The Data Is In: You Like The Music You Heard When You Were 14

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Shaddam IV, Feb 12, 2018.

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  1. My first really serious musical 'love' was Jimi Hendrix, when I was about 16, circa 1985. Including boots and all those horrible Curtis Knight things (and such), I must have had close to 50 Hendrix titles on LP by the time I graduated high school.

    Before that when I was about 13-14, I did go through a brief Beatles phase, and enjoyed nearly the entire Beatles catalog (which I made cassette tapes of from LP's belonging to the parents of a couple classmates of mine). And while I did buy some Beatles boots back in my day, I was more interested in them because they were boots, than I really was the music. And to this very day, even though I'm pushing 50, there are more Beatles albums that I've NEVER owned on LP (or CD, or cassette), than those I bothered to pick up. I think I've only ever owned three (3) legit Beatles CD's: Rubber Soul, Revolver, and Abbey Road - plus the 'Love' soundtrack, and all three volumes of the Anthology 2CD sets (and that's it). And I've NEVER actally eer owned a copy of Sgt. Pepper, btw (and how many Steve Hoffman Forum members can say THAT??!!!)

    After Hendrix, when I got to college, I immediately discovered Pink Floyd (more deeply that just what'd been on the radio), and I did a deep dive there (including tons of boots back in the day, circa late 80's). And Frank Zappa. And plenty more.

    But I have to admit that although I have gone back to Floyd a lot in recent years, I really didn't listen to much Floyd at all for a good 10-15 years (and didn't even own The Division Bell until around 2003). And much as I've always loved Hendrix (and always will), between 1995 and 2015, I'm sure there were SEVERAL non-sequential 2-3 year periods where I never listened to even one Jimi Hendrix album. And I'll go on a big Frank Zappa bender about once every 5 years or so, but I can EASILY go 3-4 years without listening to more than a small handful of my Zappa CD's (despite owning 85% of his entire catalog).

    None of this disproves the claim of this thread title/article. But I will say that at least in my case, my tastes have come and gone, and certainly my enthusiasms have. I listened to a TON of Miles Davis for 10 years, starting in the early 90's, and I've never lost interest - but even that comes and goes, and I can easily go a year without listening to much Miles (other than new, previously unreleased live material that's come out in recent years).

    FWIW.
     
    Last edited: Feb 12, 2018
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  2. dkmonroe

    dkmonroe A completely self-taught idiot

    Location:
    Atlanta
    I really do like a lot of the music that I discovered at 14 (I discovered an astonishing number of my favorite albums that year) but I also went through a sort of renaissance in my late twenties - early thirties where I discovered some new musical styles and artists, and those are as essential to my listening habits as my teen years.
     
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  3. x2zero

    x2zero Forum Resident

    Location:
    Brooklyn USA
    I was listening mostly to Prog when I was 14 (1975), I soon grew out of that...
     
  4. Brian Doherty

    Brian Doherty Forum Resident

    Location:
    Los Angeles CA
    I have always been very ecumenical and generous to myself and there is VERY little, almost no, music I ever genuinely loved and then genuinely decided I didn't like at all. (Closest is the Doors, but I've been sort of letting myself fall in like with them at least again.) Some of it I don't play a lot anymore, but would still say I liked it. My "favorite bands" when I was 14 were The Who, Kinks, Beatles, Dylan, Elton, Jefferson Airplane and family, and the Doors, and I am still a big fan of all of them except the Doors, mostly.

    However, I was 14 in 1982, and while I still like as songs most of the songs I liked then, I did not grow into any kind of lasting nostalgic appreciation for the general production and sound qualities of early 80s pop, in fact find it annoying in a cliched "ugh 80s production" sense. I feel more of a natural pull toward the sounds of the 60s or even fifties, weirdly. (As my favorite bands at 14 shows, I was in the stuff I bought and played a premature old hippie, but I was consuming MTV and AOR and top 40 radio in 82 and mostly digging it.)
     
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  5. qrysdonnell

    qrysdonnell Forum Resident

    I've been trying to fight this for years, but I think I'm finally coming to grips with it. For me, the sweetest spot is probably when I was 17 - 1989. So we're talking about albums like Green by REM, Pleased To Meet Me by the Replacements, Oranges And Lemons by XTC, Disintegration by The Cure, Love And Rockets self-titled album, Deep by Peter Murphy, Doolittle by Pixies, Queen Elvis by Robyn Hitchcock, Technique by New Order, 9 by PiL.

    I mean, that's a pretty good year.

    Obviously I was a fan of the alternative music at the time. I don't think I had gotten quite deep into it when I was 14. I probably just started getting into it at 1986 and got more immersed in 87. I was fully in tune with the scene by 88, but 89 seems to be the peak - with the years leading up to it being better than the trailing years. There's not too much surviving in my currently listening from the pre-Alternative days beyond the Beatles - and heck, even Paul McCartney had a pretty decent album in 1989!
     
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  6. Danby Delight

    Danby Delight Forum Resident

    Location:
    Boston
    This has been a truism for me ever since I was 14 myself. Whether or not it's what people continue to listen to primarily for the rest of their lives, I think it's undeniable that most music fans have a special fondness for what they were listening to at 13-14. I know that for myself, that period between 1982 and 84, as post-punk and new wave were shading into college radio and MTV pop, is my own personal music comfort food, and it will always be a period I turn to. (To tie this in to SHMF's perennial topic: what music did Lennon and McCartney both record albums of during times of personal stress? Bingo: the early rock and R&B favorites of their teenage years.) If you looked at my iTunes listening stats, you'd see a huge spike of songs recorded between 1977 and 1987 because I have playlists of personal favorites from that era that are what I most often click on when it's time to hit the gym.

    The only problem comes when people confuse subjective taste and objective fact and start to proclaim that the music they listened to when they were 14 is obviously objectively superior to the music of 2018. Because, no, it's not.
     
  7. Let's see, in 1996 I was listening to:
    Pink Floyd (still like them)
    Chicago (still like them)
    Asia (still like them, not as much as back then though)
    The Police (still like them)
    Steely Dan (still like them)
    Yes (still like them)
    Joe Jackson (still like him)

    However, apart from Chicago I was already listening to them long before 1996.
     
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  8. jazon

    jazon A fight between the blue you once knew

    Location:
    ottawa
    At that age I was listening to a lot of Led Zeppelin, The Doors, Beatles, etc. Also some of the current music of the time which was Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Metallica, Guns n Roses, etc. Still listen to all those bands today, maybe there is some truth.
     
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  9. John B Good

    John B Good Forum Hall Of Fame

    Location:
    NS, Canada
  10. Classicrock

    Classicrock Senior Member

    Location:
    South West, UK.
    I also like some music I heard when 24, 34, 44 and 54. I don't like all the music I heard at 14 as there always was some rubbish about. Actually only have a few original singles bought before 17/18 when album purchases started. Of course I now own quite a lot of music that came out when I was 14 but also something from most years since.
     
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  11. wavethatflag

    wavethatflag God is love, but get it in writing.

    Location:
    SF Bay Area
    The data is in, you've abandoned Pyromania and Love At First Bite. :D

    I have anyway.

    Edit: Love At First Sting. Proof that I did abandon it.
     
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  12. dlokazip

    dlokazip Forum Transient

    Location:
    Austin, TX, USA
    Turned 14 in 1982.

    Definitely was listening to Rush, Blackmore's Rainbow, Judas Priest, The Cars, Al Di Meola, The Who, Jimi Hendrix, and The Beatles during that time, so that tracks. Some things like Journey, Styx, REO Speedwagon, Foreigner, Triumph, and Boston I don't care to listen to much anymore. AC/DC and Van Halen, I go through fits and spurts.

    Wasn't listening to Zappa yet. That didn't come until about 18.
     
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  13. When In Rome

    When In Rome It's far from being all over...

    Location:
    UK
    I would imagine it depends what you were listening to age 14. Some things may carry over, some just won't...
     
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  14. Jeff Kent

    Jeff Kent Forum Resident

    Location:
    Mt. Kisco, NY
    I met Paul Simon when he was working on his ill-fated Broadway musical, Capeman. We had a conversation about this very topic.
     
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  15. Jeff Kent

    Jeff Kent Forum Resident

    Location:
    Mt. Kisco, NY
    I wonder if this will still hold true for this and the next few generations of 14 year olds. When I was 14 I had a small handful of albums that I listened to constantly. I knew every lyric, note, click, pop, everything. Kids today who are into music can listen to millions of songs and may never get locked into one genre like I did.
     
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  16. Lightworker

    Lightworker Forum Resident

    Location:
    Deep Texas
    Nah. I was 14 in 1968. I still like/play a lot of music from that year (The White Album,
    Jeff Beck Truth, and many others), but my rock "nostalgia" windows are 1960-63
    (when I started buying records and listening to music radio), 1964-1967 (when Top-40
    radio "peaked" and rock was at its most exciting and imaginative (for my tastes). I also
    have a soft spot for 1975-79 with the punk rock revival years, and in the late 20th I would
    also single out 1989-1997 as rock's last gasp when I waited with bated breath for the new
    Pixies, Teenage Fanclub or Redd Kross album to hit the bins.
     
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  17. mr. steak

    mr. steak Forum Resident

    Location:
    chandler az
    It sure was a lot easier to find stuff that would blow my mind when I was 14. I still can but nowhere near as often.
     
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  18. Rick Robson

    Rick Robson

    Location:
    ️️
    According to my own experiences and music tastes, I can say with certainty that I like the music that I heard during my whole life up to date. If I tried to define an age that most influenced my today's taste I'd end up completely puzzled.

    So, I'd say that my taste for music was always influenced by an interesting mixture of:

    1) What was prevalent on my social environment (i.e. high school, my parents and close friends tastes, radio and TV programmes, series etc.);

    AND

    2) What sounded different from everything already heard and attracted me (or was even 'love at the first sight') at each time of my personal life experience.
    .
     
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  19. Arkay_East

    Arkay_East Forum Resident

    Location:
    ATX
    I don't listen to much SRV or The Doors at this point so I'm gonna assume I'm an outlier.
     
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  20. mdent

    mdent Forum Resident

    Location:
    New England
    I suppose having diverse listening habits at that point of my life (in the early 70's) helped me appreciate a lot of music; from classical, prog, jazz, folk, rock to pop rock.
     
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  21. geo50000

    geo50000 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Canon City, CO.
    Turned 14 in 1972, and yeah...there was a bumper crop of classic albums released that year that I still listen to:
    Top 60 Albums of 1972
     
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  22. Atmospheric

    Atmospheric Forum Resident

    Location:
    Eugene
    I think there's a lot of truth in the OP. All of us should consider that we here at SH are statistical outliers. I think for the vast majority of the population, the data is very representative.
     
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  23. Atmospheric

    Atmospheric Forum Resident

    Location:
    Eugene
    Not true. I once asked a linguist about this at a writers conference. Her opinion was that a plural noun communicating a singular concept was perfectly valid. As she put it, "unless you are prepared to talk about each individual datum, data as a synonym for information is perfectly fine."
     
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  24. DTK

    DTK Forum Resident

    Location:
    Europe
    At which age did you get into Clash..? ;)
     
  25. crookedbill

    crookedbill Forum Resident

    I was 13 in 1991. Therefore, no joke, Nirvana's Nevermind will likely forever by my top desert island album - even though I rarely listen to it anymore (it's probably been at least a decade). In fact, though I still love the music I loved then, I rarely listen to it now.

    Oddly enough, I didn't get into much classic rock or non-90's music until well into my 20's/30's and have found myself primarily listening to 60's/70's music in the last decade or more - Bowie, Zeppelin, and Sabbath topping the list. Even though I was a teen in the 90's, I consider the 70's my absolute favorite decade for music.

    Funny, I think about what music is popular now and I wonder what today's 13 year olds will be nostalgic for in 30 years or more. Are they going to be like "I loved Cardi B! She really made some memorable albums!" I feel like today's teens will remember video games or YouTube personalities more fondly than albums and musicians.
     
    Last edited: Feb 12, 2018
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