Does music lose its 'wow' factor as you get older?

There was an interesting article on pitchfork recently which touched on this:

A lot of pop music is an exercise in aspiration like that. In fact, I suspect this is part of why some people get older and hit a point where they stop responding to much new music: They're no longer dreaming out into some unknown future, and they've realized that most of the futures they used to romanticize turn out to be complicated and not-necessarily-dreamy in real life.
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http://pitchfork.com/features/why-we-fight/7923-why-we-fight-10/
 
I'll elaborate on my experience in more depth.

In the 90s I got into metal in a big way. My passion for metal peaked after about 2002: I wrote for magazines, I broadcast on a radio station, I promoted gigs in major London venues and started a record label. I still do all those things bar broadcasting BUT I have noticed metal getting less and less interesting. The new stuff sounds more and more derivative and it becomes harder and harder for anything to sound fresh or original. I've only heard one or two metal bands in the last couple of years who have seriously impressed me.

I don't know what it's like in other genres so I can't comment. But I will say these days metal is almost entirely devoid of emotion but full of delusions of grandeur, has-been artists and imitators. A good friend of mine, who started one of the largest metal labels in the 90s sent me a text only a few days ago saying, "is it me or is all metal these days turning to ****"? The answer is - yes, it is.

Genres can hang around for a long time. They need to develop, move on, or be radicalised. There are LOADS of people who still love traditional metal from all its subgenres but a lot of us who are steeped in the scene find 99% of the new stuff dull because, quite simply, we've heard it all before. There are two exceptions to this rule: those bands who can produce a new sound and make it sounds genuinely fresh, natural, and interesting - and those bands who play traditional metal but just do it very very VERY well.
 
Your tastes change and you do respond differently.

I was into rock stuff until early 20s when it was all about dance/electronica and pills. That got a bit flat as I got older and I moved back into the rock fold, without the girly whine of Mustaine or the carp-talk of Ulrich.

Instead, I listened again to music which I was always fond of but really does not go down well on a dancefloor:


Skip to about 38s if the vid fails to do so.

It wows me every time I listen to it.

The Chemical Brothers are still fine, I have seen them a few times, as are the Prodigy. But definately things have changed...
 
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Now I'm only 16 but I swear mainstream music has just got so much worse. Around the mid 2000s. I don't listen to radio or watch music channels if I have the choice because I hate new mainstream music with a passion. I just found a CD in the wardrobe: Jamiroquai - High Times The Singles 1992-2006. It's enjoyable to listen to. Then I listen to the old song or two, my favourite being B52 - Love Shack; all my mates think I'm weird for that haha

Though as I mainly listen to hardstyle (dance) I'm even finding the new hardstyle horrible to listen to *cough nu-style* though that's just because its ****!
 
For me you have to be there at the start of a new sound, I got my first radio cassette player on my 11th birthday. It was July 1990 and when I turned on the radio during that school holiday what I heard has influenced me ever since.

I used to tape the top 40 with the volume down and then listen to it back later to find songs that I liked. I had just saved up enough Esso garage tokens from by dad to get a Bush walkman and I would now take these tapes in the car to listen to on journeys. I can still remember clear as day listening back to one top40 that I had taped and Praga Khan - "Injected with a Poison" came on. I was actually in a supermarket isle at the time, headphones on following my mum round....it was like some kind of epiphany.

I'd never heard anything quite like it at all before, the speed and intensity of the song the ultra futuristic sounds, the weird chopped up sound bites. It was dark and intense but happy at the same time. For me at that point all other music but dance music faded into the background. Being 11 it was hard to find this music and I knew little about breakbeat hardcore and the rave scene so it wasn’t for a couple of years that I really got to grips with it finding The Prodigy etc.

So yeah I think you have to be hit with something like that and music extremes are few and far between now. Dubstep is about as close as I have heard to something new but really it’s nothing that new, all those sounds were around before it’s just they have been pushed into a certain direction.

I only ever get the wow factor if I go back and listen to stuff from the 90's
 
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Lysander said:
Your senses don't become dulled as such, you just get harder to please. You see repeated patterns, recognise more influences, see the imitators and originality appears harder to come by.
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I agree, and on top of that modern "studio magic" can make very ordinary(or even bad) singers and musicians sound decent, which is a kind of electronic con-trick. How can you have a "wow" factor when the performer is a fraud?
 
philip2009 said:
I agree, and on top of that modern "studio magic" can make very ordinary(or even bad) singers and musicians sound decent, which is a kind of electronic con-trick. How can you have a "wow" factor when the performer is a fraud?
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That might be the case if you listen to crap performers.

I still get the emotion and stuff I've always got with music. I'm even happier with it now as I get to listen to a far wider range of music than I ever used to.
 
I think I'm almost always at saturation point with music. I download new music everyday, and truth be told don't have the time to listen to an album as often as I should. Back in the day - when buying CD's was the only way to go - I'd play an album to death before moving onto something else. It was the same with video games. Now I don't know what to listen to, or play, next. Instant access [and lower costs ie often free] has kind of devalued the end product.

It might be bloody great but I haven't spent enough time with it to find out.....
 
Music's never lost it's wow factor, I'm positive it never will. I was a jazz snob, then I got into some heavier rock/metal and some thrashy stuff, then more of the 1960s soul and funk with the band I play with - a new musical door seemed to open every time.

One of the biggest things I'm grateful to the teaching qualification I'm doing now for is opening me eyes to classical (small c) music.

In the last 6 months, I've discovered Bach, Beethoven and Schubert and Tippett. Never has a factor been more wowed!
 
depends. as far as electronic goes, john digweed is still spinning some immense stuff and i still get an incredible night seeing him live. i haven't heard anything which has blown my mind as far as dnb goes since 1997 and haven't heard an awesome album since nirvana's wishkah release and prodigy's fat of the land. there is still a lot of good stuff out there, though i seem to find myself listening to 80's and 90's stuff more and more and music never loses it's wow factor.
 
i'm enjoying music more than i ever have and i'm 34 now. the noughties are my favourite decade by far and i have no reason to suspect this new decade won't be my favourite by the end of it.

disclaimer: i'm a brainless oaf who tends not to think too much. :D
 
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1980s for me. I could cut out all metal - no all MUSIC - from every other decade and not feel that I was missing out.

80s was where it was at.

BUT BUT LYSANDER THERE'S LOT OF GR8 NEW STUFF I didn't say there wasn't, but the 1980s has by far the best music as far as I'm concerned. And yes, that's a very personal view.
 
Lysander said:
Your senses don't become dulled as such, you just get harder to please. You see repeated patterns, recognise more influences, see the imitators and originality appears harder to come by.

These days I have to do a LOT of research to find an artist I really like. But when it happens it's all worth it.
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Superewza said:
I think that's more a fault of the music industry than of yourself.
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This and this.

I think when you're younger you're experiencing things for the first time, so they often leave you wide eyed and fixated in amazement.

I'd argue now that music is so easy to make and (imho) the music industry is full of incredibly dull and poor artists, so that the music industry on the whole has stagnated and become, if you like, a vast sea of poop. Which in turn, means now finding an artist that's doing something different, or fresh or is just genuinely exceptionally talented means looking through so much more poop.

It's also part to due to a lack of originality in music in general, people come out with "new sounds" but to someone who's listened to lots of music, it's just a rehash. This is similar to film and gaming now, they've all seemed to just plateaued and occasionally you get something that restores your faith.
 
Sayin' all of that, as long as ye' 'ol Dylan is making music, part of my soul is happy.

There are some great artists emerging, just don't lose them amongst the sea's of endless poop.
 
I find that I discover truly moving pieces of music less frequently now, than I did say five years ago. However, that is not due to their absence, merely my lack of effort in discovering new music.

To people saying that they've seen/heard it all and that there's nothing really new to experience, I can only say that you're wrong. Thanks to the internet and websites such as Last.fm, MySpace and ReverbNation, along with applications such as Spotify, you have so much music right at the tips of your fingers that it's ludicrous to suggest there is anything but an infinite supply of great music to satisfy your tastes.

If you haven't found something that interests your tastes in a while, spend thirty minutes or less having a browse of the aforementioned websites and you will not regret it. ;)
 
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