Lately I seem to hear songs from my adolescence an awful lot lately

[conuly]

At the grocery store, when picking up a burger, things like that.

Is this what being middle-aged feels like? You stop hearing the songs from your parents' youth, or today's youth, and start hearing your own youth again?

Comments

[gatheringrivers]

Sadly, yes. :(

I've heard a lot of stuff I grew up with for the last 10 years ish. (but then my music interests have a large range across both time and genres...)

[conuly]

Well, it's not that sad, though it's rather disconcerting.

[jessie_c]

It doesn't really get weird until you hear those songs in an elevator.

[conuly]

Do people play music in elevators nowadays?

[dewline]

Starting to get that sense again of late myself.

[loligo]

Every time I hear something like The Clash or Joy Division in the grocery store (and I'm talking big chain stores here), I just have to shake my head. When those musicians were young and passionate and felt themselves to be so very on the edge, did they ever imagine someday their songs would be the soothing soundtrack to buying TP and orange juice?

[conuly]

That's how they know now they made it big.

[topaz_eyes]

Yep. I'll catch myself singing along to the music in the grocery store, too.

[conuly]

YES.

[greghousesgf]

I was at Safeway today and I heard way too much current poppy crap.

[conuly]

We don't insult other people's musical choices. It's rude.

[offcntr]

You stop hearing the songs from your parents' youth, or today's youth, and start hearing your own youth again?

Basically, yeah. The Friday night headliner on the Jazz Stage of the Arts Festival I sold at last weekend was called Nearly Dan.

A Steely Dan cover band.

Feel. So. Old...

"Songs played in the style of - "

[nodrog]

Well, now, that can actually be good.  When it shades on into historical re-enactment (“Beatlemania,” and another I've seen even better) it can be fascinating!

[As a trivia example, Billie Holliday had no interest in recording her signature tune “Lover Man” until she heard it performed by a female impersonator who specialized in Billie Holliday!  In effect she heard a virtual simulation of herself and realized how well it worked!]

Update:  My comment title dates from 8-track days:  US copyright laws at the time allowed artist impersonators to record and sell counterfeit current hits.  If you couldn’t afford the actual albums, “Stars On” [On 45, On LP, &c.] and the like were ready to serve your party tune needs!

[halfshellvenus]

I think the defining moment of horror for me was when I was buying groceries one day and realized that the Muzak was not just a tune I knew, it was freakin' "King of Pain" by The Police.

I could practically hear the clopping hooves of the impending Apocalypse...

[conuly]

There, there.

Yes.

[bittercat]

I'll never forget the day I heard Talking Heads on a classic rock station. I thought to myself, "Dear Gods! I'm OLD!" LOL!

Re: Yes.

[conuly]

Did you keep listening or turn it off?

[wpadmirer]

Yep.

[conuly]

Maybe this is what the Boomers felt like their entire adult lives.

[rhoda_rants]

I heard Nirvana on the "oldies" station earlier this year, and that sent me to a very weird place.

[conuly]

A place that smells like maturity.

[author_by_night]

Oh, definitely. I'll be shopping and hear "Bills, Bills, Bills" playing and start singing along under my breath.

[conuly]

That's the spirit.

[malada]

Just wait until PBS starts doing specials on the music of your youth.

W....O.... L... D.....

-m

[nodrog]

That was the most depressing song.

For the sunlit side of the same object, listen to the title tune from the TV show WKRP in Cincinnati.

[sabotabby]

I've noticed that.

Also my students listening to music I like, but it's "retro."

[conuly]

Oh, how sharper than a serpent's tooth is a "retro" student.

[nodrog]

P J O'Roarke's Bachelor’s Home Companion is a very funny and surprisingly useful book.  He gives a rule of thumb for music to play at house parties:  Determine the average age of your guests, and stock up on what they listened to in high school.  Specifically, decade by decade.

I hear a lot of ’70s played nowadays.  Not all of them; I have yet to hear Loudon Wainwright III’s “Dead Skunk (In the Middle of the Road)” but I'm sure it's an oversight…

[conuly]

That's good advice.

[silveradept]

I think that is supposed to be one of the signs, yes. Then, depending on how much power you keep to yourselves before handing it off to the next generation, you'll keep hearing it for since significant time afterward.

[conuly]

Hm.

[amaebi]

I've been thinking about that for quite a while. It was realizing how often I heard big band music as a child that really shook me.

[conuly]

Now that's not my experience. But I did hear a lot of 60s rock.

[darkoshi]

I take it to mean that we're finally the target audience. Or at least one of the target audiences.

I had noticed it more on the radio than in stores. There is now at least one station here that specializes in 80s music, although it's probably been on the air already a decade by now. I don't come across many stations playing what I'd call "oldies" anymore, which is a bit sad, but it makes sense.

But you're right, yesterday at a shoe store they were playing some song from my youth that put an extra spring in my step while I was trying on shoes.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Most likely, the people picking the music are of the same generation as you, and are choosing the songs they knew and liked.

My town has a lot of old people; thus the local radio station and places of business play a lot of '50s and 60's music. However, the Canadian station my clock-radio plays every morning is mostly 'Millennials' music, songs from the 90's and on - not really geared for 'today's youth'; more for today's adults, getting up, driving to work, adulting.

It's hard to say what 'being middle-aged feels like'. What did childhood feel like, or being 20-something? Having turned 62, I can say I've now commenced on the third book in the trilogy of my life; certainly I've passed the latest probable half-way point, so indubitably I am middle-aged, but I don't think I feel any different from how I've always felt, which was never very explicable anyway.

[conuly]

You might be the first person to make it to 124, but do you want to?

Most likely, the people picking the music are of the same generation as you, and are choosing the songs they knew and liked.

Now, that's a thought.