Kids listening to old music

A moment ago, I was quite startled to hear Nat King Cole blasting out of the bathroom where my teenage kid is taking a shower. Wow! And cool! Followed by Beyonce, "Aguanile," something that sounds like Kate Bush or Tori Amos ran into a rap producer, and other eclectic taste.

I know some high schoolers who listen to old classic rock-in South Central L.A., where it's not ALL hip-hop or corridos.

I'm not sure where they pick this stuff up. I do like Nat King Cole a lot but do not recall playing it for my kid ever.

 

"Unforgettable" was covered on NBC's "The Voice" on Monday evening...
these songs are immediately available on iTunes every week; an easy link to musical history...

 

I've got a USB stick in the car on shuffle with everything from "Jerusalem", "The Entertainer" and "The Imperial March" through to Sinatra, The Who and Metallica. I have a 6-year-old who every so often, when he's concentrating on something will start singing a few lines of "Good Vibrations" or hum the riff to "Rebel Rebel". Out 18 month old has recently started shouting "More!" at the end of "Won't Get Fooled Again"; who am I to do anything other than press repeat........?

 

They have to hear it from somewhere. Thank God for T.V., I guess...

 

Yes, I'm sure that many kids listen to "old music" like Justin Bieber.

 

My son loves Chuck Berry as of this weekend. I played it in the car and is now on his iPad and *stated *it is his favorite. 50's rock & roll might be his thing?
If I play Nat King Cole next I am sure he would say pass. He loves his rock and electronic music.
Kids will like what they like. Give them independence and let them pick and listen to what they want.

 

At the gym yesterday I overheard 2 early 20's or late teens discussing how terrible the music of thier generation was.....we had a great 5 minute discussion......
This is becoming more common and it gives me hope that rock and roll will rebound eventually......if there is a demand for good music...it will come as soon as the execs figure it out.....hopefully

 

My kids have a few "old" songs that they've latched onto and seem to be in circulation, like Foreigner - Hot Blooded, Beatles - Blackbird, GNR - Sweet Child, etc. I think songs that are featured in movie soundtracks have a lot to do with it.

 

Guns N' Roses is the biggest rock band in the world right now and I'm not entirely sure that soundtracks have anything to do with it, @wdiv

 

Just the other day my 6 year old requested to listen to a song before bed instead of story time. When I asked him what he wants to listen to he said " stairway to heaven...on vinyl". That's definitely a parenting win! He also walks around the house sometimes singing " I don't want to do your dirty work, oh no". I love it.

 

I have two daughters, 17 and 18. Now, I exposed them to tons of good music from the 1920s and up, but every once in a while they still surprise me by starting in singing some old pre-WW2 jazz standard or bit of classic rock...everything from Bo Diddley to B.O.C.

Seems that invariably when I ask them where they heard it, they heard it on a video game.

 

Blackbird has been in the news of late thanks to Harry Styles new album. Apparently one his new songs is a blatant rip off

 

I was listening to the oldies while all my friends were listening to Britney Spears and europop. I guess that's why I'm here.

 

Six year olds will like your old music. When they are twelve years old, probably not. I found I could not predict what my daughter would like based on how much she had followed my musical taste up to age ten. Once she asserted her independence generally in fifth grade, all of my music was suddenly "dumb" to her. Now she never listens to anything released before 2012.

This is one of a great many threads we have had here about today's children loving the music of 1965-75. It usually turns into a thread which is much more about the members here than it is about the children.

 

There's a great YouTube channel that conducts experiments where kids hear older music and older adults hear modern music. I know there's been a lot of discussion on the topic and I think there's less of a generational gap than some may think. Plenty of kids know the Beatles at least and some of the other big rock bands of the past. Most teens know these names and may not know every song but they like many, and when you hear older music from your parents and in supermarkets and pharmacies, and toy stores and malls, then as a young person, you have some idea. Better communication amongst generations would make music of all eras feel more universal.

 

I was born in 1979, almost 90% of the music I listen to was before I was born. I remember listening to "Breakfast with The Beatles" with my mother in the mid 80's on one of the Detroit's radio stations. Funny I've been told to "get my own music" by a few old hippies, what interesting is that I probably know more about those bands than they do.

 

When I was 7 (1988) I started listening to Oldies music (50's/60's pop/rock/R&B) on the radio and was really drawn to it because it was catchy. Thus began my lifelong love for that era of music.

 

My nephew who normally listens to Rap and has shared some of his favorite songs with me loves Louis Pima. He heard me playing The Wildest and asked who it was and then immediately put it on his phone.

 

I'm 21. I grew up listening to classic rock since I was 10 when my dad played me the wall on a car ride from the Hamptons to NJ. It was a profound moment. I always hated mainstream music. I guess because I never fit in. Yah most kids will like a couple of old songs. Hits they heard from movies tv etc..

 

I'll have to ask my parents if they were terribly concerned about me listening to Sinatra and Elvis, when I was young.

 

"Honey, he just walks around saying "Shooby dooby doo" all the time- what does it mean?!".

 

Kids today are able to, and will listen to any music they like, regardless of age or genre. They are open to everything - I know I was when I was a teenager.

 

I think kids today are much more open minded and/or accepting of older music then we ever were at their age. I couldn't imagine having a Sinatra album in my collection when i was 25, my son is at that age now and already has three in his. I also think they're more accepting of older music, than older people are of new music, we see evidence that points to this on the forum often.

 

My son was born in '83, so that '80s era was a soundtrack to his early life via radio playlists, and he has a sentimental fondness for the big power songs from that time.
Neither his Dad nor I are musicians but both of us loved a broad range of artists and genre across the years, including some very old blues and jazz 78s. We had a yuuuge vinyl collection that didn't exclude new stuff as it came along; between that and radio there was always music in the house.
One of the great joys for us was talking about whatever we'd just heard - it might be life events of the artist (the sad strange end of Sam Cooke, as only one of zillions of examples) or it might be about the song itself.
So, the listening became inadvertently a history thing that in his case often held as much interest as the music.
He's 34 now and to this day we routinely have our artist conversations - it's a big world and there's always more to hear and know. Music and music conversations are enduring pleasures in our family.
I think household exposure matters enormously because it can provide frames of reference and comparison.
We're all wired up differently and Yay for that; what falls well on the ear and evokes what we need it to evoke will shake out for young people just as it does for older. A broad genre exposure just broadens the listening mind, IMO, and surely that's a positive thing.

(As an aside, one of the posts above mentioned old hippies saying "get your own music", , they meant to say "Groovy that you dig our stuff, man, welcome aboard." That's direct from Google translator.
Pay them no mind, like what you like, boomers/hippies certainly do. (I'm a boomer, can't imagine saying something like that. That's like Shakespeare saying "get your own plays." Wagner: get your own ******* opera. Robert Johnson: no blues for you.

 

Personally I'm just a casual Beatles listener but my son really likes them a lot more, and since his primary school days.

Also, when he was 9 he was talking to me about some music, not knowing the artist or the tracks, but stating I watched in on TV. After a while I found out he was referring to a Stevie Wonder live concert DVD I own. Je watched it again with me and now je is a big Stevie fan.

He plays guitar for years now, and I think it's mostly Led Zeppelin.

My wife and I concluded he has an "old soul".