Music Tastes Change

You sound great. youve worked hard over last 20 years dont let anyone kid us it was the easy option!!

mandye

I've had a similar evolution though I think mine has been driven as much by technology (iTunes, iPod, and satellite radio) as by the passage of time. I still like the music of my younger days (mostly prog rock, alternative, and later punk), but now I've added to a lot more to that repertoire. I now very much like 50s/60s music (especially the 60s channel on Sirius). I now also enjoy artists who for some reason or another I considered "uncool" years ago.

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Similar evolution, but different. I'm finding I'm more attrached to hard-rocking new stuff, even some metal and especially alternative.

Well, I guess I may be talking to myself here. No one besides me has been "here" since January! I have also rekindled my love for dancing. Not waltzes, foxtrots, or even tangoes. Rock 'n' roll dancing, hip-hip dancing. Anyone else?

Why did we stop dancing if we liked to dance???

The challenge for me has been finding new music. I've tried just about every sampling service (Pandora, etc.) but I simply don't sit around and talk to my friends about music as I used to which is how I found most new artists. Living in LA I'm lucky there are actually a few good stations but it is still not uncommon for me to ask someone about a "new" artist I just heard only to learn the song is from their 4th LP!

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I have a teenaged music lover in the house but I find my best music on a satellite station, The Loft, and it's grownup music. I'd have called it depressing when I was younger.

I don't identify myself with music the way I used to. Now I only like it when it's aesthetically pleasing, no longer because I'm troubled and the music "speaks to me."

But I still love Dire Straits.

I stopped dancing because I didn't know where to go for dancing anymore -- not enough weddings, I guess! And was busy raising two daughters. And my husband is not a dancer so I didn't want to "drag" him out. Now . . . it's more about me, finally. And I'm finding places to go, but they are geared to a younger crowd. Tough. I'm going anyway!

I do especially relate to the newer music. The "teen angst music" works for midlife angst, too!

We ought to still be music buyers. Actually I don't know if I'm a boomer or a gen-xer. I really am quite a slacker so probably the latter. But I know we have a taste for good music. There oughta be dance music for older hips and knees.

Dancing is dancing, but thank heaven for Advil!

New music really "strikes a chord" (sorry!) with me -- maybe it's MLC. Whatever. I love listening, singing, and dancing to it. I feel like I don't have the patience for my old favorites lately, but at least I know they're "there" when I do want to go back to them.

The funny thing is, maybe about five years or so ago I wouldn't have cared for some of this music!

I used to absolutely adore Depeche Mode. Now I hardly ever listen to them.

I love Aimee Mann (I noticed you specifically mentioned her). I have been relistening to a lot of my old trip hop cd's lately, like Olive. I really love Keane. My DH and I are seeing their concert in Berkeley next month.

My love for Top 40 waxes and wanes, but lately I have been into a lot of it. I love Lady GaGa and Keri Hilson, and Kanye isn't too shabby. :-)

Another aspect of the changes in musical taste is that when many of my old favorite bands were popular, they were older than me and I thought they must be wiser because of all the beautiful ways they were able to put their ideas into music.

Now these same bands are still older than me, but I realize a couple of things: 1. They may have been channelling wisdom as their muse led them to create great music, but some of the thinking they put into my then-innocent mind was wrong. 2. They're just musicians. They poop too.

Also, now the popular musicians are younger than I am, and... they still have the muse and a lot of their music sounds wise. So I had to give over my musical authority figures and accept younger ones. Except now I know they aren't any kind of wise authority figures---they're just expressing thoughts and emotions.

We're too close in musical taste for comfort. I love Elton John's classics. ("Skyline Pigeon," anyone?) I cut my teeth on Carlos Santana's music in the 1960's and still love it today. If there is a trinity of the guitar, it's Carlos Santana, Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix.

Today, I love my SiriusXM...

Dire Straits, Pink Floyd, The Eagles, The Moody Blues, The Beatles (together and solo), Jimmy Buffett and the Coral Reefers (together and solo) and on and on...

I was never a dancer, though. Too shy, two left feet, no girlfriends in high school and only one in college.

I can listen to Steven Sondheim broadway musical stuff, and Glenn Gould on piano, and I found a new band called Turin Brakes that sing a song called Painkiller that really knocked me out. It starts to look like good music is for everybody, not just a certain age group. Now, this excludes some of the gosh darn tripe these teenagers listen to... (gulp. Old talk.)

No accounting for it. I hate most rap, for example.

I've always had wide musical taste. Even as a teen, I had a wide music collection of classical, jazz, rock, soundtracks, folk, you name it. My tastes in music get wider, but I don't seem to lose my tastes. The same in reading. I read everything from Scientific American to dumb movie tie-in novels.

My friends could never figure out how someone could love Beethoven, Elton John, Jimmy Buffett and Pink Floyd at the same time.

"When you're going through Hell, for God's sake, keep going!" (Winston Churchill)