![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2022/11/26/opinion/24brooks-image/24brooks-image-mediumThreeByTwo440-v3.jpg)
By David Brooks
Section: Opinion
Source: New York Times
Published Date: November 24, 2022 at 02:00AM
No matter how old I get, I have the musical taste of a 15-year-old.
When I was 15, I listened to the music that was popular among 15-year-olds. Then as I’ve aged through my 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s I have continued to listen to whatever music is popular among 15-year-olds. My body has matured; my tastes have not.
Then, during the 1980s, my tastes were once again chronologically unremarkable — the Pet Shop Boys, Eurythmics, Talking Heads and the B-52’s. But in retrospect there were signs that my tastes were beginning to go all Benjamin Button on me. For a guy in his 20s, was my devotion to the Go-Go’s “Vacation” album a little obsessive? Why had I popped Mozart out of my Walkman and replaced him with Kim Carnes’s “Bette Davis Eyes”?
It was like I was being eternally held back in school.
The 1990s brought astonishing hip-hop — Tupac, Biggie, Jay-Z, Wu-Tang Clan, A Tribe Called Quest, the Fugees — and I got introduced to all of that like everybody else at the time. My hands were writing and editing conservative editorials for The Wall Street Journal; my ears were straight outta Compton.
The 2000s were just ridiculous. I was a suburban guy with a minivan. Why was I grooving along as Katy Perry sang “I kissed a girl and I liked it”? As the decade turned, Kesha burst on the scene with a series of dance hits that were supposed to be for kids in clubs, though I mostly listened to them on the elliptical.
In the 2010s, my favorite songs came in categories. There were the drunk songs — Beyoncé’s “Drunk in Love” and Dierks Bentley’s “Drunk on a Plane.” There were songs that contained the assertive lyric, “I got hot sauce in my bag, swag,” of which, sadly, there was only one (Beyoncé’s “Formation”). And then there were the David Guetta and Pitbull dance anthems that are less like music and more like life-threatening cardiac events. (Here I should reassure readers that I was not actually gyrating to this music. Shakira tells us that her hips don’t lie; my hips are mute.)
Why do I listen to this music? Perhaps it’s because Billy Idol offered subtle observations on the human condition: “Ride your pony, ride your pony, ride your pony / Come on, come on (Come on) / Mony Mony (Mony, Mony) / Feel all right (Mony, Mony) / (Mony, Mony).” Perhaps it’s because Destiny’s Child offers an inspiring vision of the beloved community: “Ladies, leave your man at home. / The club is full of ballers and their pockets full grown.” Perhaps, it’s because Taylor Swift … well … she just gets me: “I’m a nightmare dressed like a daydream.”
Read more at: Confessions of a Middle-Aged Fanboy appeared first on New York Times.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/24/opinion/middle-age-music-taste.html?partner=IFTTT