Music

[Haydn2]

No I doubt it. We only remember the best songs from yester years and the enormous amounts of rubbish are just forgotten. I'd like to know what your outstanding exceptions were.

I find that mostly the outstanding exceptions tend to be more bands/people, than songs.

A couple of them for me are Robbie Williams and, believe it or not, The Bloodhound Gang.

I usually loathe anything hip-hop or rap, but the music of The Bloodhound Gang is done in such a way that it's humourous and fun.

Personally I'm a bit of music tart and I like the best songs from any genre, including hip-hop, rap but also classical, rock, Britpop, Jazz. I like songs from the old era's and the pop music that's coming out now, but it probably at 1:50 ratio and you only hear the good ones if you trawl through the crap.
Robbie had a couple of good songs but the Blood Hound Gang had the iconic: The Bad Touch.

[Alex K]

I'm kind of a music fanatic in my own way. The soundtrack of my teens was shitty 90s dancefloor music. I reacted by becoming a death metal and classical music enthusiast. But I kind of make a point now of being a music enthusiast and think about each piece I hear individually in terms of whether I can find something interesting in it. That doesn't change the fact that the music I will actively seek out is almost always from my favorite genres.
In ninth grade my music teacher asked us to put on music we liked in class, and the first guy put on some punk rock thing, after which our teacher went off on a rant about how this was inferior music. I wasn't a fan of that type of music at all back then but I remember that the teacher's reaction annoyed me a lot. Thinking back, today I believe that if you sit in your ivory tower where only certain sophiaticated classics even count for anything and everything else is not worthy of consideration, you don't really get music and what it's all about, the different roles it plays and purposes it serves in people's lives. So the ideal I aspire to is being not like that music teacher of mine, may she rest in peace. A GOOD musician will listen to a Beyoncé song and tell you what musical tricks and harmonies they employed to create the effect that they got, and understand why that makes it a successful pop song. Raising an eyebrow because it's not Mozart doesn't require any effort, it's faux sophistication in my eyes.

[brewer]

Exactly. What you were raised on and you've stuck to a path you now can't leave. Like our religious friends. Its no more easier for me to argue that post 90's music is better to you, than to convince a religious fool their god is imaginary.

Oh, I can leave it. Please sharpen your orbitoclast prior to application. Thank you. 

Music is an acquired taste, not a required belief.

[The Industrial Atheist]

I was born in '80 and I like the newest Industrial Music.
Sometimes I like pop music too or Indie.

Once in a while I listen to 80's music.

[Astreja]

My musical tastes started developing in the Beatlemania days and went through a second phase in 1969-1976. There's also a lot of stuff from the '80s that I really like, but I can barely remember anything from the '90s (wasn't watching music videos or listening a lot to the radio). There are a few more recent bands I do like, though: Blind Guardian, Foo Fighters, Green Day, and AFI are some that spring to mind.

[c172]

I actually grew up on the likes of Kenny G, David Lanz and Paul Speer, and Skywalk, which were smooth jazz/fusion/whatever. When I was growing up, as a visibly physically disabled person, I was either shunned or treated a lot younger than I was. So I ended up hanging out with certain other social outliers, with my peers' parents and such at recess. So I took to their liking, pretty much. 

When I moved to Florida, my first ever out-of-metro move, in 1991, I was still listening to the smooth jazz, but then I started listening to a "Mix" station (Hot AC format, maybe?), and got to listening to Richard Marx, OMD, the Moody Blues, They Might Be Giants, and When In Rome. The "Mix" was a semipopular station, but it still wasn't what the teens my age preferred. "Y105" played Mr. Big, Extreme, and others. 

While there in FL, I did start listening to WMNF, a "dot.org" public freeform station, which one hour could be playing college punk, and the next be playing klezmer. And I liked a lot of it all. I really liked the exposure. And that's something I treasure to this day, being exposed to new music. 

Having said that, I think I lot about my past, and how I wished I were better exposed to the music of my pears. With that in mind, I have explored 80's and early 90's music in the past two years, and conclude that I'd have possibly been a "light punk". Is "normcore" really a thing, because that term speaks to me, too (this is a different thread, methinks). I like what now would maybe be "soft rock". like Boy Meets Girl, Eric Carmen, Tears For Fears, Simple Minds or Men At Work. But I also like The Kinks, Dresden Dolls, Jesus and Mary Chain, Deep Blue Something, Joy Division, and even some 90's alternative/grunge/whatever (so many genre names!).  90's stuff I like is Might Mighty Bosstones, Butthole Surfers, Counting Crows, Live and others.

The nostalgia is strong with me, but new bands can be capable of some fun stuff. Hey. fun. That's a band name:

[Alex K]

My musical tastes started developing in the Beatlemania days and went through a second phase in 1969-1976. There's also a lot of stuff from the '80s that I really like, but I can barely remember anything from the '90s (wasn't watching music videos or listening a lot to the radio). There are a few more recent bands I do like, though: Blind Guardian, Foo Fighters, Green Day, and AFI are some that spring to mind.

Hear hear!

[Haydn2]

Exactly. What you were raised on and you've stuck to a path you now can't leave. Like our religious friends. Its no more easier for me to argue that post 90's music is better to you, than to convince a religious fool their god is imaginary.

Oh, I can leave it. Please sharpen your orbitoclast prior to application. Thank you. 

Music in an acquired taste, not a required belief.

They are both acquired. Orbitoclast sharpened.

[brewer]

Oh, I can leave it. Please sharpen your orbitoclast prior to application. Thank you. 

Music in an acquired taste, not a required belief.

They are both acquired. Orbitoclast sharpened.

Music is voluntary (at least for me), I got to choose with little retribution. The other, not so much. Talk to those here that struggled to get out.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Why do the 'oldies' always think the old stuff was the best and that newer music is rubbish. It got me thinking.... it reminds me of religious belief. When these musical preferences are formed in the brain, they become fixed neurological pathways that are difficult (if not impossible) to break from and new musical forms probably just sound like beating white noise. The brain just doesn't have the ground work done to make any sense of, or to appreciate. The brain just resorts to what it knows and what it likes, what it understands and it assumes its just better music.

People tend to prefer the music that was prevalent when they came of age and first started enjoying music as such.

No doubt we cling to other views we also developed in our formative years.

---

I'm kind of a music fanatic in my own way. The soundtrack of my teens was shitty 90s dancefloor music. I reacted by becoming a death metal and classical music enthusiast. But I kind of make a point now of being a music enthusiast and think about each piece I hear individually in terms of whether I can find something interesting in it. That doesn't change the fact that the music I will actively seek out is almost always from my favorite genres.
In ninth grade my music teacher asked us to put on music we liked in class, and the first guy put on some punk rock thing, after which our teacher went off on a rant about how this was inferior music. I wasn't a fan of that type of music at all back then but I remember that the teacher's reaction annoyed me a lot. Thinking back, today I believe that if you sit in your ivory tower where only certain sophiaticated classics even count for anything and everything else is not worthy of consideration, you don't really get music and what it's all about, the different roles it plays and purposes it serves in people's lives. So the ideal I aspire to is being not like that music teacher of mine, may she rest in peace. A GOOD musician will listen to a Beyoncé song and tell you what musical tricks and harmonies they employed to create the effect that they got, and understand why that makes it a successful pop song. Raising an eyebrow because it's not Mozart doesn't require any effort, it's faux sophistication in my eyes.

I was having this discussion last night with a dear friend after I came offstage from a 7-song, 30-minute set on solo acoustic. He was arguing that there is music that is objectively better, and I was arguing that it depends on what you want from it.

I get that some musics are technically more accomplished and in that sense I can say that jazz is better than punk -- it requires more technique and musical understanding to both play it and enjoy it. But the real point of music is to add enjoyment to our lives, so if it's three-chord punk that gets your motor revving, that's the best music for you at that particular moment.

It took me a while to get where you're talking about, where I listen to each song as it is without imposing my own tastes on it. I can find something interesting about any song I hear, although that might sometimes take some real searching. But it's a good place to be, as a musician, because through that active listening, I open up my musical world to a wider variety of influences that help me grow artistically ... even if it's "only" three-chord pop.

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There are a few more recent bands I do like, though:  Blind Guardian, Foo Fighters, Green Day, and AFI are some that spring to mind.

Dave Grohl writes great songs. Very little of his stuff that I don't care for.