Essay: My parents don't like my music!

At some point in everyone’s lifetime, we stop liking new music.  It’s inevitable.  Even if it’s because you’re hearing aid can’t adjust to Skrillex’s harsh bass drops. 

But why?

When we’re young we suck up any and all music available, and reason we do is because we’ve never heard it before.  Whether you’re a 2 year old encountering the Wiggles for the first time, or you’re a tweener hearing you’re first One Direction song.  You are hearing something you’ve never heard before, and it’s awesome.

Then a funny thing happens.  You start developing your tastes, seeking out other music with new sounds.  Your mental catalogue of sounds builds and changes with every prevailing trend. 

This is great when you’re young and have time on your hands, but it won’t always be this way, especially if music is something you use to pass time.  When you get older and gain more responsibilities (jobs, kids), then time is something you have less and less of, and you the time you do have to yourself gets spent on the things you value the most.

If music is not one of those things, you can find yourself quickly falling out of touch with the Top 40. 

For people in this position, you’ll find yourself turning on the radio and hearing something both foreign and familiar blaring back at you.  It’s foreign in that its music you have not heard before, but familiar in that the beats and structure of the songs sound somewhat like the same music you heard when you were young.  These two states conjure up two feelings; fear and anger.

You ask yourself, why don’t I know what this is and why does it sound like the bass-line from ‘Billie Jean’?

It’s at this crucial point where the desire for new sounds that defined your youth morphs into an artless future in which you constantly repeat the phrase ‘whats this crap?’, and then head to your bedroom to listen to the Foo Fighters on your Ipod.

I’ve painted a pretty bleak picture, but it doesn’t have to be this way.

New music is awesome and it always will be.  This is a fact.  Once you are comfortable with this strange thought, it makes it easier to accept new music forever, even if you don’t get it the 1st, 2nd or 10th time.

If you find that you’re getting pressed for time in your life, utilize the amazing power of the internet.  There are some thorough sites out there these days that promote all types of new trends and great music.  Bookmark them and check them when you have a few minutes to spare.  It takes nothing to go to _ pitchforkmedia.com or complex and set their new music players running.  Streaming services like Spotify make that job even easier.

You don’t have to be the loser parent whose kid laughs at them because they don’t know who Bieber is.  You can be the cool adult who puts them up on all the great new music and then tells them Bieber is crap*.

Enjoy awesome music forever.