music tastes changing over time
 

when i was 15-18, i loved Sonic Youth so much like they were my life, as well as other noisy bands that are often mentioned here. this band was such a big deal for me, i admired every single album and everything they stood for, considered rebellion to be a big part of life and often even fantasizied i'll be educating my kids about this music when i grow up to be a father...

it's been two years, my boner for SY & other loud distortions has slowly been decreased.. up to a state where i automatically yawn whenever i hear these sounds. i still respect the band & smile when i meet an SY fan, but deep inside the music doesn't really fascinate me as much as it used to. i got interested in more chill music, stuff i actually never imagined i could listen to.

i started thinking to myself, how i got into this state.. i guess i've just overplayed these stuff, as well as changed a lot as a person. i'm no longer such an angsty teen, i found peace in my life, became more social & even fell in love. i guess it's just me tho, cuz i figure SY has a lot of older fans, who become even more and more sentimental for this band within the years.

just had to vent this & hear your opinions. :)

SY were it when I was... ooh, 15 or so. I barely listen to them once a year now I'm knocking 30. I still listen to the Fall more than most things. And I've steadily come to hate the sound of guitars.

What I don't like is people saying their tastes 'mature'. Because the majority of people just start caring about music less and either stick to tried and trusted or start going for faintly unchallenging 'sophisticated' stuff - classical and jazz, or AOR for the entirely godforsaken. I'm probably part of that. What 'kids' (meaning teenagers to early-20s) have is the ability to look at music culture critically and passionately. Which is charming, but difficult to sustain.

this.

i also think that the old me would be ashamed of the poppy, sell out music which i listen to nowadays, haha.

back in the day i've listened to some insane, really underground stuff that i could never imagine myself getting into anymore. my joy from music is still the same, it's just that i came to appreciate more soulful, smooth stuff instead of crazy, weird noises..

and no i can't seem to go back and forth about this.

I think there's a point where you realise that 'crazy' and 'insane' music is pretty much building on steady traditions, and 'underground' means pretty much nothing in 2011. The music I make could be considered 'underground' but that's less to do with the aesthetic and more to do with the fact it's very difficult to find a decent paying audience. I could go on about this quite a lot, but just as a for instance - in the narrow field SY operate in, there aren't that many 'alt tuners', but plenty of people who use similar/ same chordal/ formal structures as them; outside of that tradition, there's thousands of traditions with various, non-standardised ideas of tuning. Within quite easy reach of SY there's guitar tuning systems from, say, Zydeco, Appalachian, Blues and... yeah.

Well, I won't bore people. But the point is is that I think with age it becomes harder to say 'this is ground-breaking' because it gets easier to join the dots between various traditions.

Also, from my perspective, I listen to stuff like this and say things like 'fucking hell. Why weren't SY ever this good?' See also: Slade, the Carpenters.

even at the decrepit age of 2,376, I still voraciously search out new music; although, this doesn't mean I necessarily stop liking older bands (unless their rabid fan-base force me to).

you see, I don't have shit taste, so I'm never forced to regret my decisions at a later date.

Why do you play them then?

It's a good question. Habit, mostly. Maybe I should say I hate what people do with guitars rather than the sound of guitars themselves. Y'know, you can get a few decent sounds out of it with a bit of attention. Most don't.

I'm just struggling to find anything new that really interests me. Something'll come along, it always does, but things do seem a bit barren at the moment.

People change. People feel the need to explore new things. People go back and listen to it at some point and realise why it was so great back then. But we can't always be excited about something that's not new to us.

I certainly go through phases.

Struggling to find anything new... I wonder if that's why my father kept listening to his pink floyd albums and didn't care much about me being so excited about Nirvana. Maybe it's a getting old thing. You just can't be that impressed with anything anymore.

Or maybe that's because the music industry has changed completely. It's just so tiring to go through piles and piles or mediocre mp3s to find something good. But there are amazing things... but with our attention spam, we might not give it a chance. It's just to easy, listen to it once, delete it. Have hundreds of albums you just DON'T HAVE THE TIME to hear.

Considering that most good things take time to get (some of my favourite albums I absolutely hated or didn't care for at first), I just stopped downloading music.

I buy cds, records and tapes. That way I feel like I can listen to things properly.

I used to listen to Bikini Kill. I can still understand why, even tho I wouldn't have the patience for it anymore. One thing I can't understand (and I don't mean to insult anyone with it) is how come I used to love the Smashing Pumpkins.

Or maybe it's just as simple as teenagers are naturally angry, while grown ups are bitter. So I listen to bitter stuff.

And it really annoys me how non-angry teenagers can be these days. They're supposed to be getting angry and doing stuff, because we're too tired and know better at this point.

About the guitars and the noises... they were amazing back then. Now you will turn on the TV and hear a diluted, commercial version of that in a stupid sitcom or advert. It's kind of like what I felt while reading a fashion magazine about how the hottest hair in Hollywood is the "Kurt Cobain messy-look blonde highlights". Would kind of make me kill myself too.

hi. my name is floatingslowly and I like Sonic Youth.

less than you used to, though. i'll bet.

but not the flaming lips. you can never like them any less.

Knox = good comedy

no. not really. I still get excited when pandora plays Sympathy for the Strawberry.

maybe it's just Kim. o, sweet god above, Kim.

Hmmm...I just turned 29, and I still like loud, fast, and abrasive music. Maybe I don't listen to it exclusively like I did when I was younger, but I'd still rather listen to something hard/heavy than something light/soft--unless of course, I've already listened to 5 or 6 hard/heavy songs in a row previously. I like variety; I've seeded my Pandora stations with everything from Miles Davis to Nirvana to Meshuggah to Massive Attack. Maybe because I'm a musician I look at music differently.

When seeking out/listening to new bands, I've found the best thing is to keep your expectations low. Because the older you get, the more points of reference you have and the more likely it is that you'll hear something you've heard before. And honestly, if your enjoyment of music is based around how "groundbreaking" it is, you're gonna hit a wall because not only is there not much ground yet to be broken, but that which seems old hat to older ears will be fresh to younger ones. It's like when a new rollercoaster opens at an amusement park and there's a big line; nearly everyone will get a chance to ride it, but once you've had your turn it won't be the same the next time around. But if you enjoyed the ride the first time, what stopping you from riding again?

I will probably always love Sonic Youth. Because in addition to having been "groundbreaking" at one time, the sounds produced by their guitars form unusual but very memorable hooks. And from EVOL onwards, those guys could really write a song. Maybe every once in a while they hit a lyrical clam ("Boys go to Jupiter/Get more stupider"), but I think SY can make great pop songs in addition to experimenting with sounds. I'll admit I don't listen to them half as often I did when I first discovered them, but when I do hear them, I quickly remember why they always are and will always be my favorite band.

I have less room for things I've heard before that are only slightly different... I understand that it's fun to play music, even if it's a retread, but I really don't have time for it. I really have to dig for something that grips me. I used to be far more militant. My listening identity (I get douche-chills just saying that) was more about what I caustically rejected than what I embraced. And it still is to a certain extent. I really can't stand tepid indie rock bullshit or P4K crap like Animal Collective, but I've learned to ignore it.

When it comes to new bands, I tend to gravitate towards people who develop their own musical identities over time and diversify/bring something special to the table with each new release. I can hear a song in passing by some halfway decent punk band or something and go "oh, that's nice" but I'm probably not going to rush out to buy a one-off 7" just because it's a momentary hit among some nerds on message boards. But I suppose that's the norm again, like it was at the beginning of rock'n'roll, which seems more like a fruitless enterprise with each passing day. There is such little quality control with the sceptre of "blog rock" and it seems many bands don't really have a gestation period anymore.

Albini once said something about how he views his favorite records as conversations. One listens to a record and walks away feeling like they've had a conversation with the band, an experience that clued them into something they weren't aware of before playing it. There are very few TOTAL PACKAGE bands around like that now.

Glice, you have really become a boring old fart, if you truly think Status Quo is/was better than SY. But you can be boring old fart, if you enjoy your life, I mean it´s ok to me to like Status Quo more than SY. Maybe you just haven´t ever been deep SY-fan.

I just think music taste develop as you develop when you get older. I can´t say the direction, but still the both, your personality and music taste get in some direction and in my life they have gone in hand in hand. Of course there are people who are stuck and that´s sad. My taste has gone in a very different ways. I started with early Black Sabbath, Sweet, Dr. Feelgood (all kinds of seventies "roots"-music), then go into instrumental (The Ventures) and rockabilly, then Blues, then Prog-rock, then Punk/Speed metal and finally all kind of new wave/underground bands, also little classic and jazz.

Somebodies have said your music taste base developes in the age of 0-25 and after that nothing that is very different from that base can hit you. I believe that, it also makes sense into our brains development.

I still like that wild stuff I listened when I was young, but new "wild" artists do not hit me. There are no artists that I have seriously listened that I don´t listen anymore. The styles that seem to be the most interested for me nowdays are artists that made minimalistic, serene and/or chaotic material. Maybe that´s the reason why I think SY is the greatest band at the moment.

I think I developed more "taste" for well written and well produced pop music.
And for electronic and "hip hop" things.
I used to think a bass a guitar and a drumkit is all you need, ever.
Now I think you don't need anything.
There are a few bands which basically have changed my feelings towards "music". To name a couple, SY back in the days and cLOUDDEAD more (relatively) recently. I don't think I could "unlike" the bands I love/loved. I just can't devote time/attention to some of their stuff anymore, as I do like to hear newer things, and all gets summed up with time (the more stuff you listen too, the harder, practically, to keep up with everything without having to "sacrifice" some other things).
My obsession with NYC G&F will make me LOVE sy forever. That's an album I could listen to till I die. And you know, I will die.

My music tastes have definitely changed over time and I believe it's difficult not to become "blasé" the older you get. But I'm glad there are some bands / musicians that still "blow me away" if I get back to them, and I think it's probably better than being 100% blasé (which means you are somewhat "dead inside"...).

That's a really good way to put it. Most records produced by Albini do that for me. But I like to think a good album is more like something that transports you into its own universe and you cannot help it, you are absolutely powerless.

What I don't understand is this "religious" kind of fan thing. I still adore SY (even if I don't listen to it as much as I did before, which seems natural) but I like some things more than others. Most of my favourite artists have albums I can't stand, and I truly respect that. I don't have to listen to it as much as I did before to respect it just the same. But to be frank, I'm from a different generation. I live surrounded by hipterish kind of people who talk crap, listen to crap music, read NME and wear Sonic Youth t-shirts. So I just gave all my Sonic Youth t-shirts to charity? Because I'd rather see homeless people wearing them. Although, to be fair, it's getting harder and harder to differentiate homeless people from hipsters around here so they might be my t-shirts after all.

well i've been a fan of sonic youth for almost 20 years now and i listen to them more now than ever.

I hardly listen to any guitar music these days, but it's a phase. It'll probably go when I finally buy my new guitar.

"Own Universe" is an excellent way to put it for truly good music.

Classic Music that I grew up with in the sixties can be sickening to me now. The radio ruined many a band. I can only listen to Led Zeppelin I and III the rest of their catalog can go in the rubbish. The Beatles only the white album.
Aqualung no way in hell. Eric Clapton no thank you. Yet I'll listen to every Doors, Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd and Carlos Santana album I have. As for newer bands to me Sonic Youth, X, The Clash, Rage Against the Machine and Joy Division I can listen to any time.

My tastes always change but I am die hard sy. Must listen at least once a day.

True stu

I am in agreance with this statement. Fact is as I age I tend to go back to shit I loved a decade ago and it is like new. Sometimes we need a break and a new outlook.

It has to. People's values, priorities and overall understanding of things inevitably change over time. We may still like things we listened to in our teens but our relationship with those things is inevitably different as time goes on. That's not to say that we can't like music more as we get older but as our perspective changes on pretty much everything over time, I don't see why music should be exluded from that. I'd be more worried about anyone whose taste was fixed by a certain moment in their life.

Good point. I do see and hear new things as I age.

My tastes have changed a lot, but SY has been my favorite band for ten years. And I still like the other stuff I liked in high school (Pavement, Pixies, Ramones, Iggy/Stooges, Dinosaur jr, Big Black, Slint, Sebadoh, Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails just to name a few). No, I don't listen to them every day, but I still love them.

SY are transcendent of "the phase" for me.

time flies

Time flies, as a crow flies, in a straight line,
Through you, not around you

I'm 58 and I've had all different phases of music listening starting with the Beach Boys, Motown, British Invasion, American Rock, Disco, Southern Rock,
then in the 80's I pretty much got stuck in classic rock mode then I finally got into alternative, new wave, punk, hip hop, rap and so on. So at different times I missed different groups in different time periods so I am able to go back and forth and find things I've never heard before that might be 40 years old. Still though since 91 when I bought my first SY album and proceed to buy the rest of the catalog after that they have been my favorites because they always stretching the boundaries, pushing the envelope....

I've always only listened to harsh japanese noise

from da womb to da tomb.

I used to hate Sebadoh aside from Smash Your Head. Now I like them.

Go figure.

ok.

I still like what I liked when I was 18 because I am NOT getting old.