Did my musical adventurousness and indeed, interest as a whole, calcify by age 35?

[cimorene]

I recently encountered on an old epsode of QI the factoid (it might be a true fact, but without provenance or an examination of the experimental methods, let's leave it with the mark of dubiousness) that most people's musical taste has set firmly by the time they're 35, after which they tend to be uninterested in or dislike music that's new to them, preferring to listen to the things they listened to before. Leaving aside whether this is a strong claim or not,

On the face of it, it's easy to pick out anecdotal evidence in support. There's plenty out there about older generations' feelings about younger generations', well, everything: old people being suspicious of/pearl-clutching about the artistic and linguistic innovations which occur after their own youth. But the fact that cultural punditry etc shows a clear Discourse on a topic doesn't prove that it's the majority attitude - the people who are the most inclined to complain take up most of the space in letters to the editor, while punditry and other venues for garbage thinkpieces are notorious for their echo chamber effect. Nobody writes a letter to the editor to say something doesn't bother them that much.

A lot of this type of scientific claim sounds intuitively plausible, but it turns out that phrasing the inverse cleverly sounds equally plausible - like horoscopes, or Meyers-Briggs types. That's because broad claims like this usually are derived from somebody summing up the information from a piece of science journalism, an extremely risky prospect since misunderstanding and misrepresenting what scientific research actually managed to show is practically a requirement of science journalism. But anyway...,

it stuck with me because after a couple of months at The Finnish Equivalent of Target, I've been getting extremely irritated by the in-store playlist because it has way too much pop country on it (it also has "Fast Car" by Tracy Chapman and "Rocket Man" by Elton John, so it can't ALL be new even if it's unfamiliar to me) and I was feeling resentful of All This New Shit that was being pumped past my ears and then worried about that. However, when I focused on the new-to-me songs that I did like instead of the ones I don't, I found there were about as many. I only really HATE the pop country, and that's probably less a musical judgment than a lingering symptom of PTSD from growing up in the south. Can't expect Finns to understand that.

As a result, I put 'try to investigate current music a bit more' on my mental to-do list for now. Maybe use Shazam to identify the ones I didn't hate.

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

My kids were very helpful in updating my tastes. I tried to listen to what they were listening to and it really did help me find some new stuff. But also my kids like classic rock from my era too, so there is that.

[cimorene]

Hahaha, maybe I should try my nieces and nephews...

[princessofgeeks]

Yes, definitely. Plus it will give you something to talk with them about.

[torachan]

For me it's that I just don't have the energy to seek out new music and am not often in environments where I encounter it much, so I tend to stick to listening to old favorites.

But when I do hear new-to-me music, I often find stuff I like! It's just that I don't have the opportunity and it's not a priority to go hunting.

When I'm in the car I prefer to listen to my own music rather than the radio because of commercials, and because I don't want to sit through songs I don't like in hopes of finding stuff I do like.

When I'm at work, we have a music service that plays a decent mix of stuff, some of which is new to me, and I've found some new favorites that way, but it tends to be heavy on stuff I'm already familiar with (and I don't have control of which channels are selected). I also occasionally hear a new song I like while shopping in some other store, but I don't do much shopping so that's pretty rare.

I don't really know where to start with discovering new music these days, but also when I listen to new music I need to actually focus on listening and not be doing other things or it will be in one ear and out the other (unless it really grabs me right away), but I don't want to just sit and listen to music.

So someone might see that I listen to 99% music I already know and like and don't go searching for new music and assume I have no interest in doing so, or that I don't like new music, but that's not true! I just wish I could skip the searching and processing part and skip right to enjoying the new music!

[cimorene]

That makes sense, and sounds rather familiar... although most of the new music I hear is from pop radio (with the exception of the store playlist) and I don't like as much of it. All the specifics are different of course, but I also feel like searching out new music takes too much time.