No New Music For Me After The Age of 33.

I just finished watching “Gutfeld!” which shows with that bad title rhyme.

Anyways, question for you, especially if you’re a Gen-Xer.

When was the last time you listened to a new song or new music? If you’re past the age of thirty-three, research suggests it’s probably been a little while.

Now that I’m in my fifties, I’ve noticed that the music I loved as a teenager and even in the first half of my twenties means more to me than ever. Typically, I sleep with music playing. These days, it’s mostly my Gen-X Megamix playlist on Spotify, which is over eighty hours long as of this writing. I can’t get into the shit played on the radio now. It’s all noisy garbage that hurts my ears and, more importantly, my soul. Now, objectively, I can’t seriously assert that Starpoint’s “Object of My Desire” is artistically superior to Lorde’s “Push.” Yet, I’ll savor every second of the former and reject the latter as auto-tuner-driven screeching that scratches my eardrums with gargoyle-like claws.

If one forced me to listen to the Top 10 hits of 2022, I’d develop a headache that would rival anything my ex-wife would complain about on those worthless date nights.

If I listen to the Top 10 hits of 1987? I get happy. Period.

This begs the question, why do songs I liked when I was a teenager sound better than nearly everything I’ve heard as an adult? Fortunately, I’m thrilled to report my failures of judgment as a music critic may not be at fault.

In a 2015 survey published at Skynet & Ebert, an average American music fan gives up on new artists around the age of thirty-three.

Ajay Kalie, product director, and personalization at Spotify, who conducted the research, found that most Americans follow a similar trend with their music preferences. During our teenage years, we were more trendy, listening predominantly to mainstream music. Research suggests that as our adolescent years wane into our twenties and thirties, our tastes become more seasoned.

Kalia writes, “As users age out of their teens and into their 20s, their path takes them out of the center of the popularity circle. Until their early 30s, mainstream music represents a smaller and smaller proportion of their streaming. And for the average listener, by their mid-30s, their tastes have matured, and they are who they’re going to be.”

Based on U.S. Spotify and The Echo Nest data, Kalia’s research identified two primary reasons adults move away from popular music. First, we don’t come across new music as we used to when we were teens (unless one has teenage children of their own, then the exposure increases). Second, we’re likely to return to music we loved in our earlier years – even if it’s no longer popular.

Put simply, these treasured songs hold disproportionate power over our emotions. Our brains bind us to music we heard as teenagers more tightly than anything we hear as adults. That connection also does not weaken with age.

The phenomenon isn’t a cultural one. It’s a neurotic command. No matter how cultured our tastes may evolve, our brains stay thronged to those songs we fixated on during the high drama of adolescence.

Most adults in their thirties and beyond will probably agree. I know I gave up on music sometime around the year 2000. I’ll even admit it took me a long time to adapt to what we called “alternative” in the early to mid-nineties. It’s not that those offerings were terrible; I was still pissed about Seattle grunge single-handily killing hair bands. I don’t do change well. It’s an Aspie thing. I got over it eventually and came to enjoy much of it. Except for Dave Matthews. Fucking awful. And I thought The Cure was horrible, akin to strangling a cat in front of a microphone. Jesus. Not anymore. Yeah, I know that’s not a popular opinion. Bite me.

 There’s a certain nostalgia that comes from hearing songs from our youth. To understand why we grow attached to certain songs, you must try to understand the brain’s relationship with music. When we hear a song for the first time, it stimulates our auditory cortex, converting the rhythms, melodies, and harmonies into a coherent whole. From there, our reaction to music depends on how we interact with it. Sing along to a song in your head, and you’ll activate your premotor cortex, which helps plan and coordinate movements. Dance along, and your neurons will synchronize with the beat of the music. If you’re paying close attention to the lyrics and instrumentation, you’ll activate your parietal cortex, which helps you shift and maintain awareness of different stimuli. Listen to a song that triggers personal memories; your prefrontal cortex will leap into action as it holds information relevant to your personal life and relationships.

Still with me? That was a lot, I know.

Yet memories are meaningless without emotion. Aside from love and drugs, nothing spurs an emotional reaction like music. Brain imaging studies show that our favorite songs stimulate the brain’s pleasure circuit.’ That’s a highly scientific way of saying the brain releases an influx of dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and other neurochemicals that make us feel good. The more we like a song, the more we get treated to neurochemical ecstasy. It literally floods our brains with some of the same neurotransmitters that cocaine chases.

But… don’t do that. We’re far too old.

Music lights these sparks of neural activity in everybody. However, in young people, the spark turns into a fireworks show of Disney proportion. Between the ages of twelve and twenty-two, our brains undergo rapid neurological development. The music we love during that decade seems to get wired permanently into our lobes. When we make neural connections to a song, we also create a strong memory trace that becomes laden with heightened emotion. An excess of pubertal growth hormones doesn’t help matters. These hormones tell our brains that everything is significant, especially the songs that form the soundtrack to our teenage dreams…and embarrassments.

On their own, these neurological pyrotechnics would be enough to imprint certain songs into our brains. But other elements at work lock the last song played at high school prom into memory for all time. Daniel Levitin, the author of This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession, notes that the music of our teenage years is intertwined deeply with our social lives.

Levitin explains, “We are discovering music on our own for the first time when we’re young, often through our friends. We listen to the music they listen to as a badge, a way of belonging to a certain social group. That melds the music to our sense of identity.”

Petr Janata, a University of California–Davis psychologist, agrees with the sociality theory. He explains that our favorite music “gets consolidated into the especially emotional memories from our formative years.”

He adds another factor that may be in play: the reminiscence bump. This phenomenon postulates why we remember so much of our younger adult lives more vividly than in other years. According to the reminiscence bump theory, we all have a culturally conditioned “life script” that serves, in our memory, as the narrative of our lives. When we look back on our pasts, the memories that dominate this narrative have two things in common: They’re happy and cluster around our teens and early twenties. These memories last well into adulthood when the brain begins to deteriorate with the loss of a cell’s power to divide or grow.

So, why are our memories from these years so vibrant and enduring? Researchers at the University of Leeds in 2008 proposed one inviting explanation: the years highlighted by the reminiscence bump coincide with “the emergence of a stable and enduring self.” In other words, the period between twelve and twenty-two is when you become…you. It makes sense that the contributing memories become uncommonly crucial throughout the rest of your life. They didn’t just contribute to developing your self-image; they became part of your self-image – an integral part of your sense of self.

Music plays two roles in this process. First, some songs become memories in and of themselves, so they forcefully worm their way into memory. Many of us can vividly remember the first time we heard that one Madonna or Journey song that, decades later, we still sing at every karaoke night. Second, these songs form the soundtrack to what we felt then, like the most vibrant and vital years of our lives. The music that plays during our first kiss, our first dance, our first couple’s skate, or our first toke or acid hit (if you’re into that) gets attached to that memory and takes on a gleam of its deep perception. We may recognize in retrospect that prom wasn’t really all that profound…or even that first toke. But even as the importance of the memory itself fades, the emotional afterglow tagged to the music lingers.

As fun as these theories are, their logical conclusion is a little depressing; you’ll never love another song like you loved the music of your youth. It’s not all bad news: our adult tastes aren’t weaker; they’re more mature, allowing us to appreciate intricate artistic beauty on an intellectual level. No matter how adult we may become, music remains an escape from our adult brains back into the sheer, raw passion of our youths. The nostalgia accompanying our favorite songs isn’t just a fleeting recollection of earlier times; it’s a neurological wormhole that gives us a glimpse into the years when our brains leaped with joy at the music that’s come to define us. Those years may have passed. But each time we hear the songs we love, the joy they once brought surges anew.

For those who are aging and feel that they’re no longer part of the popular crowd, Kalia reassures us that once you have children, you’ll be right back in the mainstream music mix.

“If you’re getting older and can’t find yourself staying as relevant as you’re used to,” he wrote, “have no fear — just wait for your kids to become teenagers, and you’ll get exposed to all the popular music of the day once again!”

It’s not the same, though, is it?