Middle Aged Man Doesn't Listen to New Music Anymore (AKA midlife non-crisis)

[Opoponax]

I'm listening to the same shit I did X years ago. Nothing new for me. I used to think that old timers who only listened to old shit were lost and that I'd never become one of them. But I have. And it's fine.

And I think I've figured it out:

1. I've heard it all before in one form or another. I hear some band play something and I think, "You can tell these guys are Bowie fans." Or Sabbath, or whatever their influences are. But who does it better than the bands that invented it in the first place?

2. Catalogue: that is, I've got some 4.5 decades of music in my background... well, about 3.5 if you don't count the fact I've gotten into about one or two new bands in the last decade. The point is that I can go back to the 1960s and all the way up until a good decade ago to find bands and songs I like.

I've tried, and have run across some decent stuff, but it doesn't grab me anymore, and importantly, I don't care. Maybe I have low T. But even if I do, I sure as hell don't want to run around a horny as I was when I was young.

So yeah, I'll be in the old folks home listening to Iron Maiden. But somehow I don't think that creates the same image as old folks shambling around to Glenn Miller and Duke Ellington. At least I hope not.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

I'm the same. There's not much in the way of music which interests me these days. There are some good new songs coming out and I have no real problem with the quality of musicians which are around today, but there's really nobody whom I'd say I'm into. The majority of stuff I listen to is from the 60s to the 80s and I don't see that changing any time soon.

 

[TSwizzle]

I'm listening to the same shit I did X years ago. Nothing new for me. I used to think that old timers who only listened to old shit were lost and that I'd never become one of them. But I have. And it's fine.

And I think I've figured it out:

1. I've heard it all before in one form or another. I hear some band play something and I think, "You can tell these guys are Bowie fans." Or Sabbath, or whatever their influences are. But who does it better than the bands that invented it in the first place?

I'm the same and yes, you have heard it all before. There hasn't been anything innovative in music since the 80s. Well, popular music that is. I have not had much interest in music since Oasis came snarling to the fore. I listen to the alternate rock radio stations in the car and there's nothing new that grabs my attention. Some of it is ok and some of it is shit. But it goes down well with the youngsters because it's new to them. But I'm quite happy to listen to my original stuff. I think the same applies to movies. There's nothing original, we've seen it all before. It's the same plot lines really.

 

[rousseau]

Given I'm only 30, but I'm the opposite. All of the music I was listening to in my teens, and my early twenties? I've listened to it enough that I'm bored of it and crave novelty. Occasionally I'll go back to it after many years, but the revisit is usually short winded, and I'll soon be seeking out new sounds.

The problem I have is that after devouring all of the great stuff from the 60's through 10's in both the rock and soul streams, including a century's worth of jazz, and many centuries of classical.. is that there's just not a lot of novel music to listen to anymore, regardless of era.

So I can't imagine listening to the same 90's and 00's records for the rest of my life, but there's also not a lot of new stuff being put out that genuinely excites me anymore.

Big first world problem. Hundreds of years ago you were lucky if you had someone to play piano for you, now there's Spotify where you can listen to pretty much all music that has ever existed.

 

[J842P]

I'm listening to the same shit I did X years ago. Nothing new for me. I used to think that old timers who only listened to old shit were lost and that I'd never become one of them. But I have. And it's fine.

And I think I've figured it out:

1. I've heard it all before in one form or another. I hear some band play something and I think, "You can tell these guys are Bowie fans." Or Sabbath, or whatever their influences are. But who does it better than the bands that invented it in the first place?

2. Catalogue: that is, I've got some 4.5 decades of music in my background... well, about 3.5 if you don't count the fact I've gotten into about one or two new bands in the last decade. The point is that I can go back to the 1960s and all the way up until a good decade ago to find bands and songs I like.

I've tried, and have run across some decent stuff, but it doesn't grab me anymore, and importantly, I don't care. Maybe I have low T. But even if I do, I sure as hell don't want to run around a horny as I was when I was young.

So yeah, I'll be in the old folks home listening to Iron Maiden. But somehow I don't think that creates the same image as old folks shambling around to Glenn Miller and Duke Ellington. At least I hope not.

With regards to 1):

Rock is pretty much dead, and most contemporary music, while it can certainly draw from rock influences, have a lot of non-rock genres influencing it. So, if you are listening to contemporary music that draws from bands like Sabbath you are probably listening to a very small sliver of contemporary music.

Anyway, the older I get the more and more I find myself listening to classical music. I was into "classic rock" in my teenage years (you probably just call it "music"), and actually I am pretty out of the loop when it comes to contemporary shit. Distribution has changed a lot, and unless you knows where contemporary music is being generated and released, you really aren't listening to it at all. The radio has been replaced by SoundCloud. What you hear on the radio or TV isn't really being listened to by young people.

 

[J842P]

I'm listening to the same shit I did X years ago. Nothing new for me. I used to think that old timers who only listened to old shit were lost and that I'd never become one of them. But I have. And it's fine.

And I think I've figured it out:

1. I've heard it all before in one form or another. I hear some band play something and I think, "You can tell these guys are Bowie fans." Or Sabbath, or whatever their influences are. But who does it better than the bands that invented it in the first place?

I'm the same and yes, you have heard it all before. There hasn't been anything innovative in music since the 80s. Well, popular music that is. I have not had much interest in music since Oasis came snarling to the fore. I listen to the alternate rock radio stations in the car and there's nothing new that grabs my attention. Some of it is ok and some of it is shit. But it goes down well with the youngsters because it's new to them. But I'm quite happy to listen to my original stuff. I think the same applies to movies. There's nothing original, we've seen it all before. It's the same plot lines really.

Yeah, "alternative rock" stations might as well be called Oldies. If you want to hear the new shit, you've got to listen to SoundCloud and read Pitchfork. Not that I would recommend that, but if you really want to judge contemporary music, you've actually got to listen to it.

 

[rousseau]

I'm the same and yes, you have heard it all before. There hasn't been anything innovative in music since the 80s. Well, popular music that is. I have not had much interest in music since Oasis came snarling to the fore. I listen to the alternate rock radio stations in the car and there's nothing new that grabs my attention. Some of it is ok and some of it is shit. But it goes down well with the youngsters because it's new to them. But I'm quite happy to listen to my original stuff. I think the same applies to movies. There's nothing original, we've seen it all before. It's the same plot lines really.

Yeah, "alternative rock" stations might as well be called Oldies. If you want to hear the new shit, you've got to listen to SoundCloud and read Pitchfork. Not that I would recommend that, but if you really want to judge contemporary music, you've actually got to listen to it.

Yea, there seems to be a fundamental chasm between the music listening habits of young versus old people.

Back in the day you heard the good stuff on the radio, nowadays the best stuff is usually pretty obscure, sometimes even impossible to find. One of my favourite song-writers of all time (Jens Lekman) only has 7000 followers on Twitter.

 

[TSwizzle]

Yeah, "alternative rock" stations might as well be called Oldies. If you want to hear the new shit, you've got to listen to SoundCloud and read Pitchfork. Not that I would recommend that, but if you really want to judge contemporary music, you've actually got to listen to it.

No kidding, KROQ just play The Red Hot Chili Peppers it seems. But to be fair, they so play some newer stuff which is OK, Imagine Dragons, 21 Pilots etc.

I have teenage daughters so I sometimes get to hear what they are listening too. And watching the Grammys tells me there's not much happening. Ed Sheeran ? Shoot me now. But I don't have time to listen to music unless it's in the car.

 

[J842P]

Yeah, "alternative rock" stations might as well be called Oldies. If you want to hear the new shit, you've got to listen to SoundCloud and read Pitchfork. Not that I would recommend that, but if you really want to judge contemporary music, you've actually got to listen to it.

No kidding, KROQ just play The Red Hot Chili Peppers it seems. But to be fair, they so play some newer stuff which is OK, Imagine Dragons, 21 Pilots etc.

I have teenage daughters so I sometimes get to hear what they are listening too. And watching the Grammys tells me there's not much happening. Ed Sheeran ? Shoot me now. But I don't have time to listen to music unless it's in the car.

Yeah, I wouldn't go to the Grammys to see what contemporary music is either. The Grammys are awards given by the recording industry, a slowly dying dinosaur. It's no wonder you'd think there isn't much going on. Again, you'd have to actually dig into the whole community of people on platforms like SoundCloud and to really get it. I'm not even 30, only 28, and I have no idea. But definitely not the Grammys.

Certainly, a lot of contemporary music is heavily geared towards "EDM," or "electronic." Not really "bands" anymore. Of course, there has also been a revival of various "Americana" styles, e.g. folk, bluegrass, Old Time. That's another thing, there has been an exponential explosion in genres.

 

[rousseau]

Well now seems like another good time to break out Ted Gioia's best 100 records of the year, spanning from 2011 to 2016 (links a little down the page).

I'm reasonably sure that most people in this thread won't have heard of about 95% of the artists on these lists, and yet there's a huge number of stunning records among them.

 

[blastula]

After compiling a large enough music collection, it's just more efficient for your music listening enjoyment ratio to pick something from your own collection than to look for something new.

 

[J842P]

After compiling a large enough music collection, it's just more efficient for your music listening enjoyment ratio to pick something from your own collection than to look for something new.

You are dating yourself by the mere fact that you "own" a "collection!"

 

[Ford]

I'm listening to the same shit I did X years ago. Nothing new for me. I used to think that old timers who only listened to old shit were lost and that I'd never become one of them. But I have. And it's fine.

This is something I make an effort to fight against. I can't say I'm up on all the latest music, but I'll at least give it a listen. A couple weekends ago a link popped up on my social media for a mix show that a couple DJs I know put on, so I streamed it for awhile. Didn't recognize any of the songs (all EDM/club music) but the fact that I didn't know any of it bothered me. I used to spin records in a club (back when records were still a thing) and prided myself on knowing not just the latest stuff, but the best mixes of those songs, what song you could mix them with, and which ones worked on the dance floor.

If I ever needed to DJ anything now, I'd be lost unless it was all oldies.

I listen to the radio mostly on my way to and from work, and I'll force myself to stop on a station playing something I don't know, or when it is something I know I think "have I heard this a million times, or only half a million?" before changing the station.

If I do make it as far as the old folks home, I'll enjoy some Iron Maiden as well, but I also hope to be annoying my fellow geezers with music that my grand kids turned me onto.

 

[Angry Floof]

Do you listen to anything other than well known pop and rock? Ever try experimental, or classical, or medieval, or anything other than mainstream stuff? Sounds like stagnation, and by the way, old guys shambling around listening to Iron Maiden are not so different from the ones shambling to classical jazz. (Face it, rock n' roll has been less about defiance and more about appearances since the 60s. Rap, an important and valid art form, has claimed that one for a while now, like it or not.) Ah, and speaking of classical jazz - there's another genre that might speak to your or inspire you or just entertain you if you didn't automatically associate it with being uncool or whatever.

Nothing personal. Just sayin.

 

[J842P]

But I've been really digging the rebirth of Americana and other "folksy" genres. Art in general in the past decade has abandoned the really rather sophomoric obsession with being "original", and I feel like artists care more about making something beautiful again.

 

[Horatio Parker]

Yeah, classical has 1500 years worth of material. It would take many lifetimes to know it all.

If you don't like Beethoven, try Mahler or Copland or Vivaldi or Schoenberg...and so on into practically infinity. Same with genre, symphonies, concertos, solo instruments, choirs, chamber music, opera, there's so much, mostly free.

The wife and I saw Aida at the Met last week. I've been indifferent to the little Verde I've heard, but Aida killed. Pleasantly blown away...

 

[TV and credit cards]

I keep searching and do occasionally find something I haven't heard before that I like. The music thread here sometimes leads me down a fun path on YouTube. Occasionally I'll read about a local band I like. Hey Mavis is one I really liked and listened to for quite some time. And sometimes I'm just late to the party. I may have heard of a band but for whatever reason, never gave them a listen until much later. Amy Winehouse is a good example. I never listened to her music until about six months ago. It's still my standby when I'm suffering YouTube block.
As a teen I listened to the best radio station in the US, WMMS in the late seventies, early eighties. Radio today saddens me.

 

[funinspace]

After compiling a large enough music collection, it's just more efficient for your music listening enjoyment ratio to pick something from your own collection than to look for something new.

You are dating yourself by the mere fact that you "own" a "collection!"

Why date yourself? Wouldn't it be easier to just go straight to masturbation

Anywho, I have a collection and I'm heading towards that double nickle. But I still like to explore sometimes. One of my favored albums is now only 18 years old, NINs 'The Fragile'. I also like the music from the more recent Within Temptation and The Pretty Reckless.

 

[KeepTalking]

I'm 50, and I have no problem finding new music/bands/artists that I like. Then again, I was never into pop music except for maybe a few years in the '80s. I listened to alternative rock in the '90s, but the alternative music they play on the local alternative stations these days bears no resemblance to what I listened to back then, it has gotten way to popularized, and the rock has mostly been stripped from it. In short, it is no longer alternative, but rather mainstream. I no longer listed to terrestrial radio, with one notable exception that I will get to later.

I sometimes tune into satellite radio when I am commuting, and not listening to an audio book. At work or at home, I almost exclusively use Google Music. I often to listen the Today's Heavy Rock station there, to keep up with the new hard rock and metal that is out there. The songs I like, I add to a playlist labelled with the year I found them (not necessarily the year they came out), and by the end of they year, I usually have about 4-5 hours worth of music on the playlist that I am listening to often, and sharing with friends whenever they give me control of the audio. Songs I really like from artists and bands I have not listened to before lead me to listen to their back catalog, and with Google Music, this also leads me to listen to related artists I have not heard of before. I also go to a good number of concerts every year, a mix of old and new bands, and often find some good music to listen to from the relatively obscure warm-up bands.

I am going to see Highly Suspect this weekend, they have been nominated for best rock song at the Grammy's for the last two years, and best rock album lat year for their debut album> Not that I even watch the Grammy's, I was turned onto the band before they were nominated by listening to Today's Heavy Rock. They are a hard rock trio with a grunge/blues feel. Two days ago, I found out that their opening band will be Slothrust, which is a female fronted band labelled as grunge rock that I had not heard of, so I gave them a listen. I'm not sure if Slothrush will make it into heavy rotation, but I like what I have heard so far, they remind me a bit of The Pixies, with more of a stripped down sound.

Honestly, most of the new music I find myself gravitating towards these days is in the category of progressive metal, much of which sound neither traditionally progressive, nor traditionally metal. Some of the bands/artists I have found in the past year that I have really been enjoying are Haken, Thank You Scientist, Purson, Blues Pills, Avatar, and Sithu Aye. With the exception of Blues Pills, they all get labelled as progressive rock/metal, but there is a wide variety of sounds between them. Haken incorporates a lot of electronic elements, Thank You Scientist adds liberal amounts of jazz to their sound, Purson goes with a psychadelic/ stoner rock sound, Avatar bases their sound on power metal grooves, and Sithu Aye is all instrumental, but probably the most straightforward progressive band of the bunch. Those bands are just those that I have invested some time in listening to their back catalog over the past year, there are a good number of other newish bands that I like a song or two from, but haven't taken a deeper dive into yet.

As a teen I listened to the best radio station in the US, WMMS in the late seventies, early eighties. Radio today saddens me.

You are mistaken, KSHE is the best radio station in the US, and has been for 50 years now. They were the first radio station to broadcast rock music on FM, and they have remained an exclusively rock station over those 5 decades. They don't play as much new music as I would like, but they do play some, and they are the only terrestrial radio station that I have set to a quick tune button in my car. Even at that, I don't listen to them as much as satellite radio, because I am not a fan of commercials, but I do tune in at home every Sunday night for The 7th Day, where they play about a half dozen rock albums in their entirety, back to back.

 

[C_Mucius_Scaevola]

Another 50-year-old here.

"New music"? Not so much.

"Music that's new to my ears"? Yes, loads, but far from being new stuff, I'm listening more and more to older and older things. Jazz, swing, ragtime, ye olde blues, rockabilly ...

I blame video games, really, because it was when playing Fallout 3 I started hearing older stuff without any real distractions.

It's not that I don't like any new music, just that I don't pay much attention to it. Some of it, when I hear it, sounds good, but I suppose I'm just not prepared to put the effort into listening to it that I used to when new stuff came out.