Do you still enjoy the music you grew up with?

[John]

I always hear the phrase guilty pleasure, but I think guilty pleasures have more to do with nostalgia and that you can enjoy bad to mediocre music because you can place yourself in a certain time when you hear them. As I've grown a little older though that nostalgia is starting to wear off a little bit. That's not to say I don't still love a lot of albums that I listened to in my teen years. The good stuff is still good. But, I do remember a conversation I had with a former coworker who was much older than I was who said he can't listen to classic rock radio anymore because he's heard the songs so many times. Now, with radio being basically a relic for music, it's really up to each individual on how overplayed a song is. Still, tastes change, nostalgia wears off and they still are the songs you've listened to the most. So the question still remains, do you still enjoy the music of your youth?

[Nick]

A very interesting question, and one I've been asked quite a bit.
I'm only in my early 20's so I'm quite a bit younger than the majority of the members of this forum, but I can remember back when I was in elementary school and everyone was listening to the Backstreet Boys, N'SYNC, Britney Spears, and Christina Aguilera. I never cared for any of them back then and I still don't care for them now (well...except for "Toxic"). Then a little bit later the dreaded genre "nu metal" was in fashion, and bands like Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park were ultra popular among my age group. Once again, I didn't care for them then and I sure as hell don't care for them now. For some time I was just a kid who had absolutely zero interest in music, because all the music I was surrounded with was unappealing to me. My parents never played music around me, but the first couple of artists I really got into were from a friend of mine. This was my first acquaintance with classic rock.

Around the 7th grade I was into Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Nirvana, and Jimi Hendrix. Those were the first few artists that I really got into. After that came The Who, The Beatles, The Doors, Green Day, and Pink Floyd. So from about the 7th grade to the 9th grade I was pretty much a typical "classic rock kid". Then sometime around the middle of high school I started watching the TV channel FUSE, which was what I'd imagine MTV would have been like before MTV turned to shit. Anyways, this lead me into bands like The Strokes, The White Stripes, U2, Coldplay, Nine Inch Nails, and Franz Ferdinand.

Then I discovered this website around my junior year of high school and it was like the musical floodgates all burst open, pouring music, beautiful, beautiful music onto my soul. The website has lead me to artists like Radiohead, David Bowie, Blur, The Smiths, Wilco, LCD Soundsystem, Arcade Fire, Television, The Flaming Lips, and countless others.

So to make a long story short, no, I haven't really gone back on any of the music I used to like. At most there are some artists that I don't like as much as I used to like, but I feel very confident saying that I do not flat out dislike any artists that I used to like.

Something tells me that I'm one of a very small number of people who can say that last sentence truthfully.

[Moonbeam]

The answer to this question is 97% a Hell Yes! I first got really into music in 1989, when I was 9 years old. I used to sneak out of my bedroom to watch MTV's top 20 countdown and making lists from it (of course). The cassette single was my format of choice and I was in Heaven. It was then that I discovered Prince, Madonna, Janet Jackson, The Cure, Depeche Mode and countless other favorites that remain favorites to this day. I still quite enjoy stuff that was then and is now considered to be quite lame as well.

So I still groove out to this, this and this. I still rock out to this, this and this. My heart still soars to this, this and this.

In fact, there are very few artists that I've properly grown out of, and they are more music from my teens than music from my childhood - stuff like The Offspring and Ace of Base.

[John]

I know there's nothing guilty about your pleasures Moonbeam, but you sure are the king of them.

[Moonbeam]

I know there's nothing guilty about your pleasures Moonbeam, but you sure are the king of them.

[slick]

Without a doubt, I was 7 when I first started really getting into music in 1980. I went through all kinds of fazes by the time I graduated High School in 1991 and started in college radio for 4 years in the early '90's. I look back fondly in my childhood and my various musical tastes ranging from my 1st concert (Journey 1981), the Duran Duran years ('82-'84) pop faze, The Purple Rain era, the Hair Metal Years, the 1st time I heard 'Head on the Door' changed my life forever introducing other like The Mats', The Smiths, The Church, The Furs etc..., early hip-hop, Industrial/House/Techno, the 1st Stone Roses cassette, the 1st time I heard 'Head Like A Hole'... I could go on, but I still enjoy all of it, even bands like Dokken!!!

[Stephan]

Recently I've found myself going through lists I haven't touched in a while (e.g. the '90s lists) and seeing songs like Fell In Love With An Alien placed very high in 1996 and I wonder what they're doing there. It doesn't go for all of them, but I think I'm certainly losing a few of my earlier favorites.

However, if we're really talking about childhood favorites or music from the era before I made lists (before 18 or so), then we're talking about basically your standard MTV fare; 5ive, Marc Anthony, etc. And no, I don't really enjoy many of those songs anymore.

[Dan]

These were the first CDs I bought when I was 13 years old:

Bryan Adams - Waking Up the Neighbours
Bette Midler - Some People's Lives
Ace of Base - The Sign

Fortunately my tastes have changed a lot since then.

[nicolas]

Well, it depends

My parents and grandparents were very fond of Georges Brassens, and at 3 or 4 I used to sing his songs by hearts, bad words and all, without understanding most of it. and now he's still one of my very favorites.
Then from that age to 11 or 12 I wasn't much intersted in music -but in football- but then my cousin told me about the "Hit Parade" and I started listening to the radio favorites of the time (it was 1981). Some I still like. But I got tired of all those synths. I had a big sister who was into Simon & Garfunkel and Springsteen, so i got into that myself, and at age 13-14 I was very fond of 70s soft rock (Eagles, Supertramp, Rod Stewart, Elton John).
Then I heard "Thriller", "Let's Dance" and "Born In The USA" and started buying music magazines. I'm still a big Boss fan, like in '85.
I only discovered the great classics of the 60's-70's in the late eighties. then I fell in love with that music. And I discovered the blues through my dad's records.
Of course there are things I wouldn't listen to now (basic 80's music) but i discovered most of my very favortie artists before I was 20 years old.
Brassens at age 2, Brel at 7, The Beatles at 11 (we used to hate them with my cousin because another cousin we hated liked them), Tom Waits at 15, Leadbelly at 16, Neil Young at 18, Dylan around 19.

[Harpo]

The music I liked when I was growing up - yeah, I still like it a lot, from Cream to T.Rex, from Glenn Miller to 60s novelty pop silliness, from Spike Jones and His City Slickers to early Pink Floyd, and lots more. On the other hand, there was music I grew up with that I didn't like then (David Cassidy, Osmonds, etc) and will never like.
LIke all of us, I then proceeded to explore and discover things old (Memphis Jug Band) and new (The Residents) through the years.

[Jirin]

Some of it. I still enjoy names like Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Live, No Doubt, Alanis Morisette, etc. But some of my other favorites of the same time I only think are listenable/okay, like Matchbox 20, Eve 6, Fuel, Matthew Good Band.