The music from your teen years will remain the best music ever for the rest of your life. Right or wrong?

i definitely thought you were older than this suggests NRQ!

I agree entirely. To me (a teenager between 1987 and 1993), I liked a lot of what I heard. It felt like an important time in terms of hip hop, electronic music, and some of the English Manchester / shoegazer stuff.
But 1. a lot of it just isn't very interesting any more, not just musically, but once the context has gone, then yeah, it's pure nostalgia. Which I do agree is a self-defeating impulse to gve in to. 2. the idea of hearing it nostalgically at a themed party makes me depressed. 3. I find it hard not to cringe at people who sing along to old shit. Call me anti-fun, uptight etc, but it's a *lot* more fun to go out and discover and dance to brand new stuff.

ick.

the music i actually liked as a teenager: aerosmith, queensryche, led zep, jimi hendrix, concrete blonde, frank zappa, etc

Music from my teen years? There's some stuff I cringe at, and some stuff I cringe at despite knowing it's good, because I remember how stupid my idolising of it was. I have some assorted stuff that's associated with good memories, but that keeps on happening, innit?

Then again, I am only 21, thus perhaps a bit too young to answer this.

and I can still fall in love with new stuff, but in some respect it isn't quite the same: the music isn't connected to certain points of my life as strongly as it was in the past.

Tuomas, I find this a bit puzzling. Surely this will change once the current period of your life is over?

The only possible answer to this 'question' is: "Not unless you stop listening to new and interesting kinds of music after you leave your teen years behind." The idea that you've heard every bit of music you might appreciate by age 20 is, simply put insane. (See also numerous ILE threads about nostalgia and its poisonous effects.)

This notion you have to discard anything more than 5 minutes old is sad. Embrace all that you are and have been! Bands dont become shit because theyre unfashionable.

(cue the song, etc)

I was abused by my fellow high school classmates for not liking Blink 182 and The Offspring.

CASE CLOSED!

*except for that australian rapper thread

AC/DC not merely disproves you, but Bon Scott is coming back from the dead to rip your head off.

No. And I hate most Australian music.

As for my teen years, a couple of acts remain specific touchstones from the time -- Depeche, Pet Shop Boys, eighties Madonna -- but that's about it. I think I'm rather glad of that as well.

you were probably my age in the 1980s, a nominal adult in glad rags and a trendy haircut digging "the kids today and their new sounds."

http://www.mb-imaging.net/msx/cc/images/cc4.jpg

Logically there shouldn't be, of course, but I think there's a feeling that if you're into something when it's first coming out it somehow BELONGS to you more than music your parents or older siblings might have listened to.

Haha maybe it does! I mean I loved Japan, Duran Duran, Bauhaus, Visage, Ultravox and Scritti Politti - and I still do. *shrug*.

Sure theres other stuff I think "wtf did I like that for" but I'm not going to drop ALL of my past as embarrasing. I am proud of who I am and what I like, damn you all! even if it is Howard Jones!

I guess it can. When I was a teen there were lots of interesting things going on: electronic music music breaking through, gangsta rap, etc. So a lot of the stuff I listened to then still gets critical praise today. But then again, I also listened to a lot Euro-dance that the critics probably labeled cheesy back then, and which seems to forgotten by the world today. But that makes me love it even more, because it was our music and no one else's: there's been no critical re-evaluation of it, no revival or anything. So I think music can be great either because it's timeless, or for the opposite reason that it's deeply and irreversibly tied to a certain period of your life.

actually, no matter how you read it, your thesis doesn't apply to me. when i was a teen, i listened to a lot of fairly obvious stuff (u2, r.e.m., pavement, p.j. harvey) which i neither hate nor particularly adore these days and then a lot of older stuff (motown, stax/volt, dylan) that i feel about the same affection for 10-15 years on.

there are some records that will stir an elusive emotion in me, akin to nostalgia in its sadness (but a bit more troubling than the word "sadness" typically suggests; i usually get a little rush of adrenaline similar to when i'm afraid--which makes me wonder if it's some submerged confrontation with my own mortality). but oddly those records are more likely to be ones from an era that came just before i was aware of pop music (late 70s/early 80s, i.e. when i was a toddler).

i am quite assuredly NOT a nostalgic person, at least not in the sense of being nostalgic for my own past, wanting to reclaim or relive it. i'm happier now than i had been in my adolescence and after. but as suggested above i do tend to have something like nostalgia for the music of eras i did not participate in.

also i think nostalgia is getting overly shat upon in this thread. i cant really be bothered right now to look up old ile threads on that subject but i think a healthy dose of nostalgia can be just that-- healthy.

though it seems dictionary.com indicates nostalgia is a 'bittersweet longing' rather than just a nice looking-back. which can be i guess a good way to write songs but not such a good way to live life

Also, life is more fun now, and I'm going through something of a protracted adolescence. I'm sure I'll remember today's music more fondly in 10 years time.

I love Alice Cooper much more now than when I was an impressionable 12-year old...

I think I'm coming down on the side of 'wrong', but that might be because it feels like I've lived more of an adolescence during my 20s than I did during my teens. There's a lot music from 2003-05 that really hits home in the way I think Tuomas was getting at in the opening posts - far more than stuff I liked when I was 15. There are always exceptions to that of course.

Hah, it turns out I said a very similar thing three years ago anyway.

One thing not really touched upon on this thread is that really this is less a question about music and more about your view of being a teenager. What really stands out about my mid-late teens (and I'm sure those of many others) is that big feeling of *possibility* - that even if things were shit you were at the start of some big adventure that could go anywhere. And the music you listened to when you were a teenager brings that all back.

I think I managed to keep a bit of that feeling of possibility going until I was 27 or something so I don't feel the teen thing as keenly as others. But on the other hand if you had an appalling time during your teens you might not feel it at all. This question could be 'the music from the time you met the love of your life will remain the best music ever...' and it wouldn't be hugely different.

OTM, Matt. I definitely feel the same way, even at 27 now.

Yeah, Matt def. OTM. I actively hate 90% of the music I loved as a teenager actually, because: a) most of it was total crap, and b) my high school years were the absolute worst time in my life. In fact, I think my prior idolization of certain bands as an adolescent actually *prevents* me from appreciating them now. I get much more of a nostalgia buzz from the music I was into as an undergrad.

I'm with Matt DC in that i feel like my early 20s were more adolescent than my teenage years, and that the music from that era has far more of an impact. Around that time I had given up on paying attention to music that wasn't made by my friends - with the exception of discovering new things from an era that I grew up loving as a child (raised on 60s British Invasion and 70s glam). I think when you're an adolescent and you're 'discovering yourself' your setting yourself up for all the stuff you 'know' is you when you're a cynical, tired adult.

Ha, I kind of feel like my late 20s are more adolescent than my teenage years.

music i had to actively seek out - primarily spacemen 3, velvets, similar droney stuff - for me, it still stands up. music that was current at that point and popular w/ me and my friends, not so much. lol britpop.

i would easily have had a lot more "WOW!!" listening experiences between 2001-2006 (22-27) than i had 1994-2000.

at the age when music was really taking over my life, round 14-17, yeah definitely this stuff still sounds great - mostly aussie indie, some creation/shoegaze stuff, new wave. the things i listened to from most of my 20s now sounds a bit shit, save for some of the better noisepop/shoegaze. particularly lol britpop and the also ran sarah label (and lesser twee labels) type stuff.

(That was blatantly false, by the way.)