There’s a lot of truth to this. In college I was a lot more intentional and re-discovered the stuff the “cool kids” were actually listening to when I was a dork in high school, like New Wave and classic U2, and then getting back into British bands that were popular around then later in life, like Oasis. I picked up some new bands into my 30’s but they were all kind of adjacent to my jam of 80’s and 90’s rock and alternative.
I didn’t major in hip hop and rap, but I do like some of it— and again I lean towards a sound that the kids now call “old school”, when it just sounds like rap. Or rap that is actually listenable to me. Hah.
But I found myself not really exploring or latching onto new songs and bands when I hit 40, where there was almost a clear cutoff point where I wasn’t picking anything up even organically, and no song left an impression that made you want to look up the band or hum it afterwards. It felt all samey-samey, bland, and overproduced, with few truly catchy hooks and lyrics that didn’t sound like gaff. Even some artists that had hits I liked a few years back seemed to suffer from the same trend, and I keep asking myself did musicality really dip or am I just old? It makes me understand the boomer thing where they say there’s no good music today. Hah.
TaylorMonkey t1_j27f0nf wrote
Reply to A theory on the music that we love the most. by willk95
There’s a lot of truth to this. In college I was a lot more intentional and re-discovered the stuff the “cool kids” were actually listening to when I was a dork in high school, like New Wave and classic U2, and then getting back into British bands that were popular around then later in life, like Oasis. I picked up some new bands into my 30’s but they were all kind of adjacent to my jam of 80’s and 90’s rock and alternative.
I didn’t major in hip hop and rap, but I do like some of it— and again I lean towards a sound that the kids now call “old school”, when it just sounds like rap. Or rap that is actually listenable to me. Hah.
But I found myself not really exploring or latching onto new songs and bands when I hit 40, where there was almost a clear cutoff point where I wasn’t picking anything up even organically, and no song left an impression that made you want to look up the band or hum it afterwards. It felt all samey-samey, bland, and overproduced, with few truly catchy hooks and lyrics that didn’t sound like gaff. Even some artists that had hits I liked a few years back seemed to suffer from the same trend, and I keep asking myself did musicality really dip or am I just old? It makes me understand the boomer thing where they say there’s no good music today. Hah.