0:00

Hey, it's Alan and I just wanted to

0:02

let you know that you can now listen

0:04

to the ongoing history of new music early

0:06

and ad-free on Amazon Music included with Prime.

0:09

Decades ago, I was the best man

0:12

for my buddy Charlie and was in charge of

0:14

driving the bridal car from the church to the

0:16

reception. The happy couple were in the

0:18

back seat and next to me up front was

0:20

the bride's sister-in-law. When I

0:22

started the car, welcome to the jungle

0:24

from Guns N' Roses started playing on

0:26

the radio and the sister-in-law freaked out.

0:29

What is this garbage? She screamed,

0:31

turn it off. I

0:34

looked at Charlie, he looked at me

0:36

and then he just shrugged. No

0:38

sense in making waves. So I switched

0:40

to a pop station, but the

0:42

sister-in-law's violent reaction to the Gunners stayed

0:44

with me. Then, not long

0:46

ago, I was in a car with a friend

0:48

when Rage Against the Machine's Bulls on Parade came

0:50

on the radio. I instinctively turned

0:53

it up. I mean, why not? It's an

0:55

awesome song. But my friend shrieked, what

0:57

is this? A leap, she

0:59

said. It's awful. You can't possibly

1:01

like this. Now, I

1:04

was slightly taken aback. We

1:06

go back a couple of decades and she came

1:08

from an alt-rock radio background too. Her life used

1:10

to be filled with this kind of music. How

1:13

could she not like Rage Against the Machine?

1:16

I don't know, she said. Maybe I'm

1:18

just getting old. I prefer softer stuff

1:20

these days. There

1:23

was, again, an example of how

1:26

someone's musical tastes evolve with age.

1:29

It's just something that happens with most people.

1:32

Most take that as a given. But

1:34

not me though, which is

1:36

something that's always fascinated me. There has

1:38

to be some kind of science behind

1:41

why we listen to different types and styles

1:43

of music as we go through life and

1:46

why things change. So

1:49

I tracked down this science and I have

1:51

some answers. And we're going to

1:53

call this episode, What a Drag It

1:55

Is Getting Old Musically. The

2:21

Ramones covering the Tom Waits song, I Don't Want to

2:23

Grow Up, back in 1996. Now,

2:26

I get it, me too, adulting is hard,

2:29

but there's no fighting it. We all age and

2:31

as we get older, many of us, well

2:33

the majority of us in fact, find

2:36

that our tastes in music change and

2:38

evolve. This isn't weird

2:40

or any kind of moral or

2:42

aesthetic or creative shortcoming. It's

2:46

really just part of the circle of life and

2:49

it comes with some pretty fascinating studies.

2:52

Hello again, I'm Alan Cross and what I would like to

2:54

do on this episode is explore

2:57

how our relationships with music

2:59

change over the years and

3:01

the decades. We're going to

3:03

go deep into the psychology and demographics of

3:05

our musical tastes and I'm

3:07

going to bet that a lot of this will sound

3:09

pretty familiar whether you want to believe it or not.

3:12

However, there will be no judgment.

3:15

This is just how things are.

3:18

By the end of this show, you'll hopefully understand why.

3:22

The first thing we need to accept is

3:24

that every generation has the right to believe

3:26

that the music of their youth is the

3:28

greatest music of all time. It has been

3:30

this way since ancient times when

3:33

people like Socrates wrote things

3:35

like this back around

3:37

400 BCE, no doubt annoyed by

3:39

the music of young people. I

3:41

will quote Socrates, the

3:44

children now love luxury. They have

3:46

bad manners, contempt for authority. They

3:48

show disrespect for elders and love

3:51

chatter in place of exercise. Children

3:54

are now tyrants, not the servants of their

3:56

households. They no longer rise

3:58

when elders enter the room. They contradict

4:01

their parents, chatter before company, gobble

4:03

up dainties at the table, cross

4:05

their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.

4:09

Then we have Plato. He wrote this, Forms

4:12

and rhythms in music are never altered

4:15

without producing changes in the entire fabric

4:17

of society. It is

4:19

here that we must be so careful

4:21

since these new forms creep in imperceptibly

4:23

in the form of seemingly harmless diversion.

4:27

But little by little, this mischief

4:29

becomes more and more familiar and spreads

4:31

into our manners and pursuits. Then,

4:34

with gathering force, it invades men's dealings

4:36

with one another and goes on to

4:38

attack the laws and the Constitution with

4:40

reckless impudence until it ends

4:43

by overthrowing the whole structure of public

4:45

and private life. He

4:48

was talking about music, and this

4:50

is the kind of music he was talking about. Plato

4:53

hated slow music

4:57

because he

5:00

thought it

5:03

promoted laziness

5:06

and sloth. He

5:16

hated fast music because it ruined any attempt

5:18

at, quote, sober contemplation.

5:23

These attitudes of elders towards music of

5:25

the young only accelerated in the late

5:27

19th and early 20th century. Church

5:30

hymns were fine. Classical music

5:32

was uplifting and sophisticated. But

5:35

folk songs, they were vulgar. Show

5:38

tunes with their bouncy melodies were sure

5:40

to give people heart attacks. When

5:43

jazz started coming out of New Orleans

5:46

around 1900, it was vile and evil

5:48

and a front to proper music. And

5:51

it was made largely by African Americans, which

5:54

compounded the problem. The

5:56

elders said, look, if you want exciting

5:58

music, there are military marches. Good,

6:00

disciplined music for marching up and down the

6:02

square. As

6:05

jazz spread, there was a backlash. The

6:08

answer to this cacophony was ballroom

6:11

dancing, especially waltzes. When

6:14

the big bands faded in the 1940s,

6:16

the Young gravitated towards R&B, the Blues,

6:19

Country, Western, and Bebop, staring at the

6:21

old, outdated music of the 20s and

6:23

30s. And

6:25

when rock and roll came along, that opened

6:28

up huge generation gaps, many of them.

6:31

Here's a 2023 quote from Keith Richards of the

6:33

Rolling Stones. Don't get me

6:35

going on modern day music. Push

6:37

button drums and everything is synthesized. Digital

6:40

recording is a one-way toilet.

6:44

This is a guy who played guitar behind Mick Jagger

6:46

as he sang, man, what a

6:48

drag it is getting old. In

6:51

other words, says Keith, the more

6:53

music changed, the more the attitudes of both the

6:55

young and the old stayed the same. But

6:58

why? Well,

7:00

first of all, in general, no

7:03

young person wants to be like their parents, at least

7:05

not at first. Second, music

7:07

is very important to our personal and

7:10

emotional development. My long-held theory is

7:12

that there's a sweet spot for all of us when

7:14

it comes to music. It runs roughly

7:16

from the time you enter high school until sometime in your

7:18

early 20s when you have to deal with the real world.

7:21

That's when we have all kinds of time to devote

7:23

to the pursuit of music, listening to it, learning to

7:25

play an instrument, going to shows. They

7:28

are our musical coming of age years. There's

7:31

a second component to this too. During

7:33

those years, we're growing as human beings, trying

7:35

to figure out our place in the universe.

7:38

We're very malleable, confused, curious,

7:41

and we need assistance. So

7:44

we use music to figure out

7:46

who we are intellectually and emotionally.

7:48

We use it to create our identity. Once

7:52

we've got a handle on that, we then use

7:54

this music to project our identity to the rest of

7:56

the world. We tell anyone who will

7:58

listen That this... Is our

8:00

favorite music and these are our favorite

8:02

artists and therefore that is who we

8:05

are. This. Is called using music

8:07

as an identity marker. We

8:09

might adopt specific fashion trends associated with

8:11

that music. Punk. Metal costs

8:13

one. We. Form friendships with

8:16

like minded music fans, They. Become

8:18

or tribes or as researchers call

8:20

them, our social constructs. Square.

8:22

Sucked into all kinds of rattles adjacent

8:24

to her favorite music scene. Politics.

8:27

Social issues Creative Lanes areas of

8:29

sexuality. There's also

8:31

a neurological angle to this. By.

8:33

Adolescence Our brains have developed to where

8:35

we can finally process everything that we're

8:38

hearing. Then. You add in

8:40

all the strong emotions that we have been puberty. The.

8:42

Results are: strong and lasting

8:44

bonds related to memory, emotion,

8:47

and identity. And they're

8:49

all wrapped up in music. It

8:51

is not an overstatement to say that our love

8:53

of music as young people influence is who we

8:55

become. And who we are for

8:57

the rest of our lives and it continues

8:59

today. That happened with Boomers

9:01

Get Extra And why And now Jin said

9:04

The people born between the late Ninety Nineties

9:06

in the early twenty chance. Study.

9:08

Showed that they are streaming music every

9:10

single day and the average somewhere around

9:12

four and a half hours of music

9:15

listening every single day. As

9:17

more the Jen: Why Jen X In The Boomers.

9:20

Those generation to speed. Just.

9:22

As much. But. Not anymore

9:24

because I'm. Well. You

9:27

know? voice? Leave

9:45

us or feed him. Use a good

9:47

music culture Between the ages of will

9:49

say fourteen and twenty four. We.

9:51

Are immersed in music, The

9:54

songs we listened to then sets are musical taste for

9:56

the rest of her life. But. once

9:58

we reach her mid twenties The real

10:00

world starts to intrude. Jobs

10:03

and careers, families, mortgages, car payments.

10:06

You know, the serious and unavoidable adult stuff that gets

10:09

in the way of being the music fan you once

10:11

were. Just don't have

10:13

the time or the money or the inclination to

10:15

go to shows or to scour the scenes for

10:17

new songs and new bands. And

10:20

a funny thing starts to creep into your mind. You

10:23

know, new music isn't as good as it

10:25

was when I was young. Let's

10:28

go a little deeper into that. Spotify

10:30

has been a great source of data. By

10:33

looking at listener habits, we've been able to

10:35

glean more information than ever about our collective

10:37

musical tastes. Most

10:40

of our musical lives begin with pop music.

10:42

It's easily digestible with singable melodies and

10:45

fun beats. The top 40 becomes

10:48

our life, or if not the top 40,

10:50

the most prevalent songs that we hear in

10:52

our immediate environment. The

10:54

New York Times did an analysis of Spotify

10:56

data and found the following. First

10:58

for men. The most important

11:01

period for forming musical tastes is between the

11:03

ages of 13 and 16. On

11:07

average, men were 14 when

11:09

their all-time favorite song was released. It's

11:12

a little different for women. Their most

11:14

impressionable years for music are between 11 and 14. Their

11:18

favorite song probably came out when they were 13. The

11:21

Times gives two examples. Go

11:24

Head released Creep in 1993. In

11:27

their analysis, that was the 164th most popular

11:29

song for 38-year-old men. That

11:33

means the song came out when they were 14. If

11:36

you look for Creep in people 10 years older or

11:39

10 years younger, it doesn't show up.

11:42

Then there's this song from The Cure. It

11:44

was released in 1987. It

11:46

was massively popular in this analysis with

11:49

41-year-old women. During

11:51

the math, they were 11 when it came

11:53

out. This seems to point

11:55

to childhood or at least pre-teen musical influences

11:58

are stronger with women. than they are with men.

12:02

You'll feel the disgust. You

12:06

are awesome. You

12:08

are awesome. You

12:11

are a stranger. You are

12:14

a baby. This

12:17

is more why young people are more

12:19

open to music, including and especially unfamiliar

12:21

music. Academics call

12:24

this open-earedness. In

12:26

2013, there was a study of 250,000 people

12:28

about changing musical behaviors. It

12:32

found that 20% of her waking time

12:34

during adolescence was devoted to music. That

12:36

dropped to 13% in adulthood. Yes,

12:39

we are more busy as adults, but

12:42

they also looked at things in terms

12:44

of psychosocial maturation. In other words, as

12:46

adults, we know who we are,

12:49

and we no longer need to rely on

12:51

something external, like music, to help figure that

12:53

out. This is why

12:55

our musical tastes evolved so quickly through to

12:57

age 24. In

13:00

fact, our desire for musical discovery and

13:02

preference for new music is at its

13:04

all-time peak when we are 23 for

13:06

women and 24 for men. But

13:12

by the time we're in our mid-30s,

13:14

the social scientists say that our

13:16

tastes have matured. This

13:18

relates to one of the five

13:20

personality traits that we all have,

13:22

an openness to experience. In

13:24

other words, we'll try anything, at

13:26

least when we're young. As we

13:28

age, though, we become more discerning. We

13:31

start by aging out of our top 40 years

13:33

and our teens as we start

13:35

looking for music that is cooler, more

13:37

substantial, more meaningful, more complex, and more

13:39

cool. Another thing

13:41

they discovered involves our hearing changes as

13:44

we get older. They

13:46

call this hearing acuity. We

13:48

can, over time, acquire a lower tolerance

13:50

for loud sounds and audio with high frequencies.

13:53

So you can see why that would

13:55

be an issue. This

13:57

means there's also a chance that your tasting music

13:59

will get more intense. milder as you get older.

14:02

Volume and thumping beats with high BPMs

14:05

stops being a thing for you. Life

14:07

itself is now getting you stressed out enough

14:10

that you don't need high volume, high

14:12

energy music all the time. You don't

14:14

need that adrenaline rush because you're already

14:16

adrenalineized with stress and cortisol. In

14:19

fact, that kind of music may become

14:22

more irritating. This doesn't

14:24

mean you will stop loving the high volume,

14:26

high energy music of your youth. That

14:29

will be forever the greatest music of all time, right? But

14:31

as for new music, not so much.

14:34

Again, there is nothing weird about any

14:36

of this. Even

14:38

though you've always told yourself that you will

14:40

never get old and never get uncool with

14:42

music and always be down with the kids

14:44

and whenever they're listening to, science

14:47

says there are certain realities that we

14:50

may... So,

15:07

when does our musical taste officially

15:09

become old? More

15:13

science coming up next. This

15:16

is a program filled with dangerous truths

15:19

and I'll let The Simpsons reset things for us.

15:22

You make me feel like dancing. I wanna dance the night

15:24

away. What the hell are you two doing? It's

15:28

called rocking out. You wouldn't understand it.

15:30

You're not with it. I used to

15:32

be with it. But then they

15:34

changed what it was. Now what

15:37

I'm with isn't it? And what's

15:39

it seems weird and scary to me.

15:41

It'll happen to you. No

15:43

way man. We're gonna keep

15:46

on rocking forever. Forever. Forever.

15:49

Forever. Forever. Forever.

15:52

Bad news. If

15:54

you're like most of the population and yes, I

15:57

am generalizing a lot on this episode.

16:00

We will all end up like Homer in some way.

16:03

We'll believe that rock attains perfection in

16:05

insert year here. But when?

16:08

Well, let's ask science, and

16:10

here's my personal experience. I

16:13

was in the gym, and in

16:15

the middle of my workout, some

16:17

god-awful, mumbly mid-tempo auto-tune song came

16:19

on. To me, it

16:21

sounded like bad poetry over an overly complicated

16:23

and poorly constructed beat. There was

16:25

no chorus, there was nothing sing-alongable. There

16:28

was little to the arrangement. It

16:30

meandered on and on and on for about four

16:32

minutes before something less terrible came on. But,

16:35

during those four minutes, I had

16:37

both an emotional and physical reaction.

16:40

How could anybody think that this was good music? And

16:42

if the kids are listening to this stuff today, there's

16:45

something wrong with them. Then

16:47

I realized something. Abe

16:49

Simpson's prophecy had once again come

16:51

true. Now,

16:53

I'm going to be honest. A lot of

16:55

contemporary music leaves me cold because I think

16:58

it's just bad. I'm

17:00

not immune to that cycle of life thing that I

17:02

mentioned earlier. And I listen to

17:05

and analyze and write about music for a living. Which

17:08

brings me to John S. Dwight, a

17:10

composer of hymns in the 19th century.

17:13

He wrote this about the new music of his day. Such

17:16

tunes, although whistled and sung by everybody, are

17:18

erroneously supposed to have taken a deep hold

17:21

of the popular mind. They

17:23

are hummed and whistled without musical

17:25

emotion. They persevere and haunt the

17:28

morbidly sensitive nerves of deeply musical

17:30

persons so that they too

17:32

hum and whistle involuntarily, hating them,

17:34

even while they hum them. Such

17:37

a melody breaks out every now and

17:39

then like a morbid irritation of the

17:41

skin. Look, I

17:44

still love plenty of music that's being made today. It's

17:47

just that with each passing year,

17:49

science says I'm less likely to understand

17:51

a larger subset of it. And

17:54

if you're not in agreement, listen to this. There

17:57

have been plenty of studies on how and why our

17:59

taste is so good. and music change as we get

18:01

older, which brings me to some

18:03

2023 research of American

18:05

Spotify and Amazon Echo users.

18:08

Quite enlightening. It found

18:11

that by the time we turned 33, we

18:13

start to not only drift away from new

18:15

music, the new music of the day, but

18:18

we find it to be a rocket,

18:20

a cacophony, noise. It's

18:23

the onset of a type of musical

18:25

paralysis. If you have kids

18:27

and are exposed to their music, which is probably

18:29

a lot of contemporary pop on repeat, that

18:32

threshold, that time that we start to get

18:34

annoyed drops to the age of But

18:38

we still have a thirst for something new,

18:41

or at least new to us. So

18:44

what do many of us do? We

18:46

go back to those coming of age years between

18:48

14 and 24 and

18:51

start exploring songs, albums, and artists

18:53

that we missed the first time

18:55

around. Maybe it was stuff

18:57

that was a little too radical and too different

19:00

for us back then, or because we were absorbing

19:02

so much so fast, this is stuff that

19:04

fell through the cracks. For example, let's

19:07

say that you were 14 when grunge hit in late

19:09

1991. You sucked up

19:11

all the nirvana and Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains

19:13

and Soundgarden that you could. From

19:15

there, you moved to smashing pumpkins, stone-tipple pieds, and the

19:17

red hot chili peppers. The more

19:20

you listened, the deeper you went. Pixies,

19:22

ministry, tool, 9-inch nails, Jane's Addiction. There

19:25

was Madchester, Ed Brittpop, and Third Wave Scott, and

19:27

so on. The 90s were like that. Now

19:29

let's fast forward to today. If

19:32

it's 2023, you're in your mid-40s. You

19:34

still love discovering music, but

19:37

the current stuff doesn't hold your

19:39

attention. What do you do? Well,

19:41

you go back to the 90s for the

19:44

stuff that was adjacent to all the acts

19:46

I just mentioned, that went

19:48

unnoticed by you at the time. This

19:51

is material that has all the power and energy and appeal

19:53

that you remember from that era. And

19:55

even though it's decades old, it is new

19:57

to you. So isn't that?

19:59

like being 14 again and finding

20:01

that next great band? Yes,

20:04

it is. Here's an act

20:06

from the early 1990s that you may

20:08

have missed. Let's see if this starts you down

20:10

a new-to-you path. There

20:12

was a Scottish man called Eugenius

20:14

that Kurt Cobain loved so much

20:16

that he invited them to open

20:18

for Nirvana on their 1991 European

20:20

tour. Kurt's endorsement of

20:23

the band got them a major label

20:25

deal with Atlantic Records, which resulted in

20:27

two very well-reviewed albums. One

20:29

was called Uma Lama in 1992 and Mary Queen

20:31

of Scots in 1994. But after a little bit

20:35

of alt-rock radio airplay, Eugenius

20:37

just disappeared. Too bad because

20:40

they were really quite good. If

20:42

you remember Eugenius, good for you. You must have

20:44

been really deep into the alt-rock scene back then

20:46

and have a very good memory. But

20:49

if you don't, then I'm

20:51

talking to you. If you're in your

20:53

mid-40s, loved grunge as a teenager, want to

20:55

hear something new to you and you've never

20:58

heard of Eugenius, try this.

21:00

It's a 1993 single called Easter Bunny

21:03

and Kurt Cobain loved it. I

21:23

think you can see why Kurt Cobain

21:25

liked Eugenius so much. And

21:27

for you mid-40s folk, there's

21:30

a lot more from the 90s still

21:32

to be discovered. You just have to

21:34

make time to do some research. Fans

21:36

like Lush, Young Gods, Ocean Blue, Curve,

21:38

Material Issue, Rhymes with Orange, Apotheosis. And

21:42

you know something? I think there's a living to

21:44

be made putting together playlists of lost music organized

21:46

by year for people beyond the age of 27

21:48

looking for music that they missed when

21:50

they were young. Note to self

21:52

on that one. I

21:54

should point out another study that might

21:56

ring true even though it does

21:58

sound pretty cliched. Around

22:00

the age of 42, many

22:02

of us enter existential mid-age crises

22:04

when it comes to music. We

22:07

wake up one day and say to ourselves, wait, I'm

22:09

not old. I'm still down with the kids. I'm just

22:11

as cool when it comes to new music as they

22:14

are. So for the next

22:16

12 months, and again, I'm speaking generally

22:18

not to everybody, but for the

22:20

next 12 to 18 months, we throw

22:22

ourselves back into the music world, trying

22:25

to recapture the emotional glory of the

22:27

music discovery we had during

22:29

those coming of age years, two decades previous.

22:33

But by age 44, most of

22:35

us say, ah, screw it. This

22:37

new stuff sucks. And what do we

22:39

do? We go back to our

22:42

comfort food music, the music of our youth.

22:45

This is part of what's being called the death

22:48

of coolness spiral. You

22:50

can actually graph our musical tastes. So let me

22:53

see if I can describe this spiral to you.

22:55

It's a circular graph with a line

22:57

that spirals out from the center, plotting

23:00

our age against affinity for

23:02

current music. The older

23:04

we get, the further our tastes

23:06

deviate from current music. And

23:09

the graph shows a slight wobble between 42

23:12

and a half and late age 43 before

23:14

it smooths out again. Again,

23:17

total generalization may not apply to

23:19

you, but it's what the

23:22

social scientists have discovered. And

23:25

I'm really sorry about that. Here's

23:39

another thing that happens as you get older

23:41

when it comes to music, and it's totally

23:43

unavoidable. You become

23:46

an experienced and knowledgeable consumer

23:49

of music. When you're

23:51

young, everything is new and interesting. But

23:54

as you get older, you start to

23:56

notice cycles and trends. The

23:58

sounds you hear today become rather familiar,

24:01

or at least you have a sense of deja

24:03

vu. Let's say you

24:05

stumble on a band like Beauty School Dropout.

24:08

Good group. But don't they sound a lot

24:10

like Blink-182? And

24:12

wasn't Blink sound descended from Green

24:14

Day? And isn't there a lot of Ramones

24:16

in the Green Day sound? And

24:18

what were the Ramones but 60s pop songs played

24:21

loud and fast? Your

24:23

musical knowledge can make things very

24:25

annoying Because it

24:27

may seem that history is on

24:29

repeat Everything old becomes

24:31

new again and current music seems like

24:34

it's just recycled and rehashed stuff from

24:36

the past How many times

24:38

have you said hey that new song by blank sounds

24:40

a lot like the song by blank from back in

24:42

the day? Certainly happened

24:45

a lot to boomers and Gen Xers when they

24:47

first heard Greta van Fleet in 2017. The

24:49

kids thought they were new and fresh But

24:52

God didn't Led Zeppelin sound like this in 1971?

25:08

Here's what you have to remember about bands like

25:10

Greta van Fleet. First there

25:12

are always going to be styles of

25:15

music that are independently Rediscovered over and

25:17

over and over again by subsequent generations

25:20

Second today's young musicians have the

25:23

entirety of the world's music at

25:25

their fingertips through streaming platforms And

25:28

third many of them have parents who

25:30

were music junkies when they were young and

25:33

they were only too happy to share their

25:35

record collections with the kids Look

25:37

if you're 17 and you discover the power of Led

25:39

Zeppelin and it really speaks to you Aren't

25:42

you gonna follow in those footsteps at least at first? Look

25:45

musicians are always influenced by those who came before

25:47

them So what's wrong with a bunch

25:50

of young kids picking up on the sounds of an older

25:52

band? Even one that was around 50

25:54

years ago Ponder that for

25:56

a moment. And when we come back, we'll

25:58

look at a few more things about our evolving tastes of

26:00

music when it comes to aging. We

26:04

have been exploring why your grandparents still like Elvis,

26:06

why your dad is into Bon Jovi, and why

26:09

you still love bands that you discovered when you

26:11

were 14. It's the

26:13

whole cycle of life thing when it comes to

26:15

our evolving tastes in music. And

26:18

now it's time to discuss nostalgia.

26:21

Broadly defined, nostalgia is being sentimental

26:24

about the past. It's

26:26

a psychic happy place. The

26:28

word first came into use in the

26:30

16th century by a medical student observing

26:32

how Swiss mercenaries became anxious after spending

26:35

months fighting away from home. He

26:37

thought it was a form of melancholy, almost a

26:39

type of mental illness. Today

26:41

though, nostalgia is just a pining for

26:43

the good old days, whatever that means to

26:46

you. As we've seen,

26:48

the good old days for music go back to when

26:50

you were 14 or so and move forward from there.

26:53

Now there is some wiggle room there. Other studies

26:55

have shown that the nostalgic sweet spot is at

26:57

age 17. Others say that it's age 19.

27:00

But we really don't have to be that specific other

27:03

than to say it falls somewhere during

27:05

those all important coming of age musical

27:07

years, mid teens to late adolescence and

27:10

early adulthood. And this

27:12

nostalgia trend tends to be

27:14

very stable in all of us over many

27:16

years. Nostalgia can

27:18

be a very, very powerful thing. Marketers

27:21

know this. The music industry knows this. And

27:23

promoters know this. This

27:26

is why so many legacy bands, let's

27:28

call any act that was big before 2000 legacy or heritage,

27:32

that's why they're still with us. That's why they're still

27:34

able to fill arenas. Boomers, Gen Xers

27:36

and increasing numbers of Gen Y

27:39

are only too happy to pay whatever it costs

27:42

to relive their youth by seeing a band that they used

27:44

to watch to when they were 16. This

27:48

explains why festival headliners are getting older.

27:51

The average age of a lead singer or solo

27:53

artist at a major festival is now at least

27:57

50 and is quickly moving higher. And

27:59

if we take acts like Ed Sheeran, Beyonce and Taylor

28:01

Swift out of the equation, the

28:03

vast majority of the all-time top-grossing

28:05

tours have been axed with an average

28:07

age of 45 and above.

28:10

Elton John, U2, Coldplay, Guns

28:12

N' Roses, Rolling Stones, Roger

28:15

Waters, Metallica, Madonna, Springsteen,

28:17

you get the idea. And

28:19

if Oasis were ever to get back together, the

28:21

resulting tour receipts would be Madonna.

28:40

Now comes another difficult question.

28:43

Is it possible that current music

28:45

really isn't all that good

28:48

when compared to what was on offer, say, 20, 30, 40, or 50 years

28:50

ago? Well,

28:55

the answer is highly subjective

28:57

and can also be very

28:59

technical. I can try

29:01

to distill thousands of arguments down to

29:03

just a couple of concepts. When

29:06

old music was new, there was nothing like it.

29:09

Rock was still young. It was

29:11

still evolving both creatively and technically.

29:14

And you can only be first. You can only be

29:16

new once. The

29:18

Beatles are still popular because they got

29:20

to so many great melodies and arrangements

29:23

before anyone else did. Jimi

29:25

Hendrix and Eddie Van Halen were the first to

29:27

do things with an electric guitar that no one

29:29

else had. Bands like Black Sabbath

29:32

and Led Zeppelin got to so many of

29:34

the great guitar riffs first and

29:36

thus have claimed them for all time. The

29:39

sounds from effects pedals, Marshall Stack's synthesizers

29:41

and drum machines were once new but

29:44

are now part of the standard arsenal

29:46

of musical tools. And let's face

29:48

it, there hasn't been a revolution in the

29:51

sound of rock in forever. Meanwhile,

29:53

hip hop, which was incredibly

29:55

game-changing, has also hit something of

29:57

a wall. A generation gap has

30:00

as formed in hip-hop too, with old

30:02

schoolers and gangster rap fans pitted against

30:04

the Drake's and Chris Brown's of today.

30:07

There were only 12 notes in the Western

30:09

musical scale, and there were only so many

30:11

to put those notes together in an aesthetically

30:13

pleasing manner. There were a

30:16

finite number of chord changes, and with

30:18

this current era of popular music, which dates back

30:20

to the birth of rock and roll in the

30:22

early 1950s, it's approaching the age of 70, and

30:25

there's bound to be repetition. And

30:27

dare I say it? I hate to.

30:30

Stagnation? Others

30:32

will point to the ease with which music can

30:34

be created today. Instruments like

30:37

Ableton Live, beats and stems included

30:39

with programs like GarageBand, the

30:41

team method of songwriting known as Top Lines

30:43

and Beats that's so prevalent today, the

30:46

ability to buy ready-made beats online for a

30:48

few bucks. And once you create a song,

30:51

it costs nothing to upload it to

30:53

Spotify and make it available to the

30:55

entire planet. So

30:57

maybe, maybe yeah.

31:01

If you remember the days of real musical

31:03

instruments that took years to master, and the

31:05

limited amount of music made available by the

31:08

record industry, radio, record stores, music magazines, and

31:10

video channels, you might think that

31:12

the kids have it all too easy

31:14

these days when it comes to making music, which

31:17

however is a discussion for another time, but that would

31:19

be a good one. Here's

31:21

what I can tell you. Study after

31:23

study shows that once you

31:25

get into music as a kid, you're

31:27

into music for a lifetime. Now,

31:30

we may engage less and less in new

31:32

music as we get older, but

31:34

that doesn't mean that music falls out of

31:36

our lives. The music

31:38

you're into will change to meet

31:40

your psychological and social needs. Your

31:43

relationship with music will evolve, but

31:46

you will never be able to do without music.

31:49

For example, you may still enjoy

31:51

discovering new music, but your tastes may

31:53

mellow. Instead of nine-inch nails

31:55

all the time, you might

31:57

find yourself gravitating towards fleet foxes. We

32:00

may start trying jazz or classical

32:02

music as we seek complexity, challenge,

32:05

and sophistication. Instead

32:07

of using music to form our identity, we

32:10

use it in our close intimate relationships.

32:13

We eventually stop choosing music in hopes

32:15

that our tastes will gain us acceptance

32:17

with others and start listening to music

32:19

strictly for ourselves. We seek

32:21

out material that is positive and

32:24

relaxing on some deeply personal level.

32:27

Online, embrace

32:29

the cycle of life when it comes to what

32:31

you want to listen to. Listen

32:33

to what gives you joy. Respect

32:35

all music and listen to what you want. What

32:41

other choice do we have?

33:01

I hope I haven't got you too down about music

33:03

and age and everything that goes along with it. Again,

33:07

no judgment anywhere in

33:09

this program. This is a

33:11

life cycle that extends back literally thousands

33:13

and thousands of years. Maybe

33:16

you can use this information for a little

33:18

self-reflection as a way to help understand what's

33:20

going on with your relationship to music. Above

33:24

all, every generation has a right to believe

33:26

that the music of their youth is the

33:28

greatest music of all time. No

33:30

one is immune from that. No

33:33

one. If you

33:35

want more ongoing history, there are hundreds of podcasts

33:37

available for immediate download wherever you get your podcasts.

33:39

They're all free too. Let me

33:41

know what you think through Alan at alancrost.ca. There's

33:44

my website, agernalofmusicalthings.com. It's always being updated

33:47

with music news and information, as

33:49

well as recommendations for new music I think you

33:51

might like, no matter how old you are.

33:54

We can connect through Facebook, X, Instagram, and

33:56

threads. And don't forget about

33:58

my other podcasts. charted crime and

34:00

mayhem in the music industry. If

34:03

you like true crime and you like the idea

34:05

of it intersecting with music, here

34:07

you go. Until next time,

34:09

just remember the immortal words of Abe

34:11

Simpson. I used to be with it, but

34:14

then they changed what it was. Now

34:16

what I'm with isn't it? And

34:18

what's it seems weird and scary

34:21

to me. It'll happen to you.

34:23

To you. To you. To

34:26

you. This is

34:29

Hell in the Near. It's

34:32

1986 and Michael Morrison needs to

34:34

get out of Nowick. He's

34:38

offered a lifeline, a new job, a chance to

34:40

leave and secure his future. But

34:42

it's not

34:45

this job will make confession everything

34:48

he knows about justice, community and

34:50

about himself. I'm Sarah

34:52

Jones and this is Black and Blue.