Thoughts On Musical Heroes, The Music Of Our Youth, etc.

[Sam Gamgee]

This is something I’ve thought about for a long time and I might finally be getting somewhere on the matter. I thought it might make for an interesting discussion.

I have long wondered why people never seem to get over the music of their youth and how they can listen to it for all of life. I used to dismiss it as mere nostalgia (if nostalgia can be minimized like that) but I believe it goes deeper.

I never wanted to be one of those guys that listens to the music of his youth his whole life. In fact, in years past I’ve judged those people somewhat harshly. But here I am finding myself turning into one of them.

I’m an 80s kid and grew up on 80s rock (my mom listened to 60s and 70s rock a lot so I was exposed to all that too). Some call this “hair metal” or “glam rock,” etc. It is almost universally scorned by everyone except for the fans. I am convinced it was the silly and over-the-top aesthetic that causes this. Much of the music is technically brilliant.

Over the years I’ve gotten into many kinds of music and even took entire decades off from the music of my youth. I learned a lot and enjoyed a lot but ended up mostly losing interest and have come full circle.

Pondering:
Why can’t I seem to ever get into younger bands?

Realization:
I don’t seem to be able to believe that younger writers have much to say to me. I’ve heard plenty of 20-somethings go on about how hard life is and it makes me laugh. Live a couple more decades and you’ll have a bit more skin in the game and there will be some credibility to go along with the social commentary.

Even if these bands are great musicians, and they often are, I can’t seem to “look up to them,” and I’m convinced a huge part of finding a musical hero is the willingness and ability to look up to them. We want to “believe” in them and I can’t believe in guys my kid’s age.

Realization:
When I was a kid, all the bands I was listening to were made up of guys at least ten years older than me, and in some cases almost as old as my parents. This made them like cool big brothers or cool uncles that I could automatically admire. There was a type of comfort in this, even if I didn’t see or understand it then.

I used to wonder why in the 90s it was hard for me to get into bands made up of guys my own age. They were peers and therefore there was a built-in bit of jealousy and envy on my part. I’m a musician myself, so why didn’t I “make it” or why didn’t I write a cool riff like that? I think this spoiled some of that music for me and made me unable to fully connect with it.

All of this makes a lot of sense to me now. And something that proves (to me at least) that this is all heart-level stuff, is that I’m almost 50 and the 80s rockers I still listen to were mostly in their 20s back then, but yet I can still look up to them even in retrospect. This might be because (intellectually) I know they have gotten older along the way too, so they are still older than me, or maybe it’s that (heart-level) it doesn’t matter. Maybe the emotional connection is just so deep that it will never go away?

Some of the lyrics are goofy in retrospect, but I’m able to automatically forgive them for it too.

Also, the 80s musicians probably could have played another style of music than they did and I’d probably like it just as well. I think I’d have liked whatever they would’ve offered because that was a time when I was being shaped and molded, and I was looking for something that could be “mine.” I was looking for an identity. Same goes for 50s, 60s, and 70s kids.

It’s all very mysterious but very interesting. I would enjoy hearing your thoughts and experiences.

 

[bullet08]

It's like smell. Once in your head, you can't get rid of it. When you smell it again, the whole memory shit flows back. For longest, I searched for songs I sang back when I was a cub scout in S. Korea.

 

[Briar Tuck]

For me, most contemporary music, at least the popular stuff, is too processed and artificial to appeal to me, and the lyrics are mostly full of depravity and inanity. There are exceptions, of course, but for the most part I stick with that "old time rock and roll", or at least real musicians playing real instruments.

 

[kcghost]

I grew up in the 50's and really like the music of the mid-50's through the mid-60's. As I like to put it when the Beatles turned left, I turned right. My five desert island songs are Bobby Darin ("Dream Lover"), the Platters ("Great Pretender"), Buddy Holly ("That'll Be the Day"), Buddy Knox ("Party Doll") and finally, Del Shannon ("Runaway").

 

[lraisch]

Personally, I think you have gotten to the heart of the matter. We become interested in the music or our pre-teen and teen years and hold on to that for the rest of our lives. Perhaps it's like the ability to learn language at a young age. Maybe there is an optimal age for discovering music.

 

[kcghost]

I find this very true as in addition to early rock and roll I like 50's and 60's country music, 50's big band sound, and most surprising traditional opera.

 

[Sam Gamgee]

Personally, I think you have gotten to the heart of the matter. We become interested in the music or our pre-teen and teen years and hold on to that for the rest of our lives. Perhaps it's like the ability to learn language at a young age. Maybe there is an optimal age for discovering music.

The music of our youth is also the backdrop to a lot of memories, and many of them are “firsts” (first dance, first kiss, first date, car, etc). These are very powerful memories. On the flip side, part of the absolute drudgery of adulthood is the lack of firsts and life becoming mundane and predictable. Sammy Hagar has a great line in a song:
“When’s the last time we did something for the first time?”

 

[Chasing Embers]

With age often comes the inclination to not accept the new. It's eny of youth and change so holding on to loves of youth staves away the dread of mortality.

 

[BarrelProof]

It's like smell. Once in your head, you can't get rid of it. When you smell it again, the whole memory shit flows back. For longest, I searched for songs I sang back when I was a cub scout in S. Korea.

I think you nailed it. And to take it a step further, it’s typically developed in the teenage years. Therefore, I’m going to bridge the gap and say it smells like teen spirit.

 

[Chasing Embers]

I think you nailed it. And to take it a step further, it’s typically developed in the teenage years. Therefore, I’m going to bridge the gap and say it smells like teen spirit.

Sounds like a denial to me...a denial, a denial.

 

[brian64]

This is something I’ve thought about for a long time and I might finally be getting somewhere on the matter. I thought it might make for an interesting discussion.

I have long wondered why people never seem to get over the music of their youth and how they can listen to it for all of life. I used to dismiss it as mere nostalgia (if nostalgia can be minimized like that) but I believe it goes deeper.

I never wanted to be one of those guys that listens to the music of his youth his whole life. In fact, in years past I’ve judged those people somewhat harshly. But here I am finding myself turning into one of them.

I’m an 80s kid and grew up on 80s rock (my mom listened to 60s and 70s rock a lot so I was exposed to all that too). Some call this “hair metal” or “glam rock,” etc. It is almost universally scorned by everyone except for the fans. I am convinced it was the silly and over-the-top aesthetic that causes this. Much of the music is technically brilliant.

Over the years I’ve gotten into many kinds of music and even took entire decades off from the music of my youth. I learned a lot and enjoyed a lot but ended up mostly losing interest and have come full circle.

Pondering:
Why can’t I seem to ever get into younger bands?

Realization:
I don’t seem to be able to believe that younger writers have much to say to me. I’ve heard plenty of 20-somethings go on about how hard life is and it makes me laugh. Live a couple more decades and you’ll have a bit more skin in the game and there will be some credibility to go along with the social commentary.

Even if these bands are great musicians, and they often are, I can’t seem to “look up to them,” and I’m convinced a huge part of finding a musical hero is the willingness and ability to look up to them. We want to “believe” in them and I can’t believe in guys my kid’s age.

Realization:
When I was a kid, all the bands I was listening to were made up of guys at least ten years older than me, and in some cases almost as old as my parents. This made them like cool big brothers or cool uncles that I could automatically admire. There was a type of comfort in this, even if I didn’t see or understand it then.

I used to wonder why in the 90s it was hard for me to get into bands made up of guys my own age. They were peers and therefore there was a built-in bit of jealousy and envy on my part. I’m a musician myself, so why didn’t I “make it” or why didn’t I write a cool riff like that? I think this spoiled some of that music for me and made me unable to fully connect with it.

All of this makes a lot of sense to me now. And something that proves (to me at least) that this is all heart-level stuff, is that I’m almost 50 and the 80s rockers I still listen to were mostly in their 20s back then, but yet I can still look up to them even in retrospect. This might be because (intellectually) I know they have gotten older along the way too, so they are still older than me, or maybe it’s that (heart-level) it doesn’t matter. Maybe the emotional connection is just so deep that it will never go away?

Some of the lyrics are goofy in retrospect, but I’m able to automatically forgive them for it too.

Also, the 80s musicians probably could have played another style of music than they did and I’d probably like it just as well. I think I’d have liked whatever they would’ve offered because that was a time when I was being shaped and molded, and I was looking for something that could be “mine.” I was looking for an identity. Same goes for 50s, 60s, and 70s kids.

It’s all very mysterious but very interesting. I would enjoy hearing your thoughts and experiences.

There's a lot of truth to what you're saying...I think it's true for most people. I can relate to a certain extent, but for the most part my experience has been a bit different.

With some exception, a lot of the stuff I liked the most as a teenager doesn't hold up as well for me now.

Most of the music I like the best now is stuff that I was aware of as a kid, but didn't appeal to me all that much then...because I just didn't have the capacity to really appreciate it, and didn't really get into until my 20s and 30s. There are even at least a couple of artists who are among my favorite now that didn't get started until the '90s.

 

[Kobold]

I go back and revisit some of the music from my youth from time to time but a lot of what I listen to know is stuff I missed for didn’t get at the time. Stuff like Zappa. I guess my brain wasn’t ready for it at the time. I like to discover new to me old bands because there’s so much good old stuff out there. I don’t listen to much new music but I like metal a lot so I will check out new bands in the genre. It’s also fun to time travel and rediscover cheesy pop songs I forgot about from the 80s. Sometimes it will jog an old memory like driving in my dads car with him and for a second I’m back there again. Music is pretty cool that way.

 

[tschiraldi]

Maybe I'm the outlier here, but while I still love the music of my youth, I am always searching for new music and regularly find new artists that excite me. For instance, in my teens, it was all about 70's and 80's hard Rock bands like Ozzy, Zeppelin, The Scorpions, Motley Crue, etc. Today, I love listening to newer Rock like Charlie Shafter, Uncle Lucius, Lincoln Durham, The Jompson Brothers, and Shawn James. My Country heros have always been Merle Haggard, George Jones, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, etc, but I love the music being put out by newer artists like Cody Jinks, Ward Davis, Creed Fisher, Frank Foster, and Channing Wilson. You won't find most of them on the radio. You have to look for them. I could go on and on with other genres of music, but I'll spare you all.
All this to say I like what I consider to be GOOD music from ANY era. I have no patience for drum machines and synthesizers. I abhor ANYTHING that can be considered POP, Pop Rock, Pop Country, etc. Music has to tell a story or make me FEEL something. There are new artists that can do that for me.

 

[crusader]

I also think alot of it has to do with how we felt at that time. Most of us hadn't a real care or worry in the world. We were free from the stress of bills, death, and parenthood worries.

I love all genre of music. Well, except today's over produced pop.
Typically I'm a metal head. But will also switch to big band, opera, orchestra and then Duran-Duran. In my late 40's, so I consider myself an 80's child. As a five yr old I even took lessons to dance like Michael J. Tee-Hee! C'mon girl!

Don't laugh there were probably a hundred others there!

 

[Winnipeger]

I teach music (and perform, and compose). A lot of kids these days come in wanting to learn songs off of video games, or some viral youtube or tiktok video. It's pretty random, because the way music is consumed now is completely different from how it was in our day. (I'm 45.) Kids (obviously) don't buy albums anymore. If they wear music-branded clothing (like rock t-shirts), they feature bands from the '70s and '80s. That's another thing. 70% of music downloads are of old (by decades) music. Kids, if they are familiar with bands at all, want to learn Queen and Aerosmith tunes. The top 200 new releases, in terms of popularity, only account for 5% of all downloads.

Then there's the fact that people who primary consume content mediated by algorithms, are far from guaranteed to be familiar with the same music their peers are listening to. Everyone has a unique-to-them, curated music stream. When I was in middle school, everyone listened to Metallica. Period. In the before times, music served a traditional, tribal role in society. Liking the same thing as everyone else made you feel part of the in-group. Something crucial to forming social bonds as well as an individual identity. I don't know to what extent music is a core part of kids identities these days (and generalizations are always suspect) but I suspect it's much less central than it was in our days. The shift occurred between Gen X and the Millennials. My wife is a Millennial and we share a lot of the same tastes in music, so of course, these things are hard to generalize, but one thing is incontrovertible, as far as I'm concerned: Napster killed the music industry. It didn't kill music, and there's as much great music being produced these days as ever (maybe). But music is no longer as central to culture as it was in the 20th Century.

Now, the reason the music of your youth never grows old is because it was tied up with your identity and social relations at a time when your brain was still forming. (It's forming and changing now too, but much more slowly.) If you "learned" when you were 13 years old that Ratt is the greatest band of all time, your highly suggestible and plastic brain "learned" that fact well. In my experience as a teacher, unlearning is 10 times harder than learning, especially when there's no motivation for doing so. If you come back to music of your youth that you haven't listened to in years or decades, there's the nostalgia factor too. Everything serves to reinforce your original love of Ratt, despite the obvious. Ratt is objectively bad, but what it reminds you of, if you blur your ears and just let the music wash over you, is youth, virility, camaraderie, etc. etc. It's a powerful force. If the music of your youth makes you feel good when you listen to it, you're going to listen to it throughout your life, even as you descend further and further into codgerism, decrepitude, and insignificance. Welcome to mid-life.

 

[Servant King]

I'm the opposite--I can't stand most of the stuff I listened to in my youth! I should point out that I'm an ex-musician myself, so perhaps that adds an element to my current thoughts on my musical obsessions 10, 20, and even 30 years ago. Certain genres are different than others in this regard; jazz, classical, ragtime...these are all timeless, and I still love them the same as I did back then. The rock genre, unsurprisingly, is where it gets a little complicated! For example, I spent the better part of my teen years absolutely obsessed with The Doors. Beyond obsessed. To the point where all other music CDs/tapes were decaying from disuse. Had all the albums, compilations, singles, rarities etc., and even hit the zenith by meeting Ray Manzarek at LAX airport in 2004. But now? I honestly can't see myself ever voluntarily playing one of their songs again. If a Doors song came on in the background while I was out in the world somewhere, I wouldn't scream, cover my ears and drop to the ground writhing in agony (well I might, but it'd be for some other reason, like seeing the price tag on a bag of Stonehaven). Sure, Ray was a nice guy, and had some interesting chord structures in his arsenal, but Jim Morrison, to me, was just a really mediocre poet who enjoyed taking far too many psychoactive drugs and drinking to excess. I'm just an entirely different guy than I was 20 years ago.

Aside from the ambient genre, most modern music is simply out of the question. To put it simply, it sucks. I barely even listen to rock music anymore, new or old. Again, ambient is my preferred genre. Steve Roach, Thom Brennan, Andrew Lahiff, Phillip Wilkerson...the list goes on and on. The calming "space" it puts me in works very much in tandem with pipe smoking, which often puts me in the same place. And when I'm in that space, the material I was listening to back in the 90s and early 00s is about the farthest thing from my mind.

 

[Sam Gamgee]

I'm the opposite--I can't stand most of the stuff I listened to in my youth! I should point out that I'm an ex-musician myself, so perhaps that adds an element to my current thoughts on my musical obsessions 10, 20, and even 30 years ago. Certain genres are different than others in this regard; jazz, classical, ragtime...these are all timeless, and I still love them the same as I did back then. The rock genre, unsurprisingly, is where it gets a little complicated! For example, I spent the better part of my teen years absolutely obsessed with The Doors. Beyond obsessed. To the point where all other music CDs/tapes were decaying from disuse. Had all the albums, compilations, singles, rarities etc., and even hit the zenith by meeting Ray Manzarek at LAX airport in 2004. But now? I honestly can't see myself ever voluntarily playing one of their songs again. If a Doors song came on in the background while I was out in the world somewhere, I wouldn't scream, cover my ears and drop to the ground writhing in agony (well I might, but it'd be for some other reason, like seeing the price tag on a bag of Stonehaven). Sure, Ray was a nice guy, and had some interesting chord structures in his arsenal, but Jim Morrison, to me, was just a really mediocre poet who enjoyed taking far too many psychoactive drugs and drinking to excess. I'm just an entirely different guy than I was 20 years ago.

Aside from the ambient genre, most modern music is simply out of the question. To put it simply, it sucks. I barely even listen to rock music anymore, new or old. Again, ambient is my preferred genre. Steve Roach, Thom Brennan, Andrew Lahiff, Phillip Wilkerson...the list goes on and on. The calming "space" it puts me in works very much in tandem with pipe smoking, which often puts me in the same place. And when I'm in that space, the material I was listening to back in the 90s and early 00s is about the farthest thing from my mind.

What is interesting is that I was the same way for a good while. During my 20 and 30s, if I'd hear a song from my youth I would generally not enjoy it. It had lost all appeal. But then in my late 40s it all came back to me. And at the same time, most of the stuff I'd learned to enjoy during my 20s and 30s has no appeal to me now.

 

[Sam Gamgee]

Welcome to mid-life.

This idea deserves its own thread.

 

[STP]

The music of our youth is also the backdrop to a lot of memories, and many of them are “firsts” (first dance, first kiss, first date, car, etc). These are very powerful memories. On the flip side, part of the absolute drudgery of adulthood is the lack of firsts and life becoming mundane and predictable. Sammy Hagar has a great line in a song:
“When’s the last time we did something for the first time?”

^^^ This

It is know as a music-evoked autobiographical memory. Even those suffering from Alzheimer’s, dementia, and other forms or memory loss can retrieve vivid memories by listening to music.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

I think that the good music of today, and the last 20 years, is just hard to find. Most was never bought as a physical album, so hardly any of it is floating about in used music. The radio is stuck on what was classic rock in the 80’s, country, dance, and old soul and R&B. I never hear current pop or rock on the radio. So, how do people find music nowadays? Talk? The Apple Music algorithm of (if you liked that band, you’ll like…).

For 20 years, music seems to have been in a digital hole.

So, I listen to what I’ve collected over the years, and keep an ear out for anything new that sounds decent. But, new and great seems to be hard to find with the way people today listen to it. Many recent bands sill be lost to the ethers of the interwebs.