18 vs. 12

[robin_d_laws]

There’s a meme going around where you’re supposed to list the top hits of the year when you were eighteen and then indicate which of them you love and which you despise.

I’m not going to do the meme. That would be a Rule Twelve violationInstead I’m just here to quibble with the concept. The meme author has chosen the wrong year. It’s not age

Comments

[jadasc]

It’s not age eighteen that imprints itself on you musically forever. It’s when you’re younger than that and first start listening to radio and buying records. The top songs when I was fourteen, or twelve for that matter, have way more bearing on my life and tastes than when I was wobbling toward adulthood.

I don't know if I buy that -- at that age, I was listening to what my peers listened to, which was classic rock radio, which meant an awful lot of the hits from 1968, not 1988.

[doccross]

For me (and those around my age) the defining years would probably be between 1964 and 1969...Beatles, British Invasion, Summer of Love, etc.

I would add tho that I had already started to form some of my musical tastes based on hearing 1950's rock & roll, surf music and honkytonk on the radio and C&W and big band swing via my folks record collection.

[janewilliams20]

Well the "top hits" at any age implies pop music, which implies I wouldn't have been listening to it. My musical tastes got formed when I was under 5, "singing" along to Mozart on the radio.

12 was when I got my first cassette player for Xmas. The cassettes I promptly spent my Xmas money on were the Dvorak cello concerto and Beethoven's 5th and 6th symphonies. And I still think all three are great. Not quite sure this is what the meme intended, though?

[maverick_weirdo]

There have been multiple versions of this meme, or most people put their own spin on it when they get it.

I have seen several milestones suggested, birth, marriage, turning 18, loosing virginity

[anonymous]

What do the pop charts have to do with anything? Are people's tastes really set by the pap that the mainstream plays? I know my musical ears were tuned by the records we had and were buying all through my youth, and not by what "millions of listeners all over the country" could agree upon...

Then again, following such memes probably indicates a willingness to surrender one's taste and opinions to society anyway...

- Liam Routt

[thebitterguy]

Thank God we have supercool iconoclasts to show us the correct way to think.

[3lobed]

I am *so* stealing that line.