As a teenager I was obsessed with music – I mean completely obsessed. I devoured singles, albums in painstaking detail. Everything, the lyrics, the music, the production, the sleeve, the promo video.
Since last week I have been listening to The National’s new album – at home whilst cooking, housework etc. I’ve had it playing on my commute work or in the background whilst working at home. And it’s pleasant enough, I like some of the songs, really like a few, but nothing really, really grabs me. And I’ve realised that nothing has really grabbed me for years, possibly decades.
It’s easy and obvious to blame digital music, and I partly do – too much choice, losing the art of listening to albums and not having a physical copy in my hand. But, I also blame myself – music just doesn’t give me the rush it once did – and it’s all rather worrying!
Does anybody else feel the same? Is anybody actually more in to music than they were when they were younger?
Does your enjoyment of music diminish as you get older?
Interesting one. From my point of view I think that the music I migrate to is the music from that period between about 14 and mid 20’s when (with the benefit of hindsight) I was relatively carefree and could invest time and energy in new music as well as being tribal about likes and dislikes. It was also a time in my life where most of my friends were the same age and so doing the same thing
Now i am older and my circle of friends has a wider age range so even without the “real life/getting through the day issues” music is more personal to me and less shared with others (aside from a couple of mates who have always been music based mates and so we have retained that element of “unhealthy”competition./oneupmanship – something which IMHO this site is designed to indulge… and one of the reasons why i stay here) all this may diminish the impact or the enthusiasm, it certanly reduces the immediacy of that song that comes along and you tell your mates that their life will be incomplete without hearing it immediately.
Latterly (and for absolute clarity I’m 56) I have found that my tastes are much broader and I still get obsessed with a song (more so than an album which I think is digital’s fault to an extent). I have also found that having teenage kids means I am aware of what they are listening to and pick up on their likes in ways which are both good and bad. One of the real joys now is finding somethng I missed and exploring it in a similarly completist way to what I would have done in my teens (as an example, I was aware of A Tribe Called Quest but early to mid 90’s hip hop pretty much passed me by completely, watched one of those BBC4 docs and went on a really enjoyable “quest” of my own.
Having said all that you mentioned The National and the last album i got completely smitten with was Sleep Well Beast. The new one is not a radical departure but I am really enjoying the addition of female voices and it is, as they say, a grower
Finally, as someone once said “one good thing about music, when it hits you feel no pain” great music can still stop you in your tracks and make you think, dance, cry, reflect, melancholy, uplifted, angry and all points in between.
In several of these categories i would – over the past few years recommend any or all of the following for very different reasons and purposes.
Bury a Friend – Billie Eilish
Ottolenghi – Loyle Carner ( i know he is Galliano in sheeps clothing but he’s very good at it)
Danny Nedelko – Idles
Smoke – Tracey Thorn
Django Jane – Janelle Monae
Raise Hell – Sir the Baptist (my most played song over the last few years)
Dust – Craig Armstrong
Rennen – Sohn
I am easy to find – The National -already a serious song of the year contender for me along with…
Not in Kansas – The National
My list of music would be different, but otherwise that’s me, that is
Yes.
I agree
I empathise completely.
Music, in many genres, still provides a lot of pleasure but I don’t feel about it as I did. There have been days when I have been getting ready to retire to bed when I have realised I haven’t played a disc (or listened to a stream) for the whole day.
There was a time when that was unthinkable. The only reason I would not have played a disc or tape was because the technology was not available.
Part of it must relate to there being nothing new, in the sense that you can’t be surprised anymore. People still produce excellent music but I don’t think it’s possible to feel that same sense of elation and awe combined that happened the first time I heard A Day In The Life or Voodoo Child (Slight Return) or Good Vibrations or …. (make your own selection).
The age of exploration has gone and the excitement it engendered with it.
It probably takes more of a back seat in most peoples’ lives, simply because more things demand your time as you get older and you don’t have the energy. Also, not many people would start varying their taste to incorporate more modern sounds as they get older, so the passion isn’t really going to be there if you’re only buying a handful of CDs each year and they’re by the same artists you were buying 30-40 years ago, particularly if you’re having to convince yourself that the new albums are as good as their classics from back in the day! I’d certainly have been one of those bemoaning ‘modern’ music a few years ago, and looking at the dwindling amount of new music that was added to my iTunes library up until around 2015 it backs that up.
However, I stopped working for medical reasons a few years ago and, along with a couple of other reasons (namely hearing To Pimp A Butterfly by Kendrick Lamar and moving the settee, giving me full view of my CD shelves!) it set me off exploring musical genres I’d previously not given much attention to, so over the last few years I don’t think I’ve ever listened to as much new music. I’m certainly more passionate about music now than I have been since I was discovering all the greats (Beatles, Dylan, Floyd, etc) for the first time as a young teenager. I’m doing this project where I’m ranking all the albums I have on CD or MP3 for each year and last year I got as far as a top 184!
My musical tastes have widened considerably and I thought I already had a pretty wide appreciation of music. Most of the music I am listening to these days is nothing like the stuff I’d spent the past 30 years listening to. Not that the stuff I was listening to previously was bad or anything. I’d just got a little bored of it. So whenever I hear anybody saying that there’s very little decent new music about these days I just think they sound like our dads/grandads who raised eyebrows at Elvis/The Beatles/Bowie/the Pistols/Boy George/Beastie Boys/etc when we were younger. There’s just as much good music around as there’s ever been, but people need to expand their horizons a little bit.
And I’m sure, Paul, I’m not the only Afterworder who is very pleased you can put the hours in researching the latest in “calculator music” on our behalf.
Gigs are another good source of tipping up the middle-age bucket of stagnant music taste. I’m well enough now to regularly go to gigs, after a decade or so of missing out, and I’ve lost count of the number of local or support bands I’ve randomly discovered, and now follow.
Getting back to the OP, quite the reverse; I have pressures on my time and I now opt for quality over quantity. 3 or 4 albums on a Sunday afternoon, properly, with tea and biscuits on the big stereo in the living room. The rest of the week I’d rather have silence than background music.
Not sure whether you’re being cheeky there or not!
Gig going, or the lack of, is the downside of being poorly. I have to really want to see somebody to be prepared to stand for an hour and a half, as it completely floors me for days. So I tend to skip the support bands, unless it’s somebody I’ve heard of and like. Got tickets to see Lucinda Williams in Holmfirth and that’s it. We’re going to be in Chicago when Queen are playing and my 9 year old is obsessed with them (he gets this from watching the Freddie biopic, not from me), so I had a look to see if I could get a couple of tickets. We think the secondary ticket market is bad in the UK, but I’m not spending $2k to see a band with a cabaret performer on vocals!
As you get older, if you are a relatively normal music consumer, you realise that music, wonderful stuff that it is, cannot remain your primary focus. Although still of importance as a source of pleasure, it is not as important as it seemed in your youth when the really important stuff like food, shelter, physical and mental well-being etc. were taken for granted and not bothered much about.
Out of necessity, these things now take preference over music, but music is still there for me. A comfort when things are not so good and a means of celebration when life is treating me well.
As a teenager, I used to spend my evenings with headphones clamped to my ears, poring over album sleeves. I could tell you not only who played on those records but who wrote each track and who produced and engineered them. (Yes, I lived a fairly closeted existence.)
Now, even for the albums I love, I couldn’t tell you what the tracks are called or how they go, even if they’re my favourite ones (I just know them when I hear them). That’s partly because I listen to music as a background activity now, to a commute or a chore, streamed through crappy earphones or bluetooth. Also because I’ve lost that obsessive urge – the one that meant buying all the b-sides and EPs and middling solo releases too, thankfully. Sometimes I can’t even decide what I want to hear, and then I read a book instead.
Still enjoy the music though, even if seldom so intensely. There’s nothing new under the sun, and what I like now tends to be a really well done, updated facsimile of some classic sound, but I can admire the craft that goes into it. And there’s plenty of it out there, if you spend some time looking – the great thing about young musicians is that they can be influenced by anything and everything from the past half century. What I miss more is the ability to completely forget my surroundings (and my sore legs) in the midst of a live gig.
You’ve just reminded me to go look up that Jonas Brothers track I heard in the pound store the other day too. 🙂
(Relax, this is not it.)
I’m glad it’s not just me that can’t remember track names. I tend to use 1996 as a cut off point. I blame a mixture of old age and my medication, as my short term memory is shocking. Nasty habit of forgetting I’ve put my dinner on, forgetting why I’ve gone upstairs, that kind of thing. It gets worse if I don’t get my afternoon nap, seriously. It’s why I like lists. Although the font size needs to be big if my glasses are out of reach…
No, but then I don’t have many of the distractions mentioned, such as a family or – as some would measure it – a life..
Music is still very important to me. I’ve met lots of people through music, some of them have become close friends. It’s not what gives me the strength to carry on on a daily basis anymore, but it makes the average day better. The right song at the right time can save a bad day.
The amount of new music that really gives me a thrill seems to decrease. That’s probably an age thing. “Sounds like nothing else”, you say? Well, I’d say it probably sounds like something else.
Also just can’t find the time to keep up, so it’s easier to hear an old favourite again. All those “but you’ve GOT to listen to… best thing ever….”. Really?
When I got into kraut a couple of years ago, the what the hell-factor was important. Lots of it really (still) sounds like nothing else I’ve heard.
I was the perfect age for Oasis and Blur and that bunch (I refuse to use the b*****p word), which I liked, but I couldn’t help but notice they sounded very much like The Beatles and The Kinks, which I already knew and loved. When the COOL KIDS (both of them, small city) listened to Dinosaur JR and Sonic Youth, I was a grumpy old teenager telling them it sounded just like Neil Young & Crazy Horse. Social status defeats facts at that age, so I was obviously wrong.
A Swedish music writer once pointed out something like: if you hate the people you go to school with, you don’t want to listen to the music they listen to.
Very true. Good thing their taste was crap. I still think The Beatles are better than Aqua…
I didn’t answer the question, did I?
I’m guessing the answer is “No, enjoyment doesn’t diminish.”
But available time and increased choice probably reduces long term investment in single items.
Teenage age years governed by limited funds and narrow choices meant albums were listened to and re-listened to.
More money equals more purchases (or it did for me) and wider choices – and this place hasn’t helped.
Right now, I’m stuck in a “lack of inspiration” space where I can spend ages staring at the Vinyl and CDs with no real interest in listening to anything.
I’ve only got 4 albums with a 2019 date stamp on, but Wreckless Eric – Transience may be the one that pulls me out of this pit.
Enjoyment doesn’t diminish, it just gets more selective
My enjoyment grows year on year. There is always something new or new old. I am lucky enough to be able listen all day so I’m always after something to grab me. And there’s plenty around that does.
Here’s my purchases from 2019, all have some merit, some will be in my albums of the year. (Excuse the formatting, it’s straight from a spreadsheet)
Tutti Cosey Fanny Tutti
The Delta Sweete Revisited Mercury Rev
Life & Death On The New York Dance Floor Various
Manchester: A City United In Music Various
International Teachers of Pop International Teachers of Pop
Bellissima! (More 1960s She-Bop from Italy) Various
I Trawl The Megahertz Prefab Sprout
Unusual Sound Various
Eskimo The Residents
Commercial Album The Residents
Third Noise Principle (Formative North American Electronica 1975-1984) Various
All The Young Droogs (Rock ‘n’ Glam (And A Flavour Of Bubblegum) From the 70s) Various
I’m A Freak Baby (The British Heavy Psych and Hard Rock Underground Scene 1968-1973) Various
Hollow Earth Pye Corner Audio
Revolution (Underground Sounds of 1968) Various
Gary Crowley’s Lost 80s Various
And This Is Me Various
The Campfire Headphase Boards of Canada
The Best of Fad Gadget
The Other Sides Kate Bush
Eton Alive Sleaford Mods
The Crucible Motorpsycho
The Real…. Harry Nilsson
Bend Sinister The Fall
Plastic Anniversary Matmos
Chalk Hill Blue Will Burns & Hannah Peel
Three Day Week (When the lights went out 1972-1975) Various
Strangers In The Room: A Journey Through British Folk-Rock (1967-1973) Various
Losing Touch With My Mind – Psychedelia In Britain 1986-1990 Various
Torrid Zone Nucleus & Ian Carr
Serfs Up! Fat White Family
Girl In A Million Twinkle
Poppies: Assorted Finery From The Psychedelic Age Various
The Real… Miles Davis
New Routes Out of Innerland Mark Peters
The Stockholm 1981 Recordings Moondog
Late Night Tales : Floating Points Various
Sacred Dreams Josefin Örhn + The Libration
Late Night Tales : Snow Patrol Various
Birth Of A Nation: Inevitable Records – An Independent Liverpool 1979-1986 Various
Life Metal Sunn O)))
Henryk Górecki: Symphony No 3 (Symphony of Sorrow) Beth Gibbons & The Polish National Symphony Orchestra
Mars Audiac Quintet (Expanded Edition) Stereolab
Transient Random-Noise With Announcements (Expanded Edition) Stereolab
Father Of The Bride Vampire Weekend
Too Slow To Disco (Neo En France) Various
ACR:Box A Certain Ratio
Pacific Breeze Various
Sad About the Times Various
Sule Skerry Erland Cooper
Soul Of A Nation Various
Sunburst Finish Be Bop Deluxe
Fire In The Hole Black Peaches
You keep a spreadsheet – my hero
I have many spreadsheets, but then I am an accountant.
No, please, come back….
I have less interest in the details and the minutiae, but more, if possible, in the pleasure of the sound. (Listening to) Music is still my main hobby and main interest. Nowadays, rather than collecting and collating anything and everything by any favourite, I am on a constant prowl for some new and unexpected. And, while it seems harder to find, or harder to find what I will enjoy, when I do, it is transcendent. Last night was an example, going to see a Peter Case live show. He I knew of, from the Nerves/Plimsouls: “Hangin’ On The Telephone” and his later more Dylanesque solo troubadour stuff. I have at least one of his albums, but unlistened to for ages. Forgotten, even. Anyhow, hauled out of midweek torpor by @steveT , along we went and he was also-bloody-lutely fabulous, reminding me in a moment quite why I am still obsessed by “pop music” in my 60s. Moments like this are golden.
Two years ago I did one of my year-long projects. Every evening I listened to one song over and over again and then blogged about it. It was really good to focus in on music, to hear new things in songs I thought I knew and loved, to force myself to pay attention to music that didn’t immediately appeal, to work out how long it took for new music to make its mark, to assess how long unlistened-to songs from my younger years still released a captive power and send me back to a time, a place, a smell, a different form of being.
Music has always been part of my life, and I love it when it forces me to dance, or stops me in wonder, or wraps me in comfort, or makes me make connections, or dazzles me with its intertwining melodies, or gorms me with its life-affirming stupidity, or resonates with its magpie collections of samples from other sources. It is the human spirit undefined by mere language and it can never die while we are impelled to make it and bathe in it.
It’s a fascinating question. But for me the answer to the question is an emphatic ‘no’. If anything music means even more to me than ever. But I listen differently. In my late teens or early twenties I listened to a really small amount of records very deeply, because that was all that was readily available. I knew many of them inside out and they mean a lot to me decades later. Now I listen to a huge range and volume of music but much of it only a handful of times. I used to worry that this meant I just wasn’t getting the same out of it but I now think it’s all about the moment of listening. If. A piece of music can still bowl me over and give me huge pleasure in that moment. The fact that I may never hear it again, and won’t remember it the way I remember, say, Blood on the Tracks, really doesn’t matter. And I think it’s helped by the fact that I just hear better now – half a century of listening, and a growing diet of classical, jazz, and ‘world’ music means that I think I hear much more and instinctively appreciate what’s going on in the music more than I did when I was twenty.
I still love it, I still love discovering stuff I haven’t heard before, whether it’s old or new. And this site is a great help in that process….
I have constant disagreements with my brother in law about this. He is still very much of the opinion that you need to listen to an album umpteen times, whereas I no longer listen that way. I like everything to sound fresh. I’m pretty good now at instantly knowing whether I’m going to really like something, quite like something or whether it’s safe to dismiss it. Only occasionally do I now have to file something away to try again in a couple of weeks cos I can’t make my mind up. I will, however, over the course of the year give plenty of listens to the albums I find to be the better ones from this year, but I’m generally happy putting a bit of time between repeated listens so that I get that ‘new’ feeling again each time I hear it, like I did when I played Triangulation by Scuba earlier today.
Whereas stuff by the Beatles, Dylan, Stephen Duffy, etc is seemingly hard wired into my head. I don’t need to listen to it again. But I do. Just not as often.
I understand your behaviour, Paul, but I’m slightly different. I often skim as you do but still find there is joy in repetition. I’ve been listening to Mavis Staples’s latest and have done so dozens of times. There is subtlety in there that means you hear more the more you listen. It is really something.
I don’t feel I can fairly judge an album without listening at least six times. I won’t express an opinion on it until I do. I feel bad about it but I do dismiss some music quicker than that, but, at least, I won’t then declare it to be shite. For example, I’ve never listened to Guns N Roses or The Wall. The little I’ve heard doesn’t appeal or hurts my ears. That doesn’t mean they are shite.
In answer to the OP, my pleasure seems to be increasing. There is all the old stuff that I still enjoy and there is lots and lots of new. My tastes have changed over time but there are loads of youngsters (and some oldsters) making wonderful music. My teenage self in my mind is amazed.
For everything we agree on, and everything you’ve pointed me in the direction of, we’ll have to disagree on The Wall. It’s one of my favourite albums! Never get tired of listening to it, although recently I’ve been more likely to play the longer bootleg version, The Final Cut In The Wall, which incorporates music from The Final Cut, as well as music from the film, plus alternative, live and longer versions of the tracks.
I have to put Comfortably Numb in the same bracket as Chas & Dave’s Ain’t No Pleasing You, however, as songs that I’ve loved for donkeys years but get a touch annoyed now that everybody else, including people who know nothing about music, like the songs. All part of being an, albeit mild, rock snob I guess. I’ll feel the same way about The Beatles when everybody else cottons on that Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey is the most exciting track they ever did…
Go Pauly! I think the problem with The Wall (or one of them, at any rate) is that a lot of the songs don’t really bear listening to out of the context of the album. Who’d want to listen to The Trial on it’s own? Ugh. And even songs as good as Hey You and Comfortably Numb depend lyrically on their place within the album whole. But Nobody Home is a great song in its own right. One of my favourite Floyd songs (and Noel Gallagher’s) and sounds brilliant even when played on an a cheapo guitar by a crap guitarist like me.
Funnily enough, The Trial is one of my shower songs! Except the first verse of my version sounds even more like Tommy Steele than Waters’ version, which strayed pretty close.
Joy in repetition. As Moose would say, hur.
I’m retired and my music listening has gone back up. I listen to more jazz by myself, in a comfortable chair,Reggae on African on sunny says and Americana when Mrs Wells is around. In the past it was rock n roll which was typically listened to around a kitchen table with mates a beer and a bong.My enjoyment is still high but, as with others, less obsessed by minutiae.
Agree with @retropath2. Peter Case was phenomenal last night. Today on a drive to Manchester I have greatly enjoyed the new Lambchop album that I dismissed on first listen.. On the way back I listened to a 2cd Marianne Faithfull anthology that I was largely unfamiliar with.
I have bought shitloads this year and not much I haven’t enjoyed.
At 62 I am enjoying music as much as I ever have and don’t expect that to change any time soon.
There’s a new new Lambchop album ………damn I am so late to the scene
I listen to music all the time, although to be honest much of it goes in one ear and out the other. Very little that I’m hearing for the first time continues to grab me after the first two or three tracks, then I get restless and want to listen to something else. So from that point of view I’m with the OP. If I really want a buzz I’ll go back to the Beatles, tragic though that might sound.
On the other hand, I’ve been totally grabbed by Rustin Man, so there’s hope yet. Hints of Robert Wyatt and Bowie, but with gorgeous harmonies. Anybody else?
That’s a good example, @mikethep . It explains the difference between then and now. Tho’ not all that long ago, when I bought his collaboration with Beth Gibbons, I was between houses and marriages, my possessions largely in storage as I “housesat” for a month in a chums city centre flat. I had that CD and perhaps a dozen more, and knew all of its fabulousness backwards. So I knew I wanted this, despite the reviews talking of a thin voice. Wyatt is the obvious reference, but, rather than Bowie, it is perhaps the early golden time of Bowie I am hearing, as in a very early 70s feel, yet with a modern production. It is a good record, bar a couple of later tracks which are overly defiantly whimsical. Anyway, back it went on the shelf.
Now I am going to listen to it again.
Same. I really struggle to get to the end of a new album these days. And albums are so bloody long now. The National new album has 16 tracks! That’s one of the other problems with digital music; the quality benchmark is lowered. No cost in uploading tracks to platforms, so everything gets released!!
You’re not wrong there. We’re just coming out of a 20 year period whereby rappers felt they had to fill all 78 minutes of a CD. So not only are they padded out with inferior tracks, thanks to De La Soul the discs get filled with ‘skits’. Apart from the De La Soul album that started the trend, 99.9% of skits are rubbish. Big Pun, for example, in his otherwise excellent album Capital Punishment, treats us to 81 seconds of him having sex. There are so many rap albums that would be so much better with a bit of editing.
But now we’ve gone to the other extreme, with rappers releasing albums less than 30 minutes long. Hopefully they’ll eventually realise that 46 minutes is the optimum length for an album, although that does take me back to the time of making decisions as to which track to leave off when you were putting two albums on to a 90 minute cassette!
81 seconds? Blimey!
I would say 35-38 minutes is optimum for an album. That was pretty much the standard when the 12″ album replaced the old 10″ albums. Six to eight songs per side, each one 2-3 minutes long, is about right
Into the lower 50s is OK on a CD. On vinyl. the sound can suffer if you try and squeeze more than about 23 minutes onto a side.
With a vinyl album you get a pause as you turn the record over. With CDs the whole thing is continuous. More than 50 minutes of continuous music by a single artist is just too much, most of the time.
Even if I passed the half-century, I still enjoy listening to new things (new to me).
I spent too many years ignoring the most important musical movements, so I still discover The Rolling stones.
But I have some methode in my discoveries, like this english bloke who wrote about blues without even travelling to the US…
I was beginning to think so over the last decade or so, and it was largely down to the fact that I was mostly listening to podcasts and managed to go cold turkey from Mojo around the time of the demise of Word Magazine so my awareness cratered. That said, I started listening to old Mojo and Word cover CDs that had never been played, and more recently The Underwater Sunshine podcast (Adam Duritz has very broad and good taste IMHO), and I’ve been hearing loads of stuff that I adore so the engagement and excitement is still there, albeit competing for attention. Subsequent purchases have been limited but the shopping list on my phone grows daily. Whether there is any broadening of my tastes or not is debatable… still don’t like most country or Belle and Sebastian and their ilk, still like AC-DC via 70s-90s rock through to Miles Davis. I don’t think that has changed particularly.
No. But I am selective on what new music I listen to based on my taste.
Just listening to the new Waterboys album as I write this. Mike Scott has delivered another great album but he could have recorded this 20 years ago!
My enjoyment isn’t, but I’m getting pickier, and more likely to fall back on tried and tested favorites.
I’m also much more likely to go backwards through a catalog than try some new. And I’m likelier to only try some new if it comes via a trusted source.
But I love music, and this isn’t a silent house.