what were you listening to at 15?

(And other reasons, I'm sure.)

i think about this a lot, as i was 15 in 1982, and that seems like THE pivotal year in terms of my cultural development. it's when i really started to get into music in an active way, rather than just passively absorbing and reacting to the stuff that happened around me. some of my favorite albums circa 1982:

Cheap Trick - One On One
Blue Oyster Cult - Fire of Unknown Origin and Some Enchanted Evening
Prince - 1999
The B-52's - The B-52's
Devo - Freedom of Choice and New Traditionalists
The Buggles - The Age of Plastic (came late to several of these)
Rush - Moving Pictures and Permanent Waves
Adam Ant - Friend or Foe
The Cars - The Cars (side one of Shake It Up was cool too)
AC/DC - Back In Black and Dirty Deeds
Blondie - Parallel Lines (and some of the later stuff, too)
The Police - Ghost In the Machine
Pink Floyd - The Wall and Dark Side of the Moon
The Rolling Stones - Tattoo You (along w Hot Rocks, a childhood staple)
Roxy Music - Avalon
The Go-Go's - We Got the Beat
The Clash - Combat Rock
Billy Joel - Glass Houses
Talking Heads - 77 (a gift from my dad, inaccessible aside from the hit, but kind of fascinating)
Laurie Anderson - Big Science (similar to the talking heads - i didn't really "get it", but kept listening anyway)
The J. Geils Band - Freeze Frame
Dire Straits - Love Over Gold
Men at Work - Business As Usual
Soft Cell - Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret

it will be noted that i wasn't digging terribly deep, i seem only to have liked music by white guys, and there's a lot of fairly embarrassing crap in that list. still, it all meant a great deal to me at the time. was getting tired of earlier favorites like KISS, my parents' beatles albums, abba's greatest hits and the star wars soundtrack.

a year or so later, my tastes would be upended by murmur, the violent femmes' debut, boys don't cry, speaking in tongues, peter gabriel, king crimson, and xtc

It was 2000-2001 when I was 15. This are the albums I remember buying and listening to the most those months... (several of these are actually 1998-1999 but I was catching up):

Amon Tobin - Supermodified
Boards Of Canada - Music Has The Right To Children
Bows - Blush
DNTEL - Life Is Full Of Possibilities
Four Tet - Pause
Godspeed You Black Emperor! - f#a# infinity
Sigur Ros - Aegetis Byrjun
Sparklehorse - Good Morning Spider / It's A Wonderful Life
Modest Mouse - This Is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About / The Lonesome Crowded West / The Moon & Antarctica
Múm - Yesterday Was Dramatic, Today Is Okay
Radiohead - Kid A
A Silver Mt. Zion - He Has Left Us Alone / Born Into Trouble As The Sparks Fly Upward

Sort of typical... I remember my classmates and friends at the time listened to Manu Chao, Mogwai, Moonspell, Lostprophets, Incubus and Depeche Mode. There were several more, of course but those are the ones I remember.

Ah yes, I forgot Cat Power! I was a huge fan of her and Modest Mouse at the time. I very rarely listen to them anymore tho.

As for older stuff I think the Pixies and the Breeders consumed most of my listening iirc.

95-96. Blur, the Boo Radleys, Bis, the whole Britpop brigade, dEUS, Cypress Hill, lots of grunge, not of Metallica. Nothing mindblowing tbh

I was born in June 1979, so in 1994 and 1995 I was listening to mostly to electronic and dance music: trance, techno, jungle, rave, etc. Some of my favourite tracks from the were:

The Prodigy - Break & Enter
Westbam - Wizards of the Sonic
Marusha - Raveland
Paperclip People - Throw
Love Inc. - R.E.S.P.E.C.T.
Lemon Interrupt (aka Underworld) - Dirty (the instrumental version with the Akira sample, not the later vocal version called "Dirty Epic")
Moby - Everytime You Touch Me
M.C. Sar & The Real McCoy - Automatic Lover
Banco de Gaia - Kincajou
Hardsequencer - Plastic Fantastic
ULTRA-SONIC - Check Your Head
M-People - Moving on Up
Stakka Bo - Living It Up
Shy FX & UK Apache - Original Nuttah
Subnation - Scottie
DJ Krome & Mr. Time - Ganja Man
Cypress Hill - Insane in the Brain
Warren G. - Regulators
Michelle Gayle - Sweetness (LTJ Bukem Remix)
Toni Braxton - Another Sad Love Song
Erasure - Saturday Night

"some of my favourite tracks from that era were"

was a pretty hardcore music fan from a young age... I was raised in a very musical household, with a lot of Laurel Canyon folk, psych, bluegrass, and 70s Jesus music always playing, got heavily into 60s and 70s soul on my own at age 8 for some reason, and then metal and stoner rock at age 11 - as my worldview got a little darker (as it can when you enter middle school).

by age 15 - 1995 - I'd followed metal back into psychedelia and fell deeply in love with the Grateful Dead - who I realized pretty quickly were much more about shows than albums, and collected a lot of their live tapes.

things really opened up for me musically around that time - something about the whole nomadic philosophy around the Dead, their extended jams and use of drums and space,(plus my getting into head drugs) introduced me to beats/groove and abstraction, and I soon got obsessed with Sun Ra, hip hop, dancehall, and then raves - esp jungle/dnb - which, next to the Dead, was probably the other great musical love of my life

the whole crossover alternative thing happening though (well, the post-Nirvana stuff, with some exceptions) - and the wave of pop-punk and ska that followed - was totally beyond the pale for me, really rang false

it was 91 and i was listening to the geto boys, epmd, misfits, dead kennedys, sonic youth, jfa, gang starr, black flag, public enemy, fugazi

1989 - mostly Pet Shop Boys, New Order, Depeche Mode, Cure, Jesus & Mary Chain, Sisters of Mercy - plus assorted dance/hip hop hits like Bomb the Bass, S'Express, De La Soul, etc.

1977. Punk rock year-zero fundamentalism, informed by taping Peel every night I possibly could. Pistols, Clash, Ramones, Pere Ubu import singles, Peel sessions from The Slits / Banshees / Generation X / XTC / Adverts. Loads of singles, very few albums.

It was 1979 and I listened to everything because it was all great.

1989/90 - a steady diet of Disintegration and Nothing's Shocking

late 80s. i was taping a bunch of pop tunes from the radio and basically had no clue about other stuff beyond the mainstream realm. i started getting into post punk, goth and underground music at 16/17.

1993-4. Mainly thrash and death metal, a little bit of grunge and industrial. About a year off getting into electronic music via NIN and the Prodigy.

whoa i am way younger than everybody responding to this question

Lots of people saying dEUS. It's a wonder they didn't become the biggest band in the whole world at some point.

oh no just me and seandalai

Faith No More
Dag Nasty
Ozzy Osbourne
Metallica
Led Zeppelin
Jimi Hendrix
Pink Floyd
Dead Kennedys
Angry Samoans
Lords of Acid
Blues Traveller
Black Crowes
Minutemen
Sinead O'Connor
The Jean-Paul Sartre Experience
Smokin Dave and the Premo Dopes
Jane's Addiction
The Pixies

Oh I forgot Bonnie Raitt and k.d. lang

Peter Gabriel
The Beatles
Peter Murphy
Blue Aeroplanes
Prince
The Cure
Sinead O'Connor

I also forgot the Butthole Surfers

I also forgot Eazy E!!! Fuck.
D.O.C.
Public Enemy
N.W.A.

At age 15 I had banished my love of Michael Jackson and Prince and Madonna etc to some kind of purgatory of soft-rock pre-consciousness, what they call "the full rockism"

Phish
Jethro Tull
The Toasters
The Specials
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61DEN0W6EFL._SL500_AA300_.gif
Janis Joplin
Jimi Hendrix
Blues Traveller
Dead Kennedys
Mudhoney
Operation Ivy
Beastie Boys
Jane's Addiction

Bad Religion

Death
The Grateful Dead
Minor Threat

Oh man I also forgot about the amount of time I spent listening to Fishbone.

Was anybody listening to this at 15?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RajyzvqVZiM

in 1980, The Jam, Stranglers, Tom Robinson Band, Beatles and a bit of disco.

If there was the internet when I was 15 (there wasn't, it was early '90s) my listening tastes would have been completely different. I was a slave to the radio, specifically KISS FM, London. The specialist shows, House, Techno, Soul & R&B, Jazz ... pencil and pad in hand scribbling down songs so that I could follow up with purchases in Soho record shops..

Odd thinking that I would hear something once and then completely forget what it sounded like until I eventually tracked it down physically.

Will have to look for that xpost Club Ska '67--unseasonably hot springtime, and I crave ska not reggae (weather makin me antsy) This is what I was listening to at 15
http://images.wikia.com/beatles/images/4/4d/Beatles_65_Album_Cover.jpg

also

http://images2.fanpop.com/image/polls/344000/344484_1261331588711_full.jpg

1990, kind of a jumble from what I recall:

Pixies, RHCP, Rush, Pat Metheny Group, Yes, Steely Dan, Public Enemy, R.E.M., Joy Division, Frank Zappa

The Animals, Animal Tracks--a military dependent buddy brought this from UK, better cover than US, and some diff tracks, don't remember which was a better selection, if either--what the hell, it was the Animals!
http://www.sentimento.pl/images/AnimTr1.jpg

1982...tie between MDC, Echo & The Bunnymen and Afrika Bambaata. yes, a lot of NDW too.

...forgot an "a"

fuck you're all so cool.

me @ 15 = 1983

madness - various
duck rock - malcolm mclaren
thomas dolby - golden age of wireless
david bowie - lodger/scary monsters/lets dance

ben folds five
dave matthews band
dream theater

1998
also getting into radiohead

for some reason no one liked to listen to music with me

i think you know the reason all too well mad god.

That year it would have been

Lynyrd Skynyrd, "Gimme Back My Bullets"
Steve Miller, "Fly Like an Eagle"
Rolling Stones, "Black and Blue"
Boz Scaggs, "Silk Degrees"

and some older stuff. And the radio.

Brad C, I am one album younger than you. At 15 I was listening to

Lynyrd Skynyrd, "Street Survivors"
Steve Miller, "Book of Dreams"
Rolling Stones, "Some Girls"
Boz Scaggs, "Down Two, Then Left"

Also older stuff and the radio.

1985- Muncie, Indiana
Led Zeppelin
Rush
The Police
Jimi Hendrix
Iron Maiden
The Who
The Scorpions
Yes
Triumph
Ozzy/Sabbath
Prince (It was 1985, everybody listened to Prince. We had this little dude at my highschool that used to come to school dressed like him, white flowing shirt and weird boots with heels.)

Around that time I probably heard The Clash, Violent Femmes and Black Flag around there for the first time or so. I know Metallica was '86 as I heard them right before seeing them open for Ozzy. I know I saw Stevie Ray Vaughn in 86 and I probably heard him for the first time in 85.

I know I was also a die-hard WFBQ (Q-95) listener, where Bob & Tom started and still are to this day. It wasn't "classic rock" quite yet, it was just rock. So all that Bob Seger and Mellancamp was pretty much heard all the time too.

Love, The Doors, The Animals, Frank Sinatra, Nancy Sinatra, Dean Martin, Piaf, Connie Francis and other older music

The Pogues
The Cure
REM
The Rievers
Fairground Attraction
Kate Bush (Experiment IV)
Dr Calculus (Designer Beatnik)

in '97 some of my favorite recent records were by Ben Folds Five, Skeleton Key, Timbaland & Magoo, the Geraldine Fibbers and Spiritualized, while I was delving into the back catalogs of Elvis Costello, A Tribe Called Quest, Fugazi, the Velvet Underground, etc.

15 was cool cause that was the year i re-figured out that mainstream rap wasn't evil

Prince, Rolling Stones, Billy Joel