How Middle Age Affected My Musical Tastes

At 59 years of age, I'm way beyond middle age, but I now find myself listening to and enjoying more than ever music I enjoyed as a young boy. Acts such as The Fifth Dimesion, The Turtles, The Monkees, The Cowsills, The Mamas & Papas, The Grass Roots, and Sagittarius so delight my soul.

As a teen and young adult, I lost interest in the aforementioned acts and began listening to Alice Cooper, Black Sabbath, Led Zepolin, Pink Floyd, and many others often now described as classic rock. Oddly I have lost interest entirely in these and other classic rock acts, and have returned to the more flowery and harmony-laden acts from my boyhood. I'm still an explorer though, seeking and discovering acts similar to those I enjoyed as a boy. Recent joyful discoveries include The Free Design, The Collage, The Clique, The Flower Pot Men, and Harper's Bizarre. I am even finding Paul Mauriat enjoyable!

 

I once was heavily into the bands you mentioned, but learning of and hearing other extraordinary acts from that era have greatly diminished their impact on me. I can thank the Internet for that!

 

Even as a fifteen/sixteen year old I always preferred The Final Cut over A Momentary Lapse.

 

My tastes have definitely changed from angsty teenager to well uh angsty adult.

In the mid-80s, I was into punk or post-punk music and thought it was "serious" music. I didn't like dinosaur rock, indie music like The Smiths or The Cure which was for "teenage girls", and I certainly didn't like jazz music.

Now?? I'm still into post-punk, think most punk music is limited and juvenile (though I still have a weakness for a little Black Flag), love Neil Young, Pink Floyd, and even have a large Beatles collection. And feel like a fool for missing out on The Cure, The Smiths, OMD, Dead Can Dance, etc until now. I'm also a huge Bill Evans and Chet Baker fan.

 

Jazz, babies.

 

i still love all the music i ever loved, but at 50 i find myself less in the mood for brutal assault music ... i have mellowed and hopefully matured

 

When I was in my 20's during the 90's I felt Nirvana was that decades Beatles in that they seemed to start something that had a life of its own including the leader being shot. This decade I look back on that and don't feel any connection at all to the anger I and the music of that time had. I feel embarrassed that Cobain is the poster child for my generation. I'd chose Lennon every day over him but then again, that implies I'm choosing someone to look up to. I chose myself nowadays. I've shed the skin of myself figuratively and literally. 60's & 70's rock came out of having fun. Punk came out of anger & fun. I chose just plain fun now. Also, somewhere in my 40's, the softer sounds of the 70's were no longer threatening. I actually enjoyed them in contrast to what is out there now. That's when I realized I understood my parents choice of music I couldn't stand in the 70's. A mellower & happier state of mind produces a desire to hear mellow & happier music.

 

we're about the same age and I like much of the same pop as you, Mamas and Papas especially, as they're the prototype for dysfunctional bands like Abba and Fleetwood Mac but there's something so refreshing about an optimistic view vs. a pessimistic one, and with the changes of the 60's came the heavier sounds which took a darker tone which is appealing as an adolescent but once enough real world drama takes hold, melody and optimism really uplift rather than take you to the sewer to comment on the trash

 

I’m 47. I’m loyal to a fault. I had a very broad appreciation of 80s music in my teens which has been the staple of my listening ever since. Into the 90s a little Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Tom Petty, Hothouse Flowers, Counting Crows, Oasis, Paul Kelly, Del Amitri and a little more 70s Skynyrd, Jackson Browne, Springsteen, Cold Chisel, Steely Dan, early Dire Straits etc. as well as following many of my 80s artists forward. By the noughties, all of the above but some more folk/Jazz added to the mix (John Gorka), Marc Cohn, Bruce Hornsby (carrying through from the 80s), Little Feat. The last few years it has been more Jazz, Davis, Coltrane, Brubeck, and rediscovering the Beatles (kind of dropped them in the 80s) and the Stones esp. 7os Stones, amd more recently to my surprise, Dylan. Through SHF - early Chicago and Steven Wilson. I have never stopped liking the initial 80s stuff but this expansion forward and back in time over time is keeping me engaged. I will get to Sinatra I know and maybe more blues and jazz in due course, but I suspect not Elvis and definitely no R nB or rap etc.
I think my tastes have expanded rather than changed “off” anything and i’m enjoying that.

 

Music that rewards repeated listening.

 

In essence, my taste in music hasn't changed much since the 1960s. It's just broadened out with the appearance or my discovery of new genres over the decades. Also, I am fortunate to have had a much better hifi in later life which makes unfamiliar music more accessible.

However, I did go through a relatively conservative phase in my 30s and 40s. This was probably just due to being focussed on my career. I have been a lot more adventurous in my 50s and 60s.

At the present time, it helps that my 18 year old son keeps me in touch with what's happening now. I have to compromise a little to my ten years younger wife's more middle of the road tastes. Recently, we went to see concerts by Amanda Palmer for me and Don McLean for her. Ironically, I was probably the oldest person in the audience for Amanda Palmer and she was one of the youngest for Don McLean.

 

In my case, no drastic changes, and no turnabouts from positive to negative. My tastes just continue(d) to expand.

The biggest change in my case is that I more fully realized that picking favorites, including favorite artists and genres, and in general, listening to music in a way that's prone to negative judgments, just "isn't me," or at least isn't middle-aged me. What's me is appreciating everything for what it is, soaking it all in, etc. My "favorite" is "the music I'm listening to right now," and the more I listen the more that includes literally everything.

 

Agree with 3,5,6
But that’s not stopping me to see Neil live this summer
Glad I saw Leo before he passed but passing on Bob. His voice live has been awful last couple of times
Wife still not crazy about jazz.
My big change in listening to music happened after turning 55 ten years ago
But it was more about my schedule and home life
I started enjoying silence
Especially in the car, first by myself and then with my wife who does like to talk
Now since retired, at home too.
This makes what I do listen feel more special
Now especially back into vinyl
Sitting and just focusing on the music

 

At 66, my tastes run wider and I seem to have more curiosity than ever regarding music!
It’s great to see artists like Ry Cooder and John Prine release stellar albums at their age!

 

62 here. I still remain loyal to my adolescent core (Springsteen/ Lou Reed/Todd Rundgren/Stones/Zeppelin/Hendrix), but most classic rock bores the %$#@ out of me anymore. After fifty years, it's all pretty stale.

Though I question their longevity, I get more excited about new (or at least new to me) bands;dipped my feet into electronic(Tycho, Odesza) and widened slightly into country (okay, maybe just Kacie Musgraves). But hey, at 62 I'm questioning MY longevity too.

The biggest change in me is that I find I don't have the patience or attention span to just sit and listen to a whole album anymore unless I'm trapped in the car.

 

I'm 50 now, nearing 51. In the mid '80's I was all over Yes and Genesis, and I can still go back to some of that every once in a while now, but I stopped totally for a good while. Then started listening to the Dead, not much anymore though. But I was ignoring '80s music at the time, until I discovered R.E.M. in college, most of which I can return to favorably now. Early 90's I was in a music ditch, just retreading things, but in the late 90's I discovered the likes of Wilco and Stereolab, and then Sonic Youth (though I'm not much into their earliest releases), also Phish. I still listen to those bands today, plus others discovered along the way (Yo La Tengo, The Decemberists, etc.). I think I'm broader now than when I was younger, for sure. My mainstay from my old prog days of my teens is King Crimson, I never dropped them ...

 

We're almost the same age--I'm just slightly older than you (I'll turn 56 in a few months), and my reading habits, film tastes, the way I dress, eating habits, and even my views are pretty much the same as they were when I was a teen, say.

To some extent that's because I was a weird teen, but I've also just not lost my taste for any of the stuff I used to like. As with music, some things have broadened for me a bit, but with other things, like my film viewing, I've pretty much decided to narrow it back to the same sort of stuff I was watching as a teen, after trying to coax myself into expanding my tastes in film for a long time. I simply came to terms with the fact that I really enjoy "genre films" way more than than anything else, and no matter how much I try I'm not going to like a bunch of Criterion Collection-type stuff or other critical darlings a la arthouse fare, especially realist drama stuff. So why bother with it after trying to get into it for a couple decades?

Music is really the only area where I really enjoy everything . . . but that means that there is nothing from my youth that I enjoy any less than I did in my youth. In fact, I pretty much like all of that stuff even more now. I don't know why I'm like that with music and not most other stuff, but with that other stuff, I have no problem with the fact that I've not really changed since I was a kid, and I like all of that (kind of) stuff the most.

 

I'm 53 and have always had an absurdly wide range of tastes, none of which I've really abandoned - middle age has found me adding more depth to that breadth, drilling down into whatever artist or genre I feel I haven't paid enough attention to.

 

I'm 56. My taste in music has widened quite a bit in the last 20 years. A few revelations:

I really like string quartets.
I really like solo piano.
Although I've been a fan since the mid 80's, I've developed a much deeper appreciation for Sonic Youth as I age.

 

The only big thing that changed about my tastes when I became middle-aged was I developed an appreciation for Frank Sinatra.

All my life I dismissed Sinatra and anything else that was pre- rock and roll. But now, I love his 1950s albums, every one of them. What a singer!

 

The best '90s rock is fully the equal of classic '70s rock.
The best '90s R&B can't hold a candle to classic'70s R&B.

 

I've been going in the opposite direction myself, although I'm far past middle age.

I'm listening to Hatsune Miku's "快晴 (Clear Weather)" right now.

 

I'm basically middle aged being 35 and having smoked in my youth. My tastes have changed a little but I still love 90's alternative rock and grunge, the Beatles, Floyd , radiohead etc. I am much more into jazz fusion and prog rock than I was when I was younger. Overall I still champion bands like the smashing Pumpkins because I love the music of my youth and because I want future generations to know about 90's rock and get some enjoyment out of it hopefully.

 

For the most part I still love the music I always have. I've loved classical as far back as I can remember (from my parents), rock and soul music since I was 11, jazz since I was 18, country since 20. As genres within those categories came along I got into some (funk and punk, later grunge), but not others (disco, rap and EDM). But there have been some changes, that to me seem rather subtle:

I used to prefer Led Zeppelin to Pink Floyd, if not by much. Now I listen to a lot more Floyd than the Ledsters. But I can't explain why.
In jazz, I used to listen to a lot of fusion, but actually that dropped off as far back as the early 80's. I rarely listen to fusion now (maybe a little Weather Report?), and instead over the last 15 or so years listen to more forties and fifties jazz including singers.
I continued to listen to new music generally in the rock category, like Queens of the Stone Age, right up til about 5 years ago. Now I rarely hear anything that can be called new music that I find appealing. That's a definite change, but is it me or is it the music? I think it's the music.
For country I still check out new releases by performers I have liked for a long time, like Dwight Yoakam or Vince Gill, but haven't gotten into any newer acts since Brad Paisley, which by now is awhile ago. Patty Loveless seems to have retired, and so far no one has replaced her. Again I think that's more the music than me, though.

Meanwhile The Beatles and Stones are still my two favorites. If anything I love them more than ever, even if I have become unchanging in not liking the Stones after Tattoo You. Still love Beethoven and Bach, and Miles Davis, and Muddy Waters, and the Beach Boys, and Jimi Hendrix, and the 60's San Francisco bands. And the Ramones and Alice in Chains etc...

 

Being 56, Grew up on 60's & 70's (skipped 80's-90's ) Not much new stuff I like. I find myself listening to more classic Jazz, classic Country, and Standards like Sinatra and the like, which I never listened to in my younger years. Just appeals to me more now..