
Psychology tells us why older people don’t enjoy new music - velmu
https://qz.com/quartzy/1717718/why-do-older-people-hate-new-music/
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awayyyythrow
I think most of the explanations fail to account for a very important point:
music doesn't exist in the abstract but comes with a setting, a context and a
community. You don't just _listen_ to music, you _experience_ it. Whether it's
an opera house or a jazz club or a rave or a rap battle or a dive bar, all
music comes with an associated experience. It can be hard to truly 'get in' a
genre and understand why people like it if you can't experience it the way
most people who listen to it do.

I think the reason many people get stuck with the music they listened to as a
teenager is because their most intense experiences involving music occured
when they were teenagers. Then they move on, and if they don't obsess about
music, they won't have stronger feelings about the new stuff.

~~~
WarOnPrivacy
I think it's unlikely for people to first hear (or first attach to) their
favorite songs in a strong environment like a club/rave/bar. We're most likely
to hear something new in a setting we control.

~~~
djaque
Sure, but at least for me, the reason they become a favourite song is that
they become associated with good memories.

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pcdoodle
It's because it really does suck (for the most part). Product placement and
lyrics about consuming culture are at an all time high. This is the radio
stuff though, there's still lots of great music coming out.

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bloak
The other day a song came on the radio that I hadn't heard since I was a
teenager. I recalled how much I hated it all those decades ago. After a few
seconds I realised that I hated it now almost as strongly as back then. But
I'm in charge of the radio now, so I turned it off, and that made me feel
quite happy.

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Crinus
> But I believe there are some simpler reasons for older people’s aversion to
> newer music. One of the most researched laws of social psychology is
> something called the “mere exposure effect.” In a nutshell, it means that
> the more we’re exposed to something, the more we tend to like it.

Yeah, the entire article wouldn't apply to me (35) if it wasn't that little
part. I didn't paid much attention to music until my late teens/early 20s,
though while i have some genres i like, i always find myself going to
different stuff over the years - but that is usually learning about new
genres.

But that part explains it really - i learn about music by listening to random
music videos made on YouTube (often by unknown artists or channels that mainly
promote unknown artists). And YouTube tends to repeat the same (or similar)
videos if you leave it by itself :-P.

Though if the topic is popular/mainstream music... i never liked that outside
when i was ~12 or something but that was mainly because nothing else was on
the TV. Once i had control over what i could listen to, i went my way :-P.

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CrackerNews
There's an element of that psychology, sure. However, for current new music, I
think the more convincing answer is that analysis done a while back where new
music started sounding the same and louder.

~~~
soylentcola
I do subscribe to the "music enjoyed during your formative/more emotionally-
intense years tends to imprint on you" theory...

...but at least for me, the combo of ubiquitous instrument/vocal quantizing
and loudness-war compression really does turn me off to much of modern pop
music.

Still, that may just be because it doesn't sound like the stuff I had already
"trained my model" of good music on. I prefer a little bit of swing in my
drums compared to playing to a grid. I like albums that sound like people
playing in a room rather than people plugged into a DAW.

But I also don't have any logical reason why one is better than the other. To
someone else, the more "perfect" alignment of quantized beats and vox may
sound better than the "sloppy" stuff I like.

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growlist
For me, less-commercial electronic music is still pushing the boundaries and
developing (in no small part down to technology), but popular music is less
catchy, less exciting, less sophisticated, less tuneful, less imaginative,
more derivative, lacks humour, is more vulgar, covers a far narrower set of
themes, and is of a far narrower range in terms of genre than in the past. I
still discover popular music from the 70s, 80s and to an extent the 90s that
is new to me and that I rate highly. Every now and then I catch TOTP2 and what
really stands out to me is the sheer diversity of what was on offer: virtually
every genre one can imagine, novelty acts, one hit wonders, cult acts having
one big hit, super-groups, the utterly commercial, all races and sexes
represented, etc. etc. Contrast that with today. Western culture has gone
backwards.

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lawlorino
There's a large survival bias at play here - only the "good" music from the
past decades is going to be relatively available for you to find in the
present day.

> Western culture has gone backwards.

Oh come on...

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WarOnPrivacy
Assuming you're not being sarcastic, this is easily disproved thru listening
to skilled, non-hit musicians.

Popularity isn't tied to "good" so much as it is "catchy". Hooks are easy to
package and sell, skill - not so much.

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gamblor956
Assuming you're not being sarcastic, there has always been a deep catalog of
unpopular musicians with catchy hooks.

The reason they never became popular is because they weren't that good
compared to their more popular compatriots.

You and the OP are conflating marketing driven Top 100 pop songs that no one
will remember next year with the good pop songs that will stay catchy for
decades.

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WarOnPrivacy
From the Article: " 'mere exposure effect' means that the more we’re exposed
to something, the more we tend to like it."

From my perspective: This is evidence something is broken with humanity.

I do understand that we need a period of familiarization to better understand
and appreciate a new piece of music. I get that we can relive that initial
appreciation - after a period of forgetfulness.

From my perspective, that period of forgetfulness should last months or years,
not hours or days.

I am strongly, sometimes physically repulsed by Clearchannel music
programming, because of repetition. Most genres seem to be equally abused but
Oldies/Classic stations are the worst.

As I am well into my 50s, I've heard most "Classic" songs thousands of times -
mostly involuntarily. They became unpleasant after a score or so. By the 100th
relisten they transition to the sort of torture that the CIA uses against
enemy combatants.

I'm in FL; Classic/Oldies playlists are pervasive here. You can't complete a
day of chores without traversing countless retail and public spaces poisoned
with it. It's like living with a family member who's abusive when they drink
and they drink every day.

I like every genre a lot short of hip-hop and opera (but I'm warming up to
them) This fall I'm working thru a list of 100 more progressive bands I
haven't heard. New favorite finds are Crust (whoo yeah), Milos Makovsky and
maybe The Steve Bonino Project which I can't figure out if I like or not. I
just listened to Gil Scott-Theron's B-Movie for the first time and it was
amazing.

So - all of this is just me making this point. I don't disagree with the
article. However, I think it points to a deep psychological malfunction in
people (or whatever is the opposite of robust mental health). I'm not even
saying that those who are content with their bad mental health, shouldn't be
or that it shouldn't ever bleed over to me. I do wish I didn't have to
experience it every day and that people I love weren't afflicted with it.

~~~
non-entity
This tends to be a very hot take, but I really hate "classic rock" stations.
The songs tend to be dull and full of boring cliches, much like how I see pop
music today. That said, I try not to discount any "genre" completely and
admittedly do enjoy at least a few songs from most.

~~~
WarOnPrivacy
I'd agree that I tend to see much more talent, skill and creativity in modern
bands.

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Fnoord
Modern bands have it easy in every way. They have more music history
available, collaboration is easier due to internet (no longer requires
physical space or snailmail), electronics made music production a lot easier
in many ways, and autotune makes it difficult to sing false.

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winternett
It's the packaging... Most new music is made by children of label execs, and
children of rich people where they use money to polish a turd... Great music
comes from people who are "hungry" and suffering, now Labels don't do A&R
(Discovery) to find that kind of tested talent... They just pick a kid off the
Disney or America's Got Talent circuit, give them a salary, and teach them how
to be musicians, and write their songs.

Social media sites push down good indie music in favor of pop machine record
label artists, and listeners are flooded with examples of how modern music
sucks, and buying music has now become a process of needing to sift through
different music sites just to hear audio clips, and then registering an
account that tracks your every move and sends you spam. Click farms boost hits
for "chosen" artists to make them look popular even before they have an album
out now.

We used to be able to just go to a record shop and listen to CDs based on
simple genres, and buy albums at unreasonable prices, but all of that is gone
now. It's an endlessly repeating cycle for people. The Recording Industry
keeps shooting itself in the foot by practicing Payola as well. We may not
have another great artist like Prince, MJ, Led Zeppelin, etc.. for a long time
until all this eats itself or gets sorted out.

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hashberry
Also, 92% of Top Ten Billboard Songs Are About Sex[0]

Younger people obsess about sex more than older people.

[0]
[https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/09/92...](https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/09/92-top-
ten-billboard-songs-are-about-sex/337242/)

~~~
Akinato
I'd agree with this perspective honestly. Older people no longer relate to
finding as many "bae" or partners as possible. They're generally not looking
for a teenage boy band to sweep them off their feet and make their dreams come
true. They no longer find ___'s bad boy attitude alluring, as it seems
childish.

Popular Music just isn't targeted towards the older age groups, which is why
we always look back on it on rose-coloured and sex-hungry glasses. That
doesn't mean it's not still relevant to some of them, but it doesn't have the
same relevance it did from when we were teenagers.

Plus, songs about how your boss messed up a paycheque calculation, how your
child cries for 6 nights straight, which foods give you heart burn, or how
hard it is to save for retirement aren't as attractive topics.

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user_rob
Not in my experience and I am in my late 60s. I think current trends are not
radical eno

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Fnoord
My take:

Basically, because older people find it harder to relate to the music.
Especially pop music, which is catered to pristine, insecure teenagers and
youth. They're well past that stage of life.

As a consequence, they already have nostalgia embedded for previous music.
Someone else already commented on the atmosphere (and whole zeitgeist) being
part of that. Based on my experience with music (been an avid listener ever
since I grew up) I believe it is also instruments (and certain patterns of
genres) which can be part of that.

Another explanation is because older people have less of a hearing range (Hz).
You can try a test to figure out where you're standing.

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Porthos9K
I'm in my forties and still looking for and discovering new metal, jazz, and
classical artists. You don't have to get stuck in the past listening to stuff
you discovered as a teenager. But you've got to make an effort.

~~~
awayyyythrow
Even music people think is new is actually quite old. I have yet to discover a
genre whose origins don't extend at least two decades back (unless you cheat
and name an extremely specific subset that sounds like 'hard dark psy tech
core' or something)

~~~
Porthos9K
I'm using "new" in the sense of "new to _me_ ". For example, there's a New
Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) act called Satan that I had never heard
of until I was browsing Bandcamp and saw they had a new album called _Cruel
Magic_. They aren't new, but they're new to me -- and they kick ass.

Likewise, there's this Japanese pianist named Hiromi Uehara. She's been
performing and recording for at least 15 years, and has worked with artists
like Chick Corea, but I hadn't heard of her until this morning. She just
dropped an album called _Spectrum_ , and it's absofuckinlutely _brilliant_. If
I didn't make a point of looking for new music, I'd still be missing out.

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zupreme
Because enjoyment of any music requires, at a minimum, subconscious
comprehension of its core pattern and timing and brainwave generation in
complement to the same.

Older people have brain patterns which are trained, by tendency, to comprehend
and and complement patterns and timing which are quite different from
currently popular ones.

The old brain, when induced to produce complimentary brainwaves to new music,
usually finds this process very uncomfortable while younger brains remain more
malleable in this regard.

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cobweb1
Partly because they are smarter. The flynn effect is actually only on the non-
g-loaded parts of tests. In reality we're getting dumber and can't sustain the
sophistication of past music.

~~~
awayyyythrow
Except:

-There's doubt that the Flynn effect was real to begin with and isn't just an artifact of a measure that never really made sense to begin with (IQ)

-Plenty of "sophisticated" music is being made right now, perhaps you are not aware of it but it doesn't mean it doesn't exist

-Old people have always hated younger people's music - see the moral panic over the second summer of love, people thinking rock n'roll/metal/techno was satanic etc.

-Most of what people think is youngsters' music (e.g. most electro genres) is actually quite old

Your response is pretty disturbing on many levels I have to say

~~~
cobweb1
If measuring something like the visual reaction time of people makes sense,
then so too does measuring IQ. Nobody is claiming that the Inuits ability to
see far away objects in intense glistening brightness of their snowy lands
doesn't constitute real intelligence just because it isn't measured on IQ
tests.

> Your response is pretty disturbing on many levels I have to say

Well then I guess I will have to worry about the very real loss of genius in
shame and silence.

~~~
awayyyythrow
I notice you have conveniently chosen to avoid answering the other talking
points and am choosing to believe out of charity that you don't have time to
write an elaborate response.

>If measuring something like the visual reaction time of people makes sense,
then so too does measuring IQ.

I don't know what you mean by "make sense". To me it doesn't make sense
insofar as it purports to put a single number on a very complex concept that
no one really knows how to define or agree on a single definition. The
traditional "predictor of life outcomes" motte-and-baley fallback isn't
satisfactory for most people as it relies on circularity (in our society much
of our life outcomes is actually determined by how well we do at tests that
are strangely similar to IQ tests) and fails to account for the many, many
socially maladapted yet gifted people out there. It's also unsatisfactory as
it pretends to capture something from the inner person but outsources its
definition to the outer world.

Also, none of that explains how one's IQ test results may predict one's
ability to appreciate 'sophisticated music', nor is it clear what is meant by
'sophisticated'.

~~~
magduf
>fails to account for the many, many socially maladapted yet gifted people out
there

When has anyone ever claimed that being socially adept correlated with IQ?
It's long been a trope that geniuses were eccentric and socially mal-adjusted.
Even Isaac Newton, centuries ago, was known to be an odd recluse.

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rsj_hn
The issue isn't that older people hate new music, but they hate _most_ new
_pop_ music. There is music, good music, that survives for many decades, or
even many hundreds of years, that people of all generations love on first
hearing. This music is the best of classical music, Jazz 'standards' \-- stuff
that passes the test of time. I do think that some rock music is looking like
it will pass the test of time. For example, songs before my time, like
"Sympathy for the Devil" or "Son of a preacher man" or "Fortunate Son" started
out as pop, but they are appreciated by every generation since they came out.
Time will tell, but we may be listening to these songs for a long time.

Here is a lovely pop song from the 1920s that appears to pass the test of
time:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iYOu8MPY6Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iYOu8MPY6Y)

Here is a pop song from the 40s that has passed the test of time so far:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBrwaCjJIFU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBrwaCjJIFU)

And there are songs like that from every decade.

OK, so if everyone loves the timeless songs, what about the other songs? Well,
most songs are formulaic, repetitive and just not very interesting from the
point of view of _time_. Old people have already heard their share of that.
They don't need to redo it. They are looking back at those songs from the
perspective of all the songs they've heard and aren't seeing anything special.
Sort of like someone who just started reading novels might get blown away by a
formulaic novel because they've never seen the formula before. But the 10th
novel that tries to repeat the formula will just not be enjoyable. You've seen
it all before. You need something really new by that point. That's one of the
things that comes with age. I was listening to Lorde's "tennis court" and
nearly threw up at the lyrics.

Adding to all this is the notion that the world isn't homogeneous. There are
'moments' that are peak moments. That period of time in the Elizabethan era
from 1590-1620 when Shakespeare, Marlow, and Ben Johnson were all writing
plays was a golden age of English drama. It's just not the case that someone
born in the later 17th or 18th Century would be able to see their
contemporaries perform just as well. There are dry spells. And there are also
dry spells for different types of music. The 70s may have been a golden age
for rock and roll. The 80s for pop. The 90s for rap. Maybe -- maybe not, but
you can't assume that there is always the same amount of timeless standards
being produced in every decade, because there isn't. Some decades are more
fecund than others. Some decades might not be surpassed for a very long time.
In that case, it's understandable that someone growing up in the 18th Century
might prefer to read plays written in the 16th Century, and if this is true
for drama, there's no reason to believe that it's not true for music. Expect
dry spells, during which heavily produced formulaic stuff will wow virgin ears
but leave older listeners non-plussed. And don't even get me started on
classical music. The stuff being written now, compared to the baroque period,
it's shameful how bad it is. There are some good pieces, but the quantity of
amazing music written between 1650-1750 so completely dominates classical
music written between 1900-2000, and I'm a fan of Ives, John Adams, Prokofiev,
Shostakovich and Satie. But it just doesn't wow me as much as Baroque music.
Listen to these _minor_ baroque pieces that wouldn't even make most "best of"
lists:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkJC8p48g6g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkJC8p48g6g)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fac_egTqLAo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fac_egTqLAo)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2SVwTjNAFg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2SVwTjNAFg)

~~~
magduf
I'd like to say that this is a brilliant and insightful post, and really
explains the "old people don't like new music" phenomenon succinctly.

The only minor things I'd add are that the music industry has changed a lot
over the decades, and Autotune did not exist before a couple decades ago, nor
was the internet a factor back then the way it is now. It just isn't fair to
say that older people "don't like new music" when the music itself has
changed, as has the industry that produces it, and the way it's usually
listened to as well.

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axilmar
It's all about emotions (as the article explains). If the music brings back
the emotions of youth, then it is more accepted than the music that creates
no/less strong emotions.

~~~
tabtab
My youth sucked. I had insufficient social skills to handle the transition
from childhood into teenhood. Maybe it's why I _like_ a lot of the new music.
A catchy tune is a catchy tune.

I wonder if dislike for new music is proportional to a fond youth.

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DannyB2
Here's another theory:

Q. What music will be popular with the NEXT generation of kids?

A. Whatever is the most shocking to the parents!

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quirkafleeg3
My issue is that many mainstream pop songs around now seems to have
meaningless, lazy or silly lyrics.

~~~
dagw
Come on. Pop songs have had meaningless silly lyrics since shortly after the
invention of singing. I doubt there has been any significant decline in lyric
quality.

