Quote:
Originally Posted by JHikka
We're all just getting old. There's more music and options now than ever before.
This entire convo can be summed up by the usual 'your favourite music is whatever you liked when you were 12'.
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To some extent, but I don't really think it's that simple. I view appreciation of music as a journey and feel my tastes have evolved somewhat over the years. i find myself dissecting it more than I ever did in the past to the point of picking out vocal tracks or instruments and trying to understand what they were doing.
My journey has taken me from what i liked when I was twelve and opened up a whole world of amazing art, each bit taking me to a different place. Whether it's chronologically forward or backward in the catalogue, each has its own bit of joy to convey. Could be rock, folk, motown, jazz, classical, funk, disco, blues, swing, '80s brand of alternative, punk, grunge (rock with grubby clothes), early rap/hip-hop... it all has something to offer and I try to appreciate its stand-alone merits without influence.
Where I find my 'oldness' is coming into play is that I am less willing to give mindless formula music a chance, whether it's a worn-out social comment being rapped over music that another band actually performed three or four decades ago, cheesy bubblegum music sung by some seventies teen idol, mindless constant-thump beat dance music of the nineties, music that seems to exist for no other reason than to excite the bank of subwoofers in the trunk of a fart-canned Honda Civic, etc etc.
The older I get, the more discerning I get - I just crave some kind of substance, something that came from the heart and mind of an artist who felt they had something to offer over and above simple revenue generation for the company that owns the publishing rights. And therein lies my struggle - am I discerning based on my personal preferences and my life experience, or am I actually discerning based on some kind of objective quality... and does it really matter?
In the end, I conclude that it doesn't really matter, as I like what I like and get joy from whatever speaks to me. It's really only in discussions like these do I really venture to dissect my musical journey and try to parse it out in something that's the equivalent of creating an Excel table to describe art...