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

I think this is one of the greatest statements in the history of ILx:

If i start jacking off to the lemonheads again.. shoot me in the fucking head.

― slow jamz and white guy indie acoustic shit (Chris V), Friday, 3 February 2006 11:18 (3 years ago)

My favourite band when I was 16/17 was Dillinger Escape Plan. I still love Calculating Infinity but not anymore than I love, I dunno, the O'Jays or something that I only started listening to last month.

And I listened to a lot of lamentable shit in my teen years at different stages: nu-metal, idm, I ONCE SAW LESS THAN JAKE FOR THE LOVE OF CHRIST!

This is so wrong, for me, anyhow.

Teenage listening history:
13: exclusively hiphop and R&B
14: did not know what to listen to. asked for The Unforgettable Fire and Little Creatures and License to Ill for Xmas. Ended up being lukewarm about them all.
15: exclusively hardcore/punk, much of which I can't listen to nowadays with the exception of Bad Brains, Minor Threat, and maybe Descendents, Ramones, Dickies
16: most anything on Dischord label; Rites of Spring and all that stuff
17-19: Teenbeat label stuff, various indiepop, random thrift store finds, fifties and sixties "oldies"...

anyway, it would be a more accurate contention that what i listened to as a young child would last lifelong, i.e., the Beatles, my older brothers' "classic rock" records, my dad's weird bacharach, dick hyman, soul, country mishmash of sensibilities more = forever than whatever i scribbled on my notebooks in high school

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.)