produced anymore, at least, not that I’ve heard.

15

I’ve almost always been out of date. Beginning in the early 1970’s, the center of my rock taste universe, as it were, has always been the mid-to-late 1960’s, with a dusting of earlier stuff like Elvis’ Sun recordings, and people like Chuck Berry. Nevertheless, I enjoyed two brief periods of actually liking and following some of the current bands.

(1) The early punk/new-wave years, before the trend devolved into synth-pop, and
(2) The early '90’s bands like Nirvana and Soundgarden.

I totally do not appreciate or like rap, most hip-hop, rave, industrial, or just about anything else that’s going on now. I understand that there are some decent rock bands out there, but I stopped listening to rock stations when they started having talk shows during the morning drive. So I’m probably missing out on some things I’d like.

16

I think that it has something to do with
a) Loss of teen angst. Somewhere after college most of us stop identifying with the lyrics of pop music, or at least, stop believing that we are anyone particularly special, emotionally and spiritually speaking.
b) We are not accepting new unneccesary information at this time. Brain is full. When I was a teenager, I knew every new band, the mke and model of every car that went by, the license plate #s of myself, family, and friends. Now I’m 30, and Im lucky if I remember my pin #.
c) Classics, classics, classics…why try to keep up with any of that new crap when theres so much Bach, Billie Holliday, Cole Porter etc out there just waiting to be heard, now that “coolness” is no longer a concern?
d) Talk radio, talk radio, talk radio…Switched to NPR
about 5 years ago, and never went back, except for branching out in to the wonderful world of a.m. radio. Song lyrics are a bunch of been there done that common themes.
On talk shows, though, you get to learn, you get humor,
challenge, idiocy, the full range of entertainment and satisfaction!

17

I guess it depends on what you’re exposed to. If your only source of new music is commercial radio, then I blame musical stagnation on maturity. As in, as your tastes mature, you realize that what you’re hearing on the air is really lacking in talent, repetitive, formulaic, uninteresting… all the things that make radio the vast swamp of banality that it pretty much usually is.

However, there’s always good music being produced; there are thousands of record labels out there, hundreds of thousands of bands, and odds are that some of them are making music that will blow you completely away. The only problem is finding them; it’s not easy. So few bands get promoted, so many of the ones that get promoted follow some sort of “success formula” that radio has already proven, that finding obscure good bands is a real challenge. And so, a lot of people hear what’s going on in commercial radio, and are unmoved, and their tastes stagnate.

I’m lucky to have a local community station that plays some of the most bizarre stuff I’ve ever heard; it ranges from execrable to ecstatic. But I’ll take that sort of wide range of listenability over commercial radio’s formulaic pablum any day; some of the best albums in my collection resulted from frantic phone calls to the station: “Who was that band? What was that song?”

There are a lot of internet radio station out there as well that make their living off of catering to really different tastes as well. I’ve heard some amazing stuff thanks to them.

To me, it’s worth the time it takes to research bands and genres, in order to find amazing musicians like **Ida, Low, Rufus Wainwright, Bright Eyes, Jets to Brazil, Delgados, Pernice Brothers…**there’s so much great music going on out there, it’s impossible to find all the great ones. But keep trying. If you can find one new song that can make you cry, or knock you back in astonishment, or make you laugh out loud, it’s worth it.

18

I think it happened to me in the last year 2 years, and I’m 26.

At uni, and shortly after (93-97) in the UK the biggest scenes were so called “trip-hop” (Portishead, Tricky, Massive Attack et al) and drum’n’bass. (Roni Size, Goldie, Photek etc.). I loved both of these types of music and still do. They have mutated over the interim years but I still love the new stuff being produced by splintered offspring of these genres and the intermarriages between DnB and jazz, or DnB and samba or whatever.

However, the current big scene in the UK for the last year or so (unless I’m really past it and have missed the latest one) is speed garage. Basically Drum and Bass slowed down a bit, but with all the low-end, and a great big cheesy vocal over the top. Does nothing for me at all, but sells by the bucketload and is nigh-on impossible to avoid in clubs.

I look at this and think, well, it’s the same idea as DnB, except its all been done before, and these sort of vocals have been around since the days of Studio 54. Its also purely trying to push your buttons rather than engage your mind. Yes, I know, I’m too old and the music’s too loud, but surely, it’s cack?

The difference is that a good producer can take elements from their own style and combine it with, say, bossa-nova to wonderful effect – Kruder and Dorfmeister, or Thievery Corporation, anyone? I can’t see equal merit in taking that one skippy garage beat and bolting on a worn-out disco/rave vocal and an MC whose sole job is to yell “rewind” and “bo! selecta”

Don’t even get me started on Nu-metal. You’re all a generation older than your fans, I’m not a fan of metal myself so I can’t really judge how well you play, but you certainly can’t rap and if you want to do disaffected angst or paranoia buy a Radiohead or Tricky album and learn. OK, so Linkin Park and a couple of others appear to be rather talented on the evidence of the single, but the rest of it sounds like someone has listened to Napalm Death, Bodycount and Beavis and Butthead and then thought “lowest common denominator”.

I do notice the trend to go more more melodic as I age. You’re now far more likely to hear Jurassic 5 than AmeriKKKa’s most wanted on my stereo, and I definitely listen to Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works more than Come to Daddy. Jazz is the fastest growing bit of my record collection and that tends to be from the 50s rather than the latest avant-gardista who has advanced beyond the conventions of tone, harmony and rhythm.

Re-reading this post, I realise that whilst it all makes perfect sense to me and I know that I’m right, I also know I’m not one of the kids anymore. I shall buy a pipe and slippers, secure in the knowledge that if an infant, sat on my knee the better to play with my aged white whiskers asks me “old man, what does rinsing mean?” I can reply, “well, back in my day…….”

Christ I’m an old git.

19

I agree that exposure has a lot to do with it. when you’re young you constantly meet new people with new tastes, especially when going to college for the first time, and you have more time to go to gigs, listen to the radio, hang around in record shops or whatever.

Fortunately we brits are blessed with a godlike figure called John Peel. He has remained at the bleeding edge of music for thirty (?) years and apart from a weakness for the Fall, he plays just about everything from death metal to dub, alt-country to ‘ardcore with equal enthusiasm. Musicians worship him, and you know you’ve made it when you get a live session on his show.

The only problem is that if you have any boundaries whatsoever to your music tastes, they will be crossed repeatedly.

His show is broadcast on the web. I’d recommend having a listen and expanding your horizon:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/alt/peel.shtml

20

I agree with the “exposure” people.

Now, if you’re sitting around thinking you’re musical tastes are stagnating because you’re no longer on the cutting edge of what the cool kids are listening to, or that you find you no longer like what’s on the radio, you probably deserve to have those tastebuds wither. Most pop music, there’s nothing to “understand”. It’s all right there in front of you, like it or don’t.

I was born out of the Nirvana grunge period, and from there went to industrial like Nine Inch Nails or Ministry. Then Radiohead swooped in leading me to more melodic pastures, like Tricky or Portishead. Right now I’m into instrumentals like Godspeed You Black Emperor or the soundtrack to ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST. And all along the way I kept exposing myself to new music, at least new to me. Filled in my Beatles gap, learned to appreciate classic rock and roll, found Johnny Cash, female vocalists like PJ Harvey, the noir goth of Dead Can Dance. And that’s just the more recognizable stuff.

The radio and MTV are very narrow in what they put out for the listener’s ear. It’s more of a money thing than a music thing. If you become a little more adventurous and seek new music outside of the mainstream you’re musical tastes will never stagnate. Some roads may lead you nowhere, but others lead to parties you never new existed.

Also, I think while some people’s tastes do actually stop at high school, even the most staid listener can appreciate new music. My mom told me she liked some of the songs off Radiohead’s “OK Computer”, which is understandable. But she’s also told me she liked the Revolting Cock’s cover of “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?” Which is completely off the wall. (I don’t think she’s actually listened to the lyrics, though. I know she doesn’t know the name of the band.)