The new Wilco album has me thinking about how much my musical tastes have expanded. If I heard this earlier in life, it would have gone back to the used cd store in a hurry.

As I grew up, I listened to a Top 40 station, then I moved to hard rock and hair metal stations in high school. In college, I listened to Alternative. After college, I started into the indie scene. Now I seem to be on a classic rock binge for Led Zeppelin and The Beatles.

Artists that I often played included Rush, Journey, The Doors, Billy Joel, Violent Femmes, Weird Al, The Cure, Nine Inch Nails, Van Halen, and Ministry. Now I might only play their discs if it was a special occasion. Maybe I burnt myself out on their albums, maybe I just found better music to listen to and the quality range of my collection increased so the shitty stuff fell by the wayside.

How much have your musical tastes changed?

(I also find myself editing my musical selections based on the kids being in the car with me. Getting old and becoming responsible is kind of a bummer.)

I like pop music a whole lot more now...

Not totally on topic, but I think the CMJ board in the early '00's was the perfect storm of musical tastes. Many came and went, some without even contributing, but the core members were always turning each other on to new things that we liked. I think that our tastes have now become so divergent that that is a rare event. It's like that wonderful marriage in which the partners eventually grow apart. I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and it's sad.

I listen to a lot of country now, and in high school I wouldn't have been caught dead listening to straight-up country, especially anything contemporary.

I also now listen to much more electronic music, especially ambient, and some jazz (I'm still a work in progress), which I haven't really enjoyed until recently.

When i was in grade school, I listened to classic rock (neil young, stones, kinks, doors, greatful dead) but my music budget was pretty limited so I was pretty limited either to a new album or a greatest hits/best of. Then the punk and new wave era hit and I got into that through some friends' older brothers). I pretty much listened exclusively to punk/new wave/alternative rock/indie into my early 30's along with some reggae. I started to feel pretty limited by the genre -- that most of what was coming out was either too derivative of other better bands from the past or was experimental in ways that I didn't find interesting. If I was going to try to continue to feed my thirst for things "new to me" at the same rate as I had in the past I was going to have to branch out. I pretty much started to dip my toes into any and every genre figuring the best of any genre was going to be worthwhile. Through repeated exposures, I started to develop a more refined taste in country, country rock, soul, jazz, etc. I still will listen to most anything but I probably listen to country, country rock and jazz as much as anything now. I think music is kind of the soundtrack to your life though so as your life changes, you start to listen to things that provide the right background to your life as much as anything. I'm not sure my taste has really changed as much as my life has. I still like in theory a lot of things that I just don't have the proper occasion to ever feel like listening to anymore.

MJ>oldies (parents' influence)>PJ>Punk/Hardcore>Jazz>Country/Folk/Bluegrass>Back to Jazz/Experimental>Back to Country/folk/Bluegrass

Pretty much describes my linear movement.

Disappointed.

I thought this thread was going to be about the McRib.

While I still love the reg rock, over the last couple of years I find myself listening to a lot more music that isn't verse-chorus-verse, like the Dead, Zappa, Beefheart and jazz overall.

My taste has gone from totally lame in a narrow way, to totally lame in a broad way.

I read this as "like Dread Zeppelin" first time through.

I've always been a sucker for a good pop &/or radio song. At nine, it was "We didn't start the fire"; fourteen, "She don't use jelly"; seventeen, "How bizarre"*; twenty-one, "One more time"; twenty-nine, "Tik-tok". The rest, your Yankee Hotel Foxtrots, your Odelays, your Vitalogies -- the stuffing of the turkey that actually fills you up, where the three minute (or eight (?), in the case of Billy Joel) ditty is the succulence that draws you.

*How come nobody started a Sister singer says DEADLY thread? We were not allowed properly to mourn Pauly Fuemana.

I've always had pretty broad tastes. When I was young I listened to rock 'n' roll and soul on my dad's side, swing and crooners on my mom's and vintage country from my grandpa. So while I have always discovered new genres, getting into reggae in high school, hip hop around the same time, jazz a couple years later, electronic music after that, etc... I never felt like I had some grand eye opening that I suddenly liked new or different stuff. Still, I think there has been an evolution and there are certainly things I never cared for that I like now. In particular I think I have a lot more patience for rock stuff that is not high energy. When I was younger I would take a listen to bands I heard raved about and some were hits and some misses, but those have changed over time. Good example for me is Television. When I was a young pissed off kid listening to hardcore stuff and someone mentioned this cool punk band Television I had to hear them and was horribly disappointed and quickly dismissed their mellow guitar jams. Finally a few years ago I returned to that album and think the title track is one of the greatest damn songs ever and I love the whole record. I think that while I liked variety even when younger I still liked to pigeonhole things into genres and was a lot quicker to dismiss what did not fit neatly into whatever category I placed it. I give things like that a lot more of a chance nowadays and pretty much ignore genre outside of as shorthand to tell others about something.


Also...I'll totally own up to a soft spot for How Bizarre...great summertime song.

i've always been open to just about everything BUT
reggae still sucks and i've come to really enjoy opera over the past 10 years.

You suck

and i'm still so good at it.

This I do not doubt.

speaking of taste...

As a creole, I grew up listening entirely to zydeco music. In fact I didn't hear any other form of music until I was 26. When I had to stray from my Louisiana homeland, in which zydeco music and only zydeco music was played, I'd block my ears up with slices of Kraft cheese and say shout "na na na na na na I can't hear you na na na na na!" really loud all the time.

Then something amazing happened. I put a cassette in my walkman that was labeled "Boozoo Chavis" but actually had Cafe Penguin Orchestra on it. Suddenly my world exploded with limitless possibilities. One minute I was listening to Cafe Penguin Orchestra, the next minute I was listening to a different Cafe Penguin Orchestra album, the minute after I was listening to the Cafe Penguin Orchestra I'd initially been listening to. My head swam with so many new sounds and the fact that, apparently, Cafe Penguin Orchestra put out two albums of only a minutes duration.

It was the beginning of an amazing journey into the world of popular sonic art. Looking back I am utterly aghast with amazement that as my adulthood expanded over several decades I actually experienced different things instead of living like a demented zoo captive polar bear, repeating the same limited set of actions over and over again. That to me is truly amazing, something I could never have envisaged. Really, really amazing. Like as amazing as the universe or something. That amazing.

Frew slowly slipping into insanity (said the guy from Louisiana who's only heard zydeco a handful of times).

Fixed.

Good thread. As a child of the 80s, my listening was pretty much limited to what was on the radio in Oklahoma City. As I got a little older, like 11 or 12, I started to explore rap and then pretty much stuck with that through high school. As high school was wrapping up, the whole grunge movement came along and that was the start of my musical awakening. Grunge led me to their classic rock influences. At the same time, the local college station was playing the indie music of the time and I soaked it in like a sponge. Since I was in college, I've constantly been seeking out new music of all kinds. I don't stop by here much but I know that I can poke around and get some pretty good recommendations when I get bored with what I'm listening to. I thank you guys for being such a good resource. Whenever I come across something good that hasn't already been mentioned here, I post it. Peace.

When I was little, my tastes were limited to what my parents played for me on the 8-track in the family station wagon: Neil Diamond, Steve Miller, Barry Manilow, Blues Brothers, Kenny Rogers, and similar pap.
When I got into 3rd or 4th grade (late 70's/early 80's), I started to discover other music through friends and the radio -- mostly rock stuff: Styx, Rush, Journey. Also, my parents bought me my first Beatles record, so I started to get into them.
In middle school, I fell in with the burnouts, and shifted over to heavy metal -- Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Quiet Riot, etc. And I also started playing the guitar. Playing the guitar led me into ANYTHING that had good guitar playing, so classic rock like Clapton, Santana, and Yes opened up for me.

Here's where it starts to really change for me:
I also got a subscription to Guitar Player Magazine where, My Junior year in high school there was an issue that featured an interview with Curt Kirkwood from Meat Puppets. He sounded nuts. The magazine raved about his playing. And Curt dropped all the right names to make me want to hear the Pups.
So, I went to the girl in my class who had the pink hair and asked her about them. She was more than happy to make me a 90-minute tape with Up on the Sun[i] on one side and [i]Mirage on the other. First listen turned my world upside down. The Meat Puppets became my new favorite band (replacing Eric Clapton) and, thus began my slow descent into the weird and wonderful world of college rock.
My sophomore year in college I stumbled upon Uncle Tupelo opening for fIREHOSE at a Halloween, 1989 show. And from there, I began to realize that country music could be cool, too.

From then on, it has been a constant search for new music, whether underground or commercial. If it's good, it's good. And, if I like it, it's good.