T/F the music you loved most from 16-22 will always seem like the best music to you

taken from a comment by (underrated aerosmith albums I have loved)

"...something everybody kind of already knows intuitively i.e. the music you loved most from 16-22 will always seem like the best music to you."

True.

Next?

for me: false, tho the music from that period has an undeniable nostalgic pull.

lol dr. fever.

music sucks

not especially true, though it still sounds good

false for me. the music from that age did inexorably lead me to find the music i love most now though. i would say that the music from the ages of 21-25 are where i cemented my overall taste in music.

actually i just realised i liked britpop when i was like 19 thru 23 so god help us all

I turned 16 in 1990, so I'd actually probably dial that back a bit, as in "the music you loved most from 13-19 will always seem like the best music to you."

I'm not saying I don't like anything else. I wholeheartedly love the late 60s into the early 70s...well, pretty much all of the 70s and 80s...not so much the 90s anymore. I kind of look back on the 90s (or more specifically what I was listening to in the 90s) with a little bit of shame. It's not indie guilt, just a lack of enthusiasm at the time for embracing everything that was going on in favor of being exclusionary and snobby about it. That makes it harder to go back and re-evalutate that stuff in a positive way. Once I got over myself in the very early '00s, though, I found LOTS of current music to love. (Of course, it probably didn't hurt that a lot of it sounds like what I loved from ages 13-19.)

Related reading: http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/?p=1484

What follows may seem narcissistic nostalgia, but I do have a general point. It’s the Law of the Adolescent Window:

Between the ages of 13 and 18, a window opens for each of us. The cultural pastimes that attract us then, the ones we find ourselves drawn to and even obsessive about, will always have a powerful hold. We may broaden our tastes as we grow out of those years—we should, anyhow—but the sports, hobbies, books, TV, movies, and music that we loved then we will always love.

The corollary is the Law of the Midlife/ Latelife Return:

As we age, and especially after we hit 40, we find it worthwhile to return to the adolescent window. Despite all the changes you’ve undergone, those things are usually as enjoyable as they were then. You may even see more in them than you realized was there. Just as important, you start to realize how the ways you passed your idle hours shaped your view of the world—the way you think and feel, important parts of your very identity.

I like that. But I guess it also means that once I turn 40, I'll be listening to Doolittle ALL the time instead of only half the time.

i'll be listening to new order and aussie 45s. which actually sounds like a good time tbqh

There's certain things I first heard during that age range that I know I wouldn't like or like as much if I heard them now, but overall this is very F

if I heard them for the first time now obv

not true

rong

prob more true for the gen public than music nerds

this is false for me. i don't get much enjoyment from listening to most of the shit i did when i was 16-22, tbh. my tastes have gotten more abstract than they were then - kind of like my taste in food.

during my late twenties and for most of my thirties, i would have said this was true. but 16-22 is a LONG fucking way off now, and i don't feel as close to that shit as i thought i always would. i mean, somewhere in my head are stamped these giant, flaming, golden letters 10 feet high saying shit like TALKING HEADS ARE AWESOME!!! and THURSTON IS GOD!!! so i think i'll go to the grave with the idea that that shit is the best ever. but when it comes to actually wanting to listen to it, i find i rarely do. the more i once loved stuff, the more played-out it tends to seem to me now. i work around this by listening more to shit i paid less attention to at the time (like, prince and can were total staples for me in the late 90s and 00s mostly cuz i hadn't already spent years wearing them out).

when i look at my go-2, heavily played shit, it tends to be stuff that's relatively fresh to me, i.e., completely new to my ears w/in the last 10 years.

False.

If you take the music I loved most from 23-40, and subtract from that the music I loved most from 16-22, that still leaves a much larger portion of music that seems like the best music to me. And I don't think I assigned as much importance to 14-15 (my great awakening), never mind my childhood and adolescence, until later.

Still, you can never go to your first rap show again. (I linked that on the taste formation thread too.)

Isn't this false for essentially everyone on this board who is over 22?

False for me too, although obviously it was part of forming my musical personality. Some things have stuck with me, some things I'm ashamed of liking, and I've since found some things that I love better.

False. For me it seems to be the music I loved most from 26-32.

Guess I was a late bloomer.

I don't even listen to Phish, trance, ska-punk, or backpacker rap anymore.

Massively false.

False, although I certainly got more excited about picking up a new release back then and played the hell out of everything. No doubt because I was so poor.

For me, the key years are approximately 8-11. I have no evidence whatsoever for this assertion other than my own personal experience: there are numerous Top 40 hits from 1969-1972 that (to paraphrase Will Smith) spark up more nostalgia in me than any other music ever.

Yeah there are definitely songs I first heard in my pre-teens - not necessarily contemporary songs - that resonate inside in ways I can't get a handle on.

actually i just realised i liked britpop when i was like 19 thru 23 so god help us all

― you're the fucking treasurer (electricsound), Thursday, July 1, 2010 4:05 AM (8 hours ago)

^ this. I cannot stomach it now, so: monolithic false for me.

we've so done this already

I know but I get tired of correcting people

It was horseshit the last time round anyway

Think it might've come to the conclusion that it takes different strokes to make the world

Depending on how old you were when the first Strokes LP came out

Wondering how many of the people on this thread going "nu-uh, no way!" are actually in their 40s yet, or if the "urgh, LOL at shit I liked in my teens" is a function of the late 20-something looking to distance themselves from stuff which appears gauche now, but will nonetheless produce that thrill of nostalgia if heard in another 10, 20 years, when emotional and physical distance has stripped away the intense naffness of the recent past.

Also wondering if this is more true of non-music obsessives (for whom musical taste acquisition is a constant process rather than something formed in adolescence and never changed.)

And yet again, wondering if this is true of any highly emotively charged period of one's life - and perhaps more true for people who *enjoyed* their adolescence (people for whom high school or college was the peak emotional period of their lives.) That the music which produces the best nostalgia in us is the music associated when we were most happy - for some people, this is childhood, for others, it's leaving the family atmosphere and exploring the world - my personal "happy period" of music wasn't until 22-25 when I finally moved to NYC - which makes me think if it's this nostalgia which is triggering mine own rediscovery of the dance music that soundtracked those portions of my life.

The considered answer: your mileage may vary.

Well I'm into my 40s now and nah I just don't do nostalgia much. I still like plenty of the stuff I liked in my late teens but I don't much listen to it and it doesn't have a special magic glow for me.

Late 80s/early 90s techno maybe but I think that's just cos it is magic.

False

I'd be interested to see, from the people who're like "no way," a top five or ten all-time artists list along with some commentary on when those artists entered their lives - for a board whose best-attended polls are New Order ones, this thread comes off a little protest-too-much imo

I don't get people still getting excitable about NO in the 21st Century, tbh.

the beatles entered my life at birth (they were playing it on the p.a. iirc) and never let go, and that seems like some of the best music to me still so: false

impressive recall

Wondering how many of the people on this thread going "nu-uh, no way!" are actually in their 40s yet, or if the "urgh, LOL at shit I liked in my teens" is a function of the late 20-something looking to distance themselves from stuff which appears gauche now, but will nonetheless produce that thrill of nostalgia if heard in another 10, 20 years, when emotional and physical distance has stripped away the intense naffness of the recent past.

This thought is one of the reasons I stopped selling any records, to be honest. There aren't many things that I'm embarrassed about liking from 16-22 (more stuff from 12-16, hello bad grunge), but there are definitely some. But yeah, I still don't want rid of them completely - they make up part of who I am.

true

I'd be interested to see, from the people who're like "no way," a top five or ten all-time artists list along with some commentary on when those artists entered their lives - for a board whose best-attended polls are New Order ones, this thread comes off a little protest-too-much imo

― get your bucket of free wings (underrated aerosmith albums I have loved), Thursday, July 1, 2010 9:09 AM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah this is an interesting idea

I'd be interested to see, from the people who're like "no way," a top five or ten all-time artists list along with some commentary on when those artists entered their lives - for a board whose best-attended polls are New Order ones, this thread comes off a little protest-too-much imo

Also, this is probably relatively true - but at least partially because those bands have had time to settle into permanent positions. You'd be wary of putting a band you've only just discovered into an 'all time' slot, as they haven't had to prove the test of time yet.

Er, that sentence was poorly constructed but you get what I mean.

Serious question, does anybody have a top five or ten all-time artists list that they consistently carry round in their head rather than just making one up on the spot if pressed?

No wait I've just remembered where I am

I used to, but had to drop it when I got to my early 30s and realised it was changing too much.

Looking at any random 70s top 40 is good for this too. I listen to a lot of 70s music, but those charts are filled with songs I literally have never heard

This too shall pass, as soon as the kids who grew up on Gangnam Style get the masters in english, and start presenting a super-articulate argument for why, actually, that was the best era of music.

The thing is, Gangnam Style has gone away (for now)… the ‘80s never really did! (Can you think of a time when you weren’t hearing “Take On Me” on the reg?)

80s pop music was loathed and despised for a while in the 90s in my world; some of that was fronting for sure, but it did happen

hm not sure why I said loathed AND despised lol

Personally, I will never not love 80s music. But one of my current musical projects is a 90s cover band. This is music that I didn't love the first go-round, but it gets a very good crowd reaction.

I have written of this before, so I apologize for sounding like a broken record. But the 20- and 30-somethings in my orbit REALLY love 90s music. They don't appear to crave Duran Duran or Blondie or Human League (although they will listen politely).

What apparently gets the young adults dropping tips in the jar is the Goo Smash Blossom Blowfish Peppers Mud Jam Sugar Temple stuff.

I worked so hard for so many years to please people in a bar on a Tuesday night. Writing, arranging, recording, performing. Most of it goes unnoticed and is not missed.

But if you play "All Star" or "Loser" or whatever? Prepare to be drenched in boozy affection. There will suddenly be five post-collegiate women in sparkly tank tops dancing in front of the stage. I do not even pretend to understand it.

about ten years ago I was talking to a DJ who worked in similar environment and noted that "Crimson & Clover" seemed to transcend generations.

As much as I'll ride for the '90s, "Take on Me" / "Don't You Want Me" are sure as hell better songs than "Loser" / "All Star"...

in regards to the fetishism of decades, it did seem locally that 80s nostalgia was dwarfing 90s for a looooong time, and I think that's sometimes largely due to the false homogenous association given to each decade.

Like for many people, 80s music is FUN PARTY music, with lots of synths, drugs, and dancing, and then the 90s came around and everybody is depressed or melancholy and on heroin and playing loud guitarists or rapping about killing people, that's no 'fun'!

obv neither of those two stereotypes are remotely accurate but for casual folk who just want to go out for a fun night of dance, these aren't people who are going to be screaming at the DJ to play Human League's "Human" or The Motels "Only the Lonely", they'll be yelling for Bon Jovi and "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and not paying attention to the lyrics of the "happy" songs that actually aren't really 'happy' songs.

but I do think 90s nostalgia is taking off here a lot more recently, a friend of mine a few years go did a 90s breakup cabaret where she sang all 90s breakup songs and the building was packed, everybody loved it. and plus any time someone sings "Plush" at a karaoke night everybody sings full-throated (once saw a dancer dance to it at an adult establishment and all of the men were ignoring her and singing to each other)

it did seem for a while that 90s nostalgia/revivalism was really going to be confined to hip-hop (and I don't blame anybody, that was a great era of hip hop) but now all of it seems to be embraced. Cranberries popular on jukeboxes again, and 90s dance parties seem to be a much bigger thiing than like ten years ago.

"Don't You Want Me" was once a pretty vapid guilty pleasure... it's just had a 18 year head start on "All Star" towards canonization.

I wonder why the 90s broke the late-20th century cycle of the 20 year nostalgia revival? It's basically taken 30 years, with only tentative traction a decade ago. Something something Napster?

It's not clear to me which is the fun decade and which is the nostalgia decade between the 80s and 90s.

I think "Breakfast at Tiffany's" soured the 90s for everybody for a while and they just finally got over it

xpost

The '80s revival started basically in 1992-1993, my freshman year of college. The radio station was already playing A Flock of Seagulls, period Roxy Music, Visage, and The B-52's on Mondays. The first Living in Oblivion comp was released in 1992, I think. That decade and its confusing signals about What It Means never disappeared.

Damn good post up there, Neanderthal.

90s nostalgia is taking off here a lot more recently

In the category of "things that are probably quite obvious but which I just realized, because I am an idiot" is that the retro fun party music that was popular 10 years ago is different from the retro fun party music that is popular right now.

And it makes sense (to people who are not idiots like me) that the optimal focal distance for retro fun party music may have shifted, in the last 10 years... approximately 10 years.

It's one of those Duh-moment realizations like "when did I become the same age as OLD PEOPLE?"

Tl;dr: the frisson of recognition that greeted "Hungry Like the Wolf" in 2013 is just about the same as the frisson of recognition that greets "No Myth"in 2023.

to my generation 80s stuff was more of a guilty pleasure - like I remember people making fun of Devo and 80s hairstyles constantly. a few years later people started to like it in earnest and then a decade or so later you had Stranger Things. 90s revival is maybe a bit weirder because that decade had so many things in a blender - like it's hard to imagine what a revival of stuff like Cake, Beck, and Soul Coughing would even sound like. whereas the 80s had a very distinct sound. or rather distinct synthesizers and drum machines that you can't use anymore without sounding like an 80's throwback.

Where are you hangin' out, Puffin, that you're hearing "No Myth"??

because I am an idiot

Would you say you... "ain't the sharpest tool in the shed"(?)

I wonder why the 90s broke the late-20th century cycle of the 20 year nostalgia revival?

The Y2K revival is happening right now... but the music hasn't come back as strong as the '80s never left!

lol @ morrisp

90s revival is maybe a bit weirder because that decade had so many things in a blender

For example, HEART IN A BLENDER

ahem

Um, anyway, to Alfred, "No Myth" has long been a staple of my acoustic trio's set. Along with "Boys of Summer," "No One Is to Blame," "Straight Up," "Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want," "Hungry Like the Wolf," "Harden my Heart," etc.

props for "No One is to Blame"

who plays the sax in your Quarterflash cover

I do.

My 6-year-old daughter loves the Go-Go’s and Joan Jett. We sometimes watch old music videos with the kids, and the ones from the ‘80s hit in a way that the ‘90s ones don’t (even though I have more personal nostalgia for the ‘90s stuff). You hear these songs everywhere, kids know them, etc. There’s something about ‘80s music that seems to keep it at the culture’s center of gravity.

Like for many people, 80s music is FUN PARTY music, with lots of synths, drugs, and dancing, and then the 90s came around and everybody is depressed or melancholy and on heroin and playing loud guitarists or rapping about killing people, that's no 'fun'!

It's more like 80's pop songs and artists on the whole are quirky and idiosyncratic and comfortable in their own skin. Lots of Ally Sheedys waving their colorful freak flags, and then apart from a few novelty hits like 'She Don't Use Jelly', the 90's are dominated by the Emilio Estevez musclehead guy from the Breakfast club. He's boasting about how awesome he is. Whether that's a reaction to all the Nirvana self-loathing stuff, or vice-versa, they're two sides of the same coin.

There are always going to be counter-examples, but what I don't see much of in the 90's is that kind of honest self-acceptance and it's not hard to see why that resonates more with kids.

Lots of Ally Sheedys

My next band name, thanks

I think part of the reason the 90s didn't have that as a lot of musicians in the 90s did struggle with accepting themselves. I mean obviously sunshine pop was a thing in the 90s, it wasn't as if it was this purely drab decade, as with all of them, it had a lot of things.

but a lot of the mainstream rock that hit airwaves, esp the stuff that the mainstream called grunge (but wasn't necessarily actually grunge) was about depression, addiction, loss, which, not that 80s rock bands didn't sing about them (though you were less likely to hear HAIR BANDS and their hit singles be about anything but hedonism)...but there just seemed to be more volumes of it with 90s rock. one of Alice in Chains's singles from Jar of Flies, which most karaoke hosts have, "Nutshell", ends "If I can't be my own, I'd feel better dead"...shit is heavy, it's a bummer of a tune and Layne was living in Hell at the time. STP's "Creep" even, that sucker's an earworm, but their hit song had Weiland wailing that he was half the man he used to be. None of the bravado and cocksure attitude of 80's hair metal.

It probably explains why I gravitated towards shit like Alice in Chains in high school, like, I never dealt with ANYTHING at that level obviously, but the mid to late 90s were where I first noticed my mental health declining and was bullied and felt very angry, isolated and closed off from the rest of the world. for me, I didn't want these bouncy alternative pop songs, I wanted slow dirgey shit about death and slowly wasting away, or losing someone and never getting them back.

to my generation 80s stuff was more of a guilty pleasure - like I remember people making fun of Devo and 80s hairstyles constantly. a few years later people started to like it in earnest and then a decade or so later you had Stranger Things. 90s revival is maybe a bit weirder because that decade had so many things in a blender - like it's hard to imagine what a revival of stuff like Cake, Beck, and Soul Coughing would even sound like. whereas the 80s had a very distinct sound. or rather distinct synthesizers and drum machines that you can't use anymore without sounding like an 80's throwback.

― frogbs, Friday, February 10, 2023 8:43 AM

frogs otm that's how i remember it happening as well. "80s backlash" was very strong for a while. to some folks, it never really went away —and that's fine— but it was def not cool to like a lot of 80s pop culture for a while. maybe about 97ish is when i remember the "party weekend" radio format started showing up. you know the one: they would play all 80s from bon jovi to romeo void, doesn't matter as long as somebody remembers it right?

i'd like to mention something along the theme of this thread, but a bit off topic sorry. 16-22 was 1997-2003 and i'm finding a lot over the past few years that the sound of that era (or more specifically, 94-99) is what i remember most fondly. even now, i go back to stuff that i either dismissed at the time or was completely unaware of and i find that it just simply appeals to me. something about the familiar production quirks of the era, i guess: the novelty-ization of the hiphop inspired "dusty drum loop", the general onslaught of more "electronica" (lol) elements, and that one drum sound (idk on this one; i can't get any more specific. it's like the "gated snare" of the 90s but it's a whole kit sound. i've recognized it on albums made during that period across continents, so maybe it has more to do with a specific mic that was popular during the time. again: idk i'm not music scholar or educated journalist, but it's a very specific drum sound from the mid-late 90s. maybe someone else can expound?). all that stuff just sounds warm and comforting to me these days. i still can't get all the way on board with a lot of the pop stuff of that era, but i have a lot more curiosity about it these days.

anyway, cool post. always enjoy reading all ya'll.

I remember being a HS freshman in 1990, and overhearing some cool, preppy seniors talking about music/movies or something... one of them said, "We're starting to look back at the '80s and go... ugh."

they said while playing Phil Collins's "Another Day in Paradise" on their boombox

There isn't a week that passes when I don't fight a rando on Twitter or a message board who calls Scritti Politti "dated" because they use drum machines + keyboards. "You wouldn't accuse a certain Rickenbacker 12-string sound from 1965 dated, would you?" is my conventional response, and it usually makes'em splutter.

*of sounding dated

(idk on this one; i can't get any more specific. it's like the "gated snare" of the 90s but it's a whole kit sound. i've recognized it on albums made during that period across continents, so maybe it has more to do with a specific mic that was popular during the time. again: idk i'm not music scholar or educated journalist, but it's a very specific drum sound from the mid-late 90s. maybe someone else can expound?).

I can't speak to the technical aspects of this -- though it likely involves just a different application of compression and EQ than had previously been popular -- but I heard a song off Jeff Buckley's Grace a few days ago (an album that has not held up well for me at all, for whatever reason) and the snare sound instantly tied it to the '90s. It's just as fat as the typical hair metal snare sound, but warmer, less high-end/snarey, and stripped of ostentatious high-frequency reverb (there is reverb, it's just not ladled on). As for the rest of the kit, there's a consistency in tone that started to become more prominent in drums around this time. The best analogy I can come up with is that, like with cars, drums were now being designed and manufactured using computers rather than slide rules. It's that clear, unchanging, resonant tone that I associate with DW drums (which really started becoming super popular around this time). Essentially, there would never again be a tom sound like there'd been on the Kinks' "Strangers" (listen to the "howl" of the drum in the outro) -- that kind of (for lack of a better term) "gritty" tone had been designed out of new drums (and most drum heads).

Great contributions, all. This is one of my favorite topics and I am grateful for the excuse to think about Scritti Politti instead of the dreary slog of life and work and school and kids and bills and repairing the Honda and cleaning the stupid house.

Anyway. My own personal ages 16-22 were 1986-1992.

My hazy memory is that I aged out of pop during those specific years. "Classic Rock" was a thing in about 1987/8. So it was totes normal to listen to Pink Floyd and the Who and Steve Winwood and Don Henley that year. By the time I was 22 I was more into jazz and classical and other artsy shit. Plus "college rock," which was like REM, Talking Heads, Replacements, Throwing Muses, and other ephemera now called "alternative."

In contravention of the thread title I date my time of musical porousness to ages 11-17, not 16-22. But the larger point remains valid.

ty tarfumes! i figured it must have been a kind of confluence of changing thoughts in sound engineering and new tech coming out. to expound on my tastes a little more, there's also a lot of familiar guitar effects from that period that i just happen to really enjoy. and of course those were mass manufactured so it figures. kind of like the crybaby wah was everywhere in the 70s i guess.

also xpost alfred i have to confess that i'm one of those people: i used to use "this sounds dated!" as a way to negatively critique the music. as if it's cupid and psyche's fault that it got made when it did.

i'm so sorry.

(if it's any consolation: now i don't even care, i only like music that's offensive to my enemies.)

and finally, this is very otm for me as well—

I date my time of musical porousness to ages 11-17, not 16-22. But the larger point remains valid.

― Auf Der Martini (Ye Mad Puffin), Friday, February 10, 2023 9:53 AM

piggybacking on the 'dated' comments, it just seems to get used shorthand to suggest "lol this sound/instrument only belongs in music within a tiny confined period". whereas the real way to use "dated" as a pejorative for me, is for those retro acts that seem more interested in creating an artificial replication of the aesthetic without giving the same energy to the material, like they'll get the sound and production right but the songs are an afterthought. like it's 'dated' because they were more interested in creating a wax statue of something rather than embodying it

like typically I hate 'dated' in a review. oh noes they used a Fairlight CMI outside of 1983

otm

so this raises a question— when does "dated" become "revival"?

that's something I really appreciate about the stuff coming out on 100% Electronica, it's kinda dialed into that specific 90's ethereal production style. when I listen to it, it kinda sounds like how I remember the 90s being, moreso than actually listening to tunes from that era. the exception (for some reason) being Savage Garden, those songs still sound a bit magical to me. anyway here are a couple tunes that I think represent what I'm talking about:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kieVYydeEOQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAIwC8aFcH4

Tarfumes, I am intrigued by your explication of drum history (speaking as someone who literally owns a DW drum kit) but I am going to need a couple more examples of what you do and don't mean. Can you elaborate?

obviously sunshine pop was a thing in the 90s

hi dere

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1fzJ_AYajA

Isn’t it an old Rickenbacker 12-string on the Friends theme song? It’s probably that kind of thing that throws people off when assessing what’s dated and what’s not.

Tarfumes, I am intrigued by your explication of drum history (speaking as someone who literally owns a DW drum kit) but I am going to need a couple more examples of what you do and don't mean. Can you elaborate?

The best way I can explain it is that on modern (post-'80s) drums, the tone stays consistent as it decays. Whereas, in addition to the Kinks example, listen to Bonham's first tom hits on his solo at the end of "Rock & Roll" -- there's a growl that accompanies the decay after the hit. Now, the journey from that sound to the '90s DW tom sound includes years of experiments with muffling, the introduction of clear plastic heads (less room for growl), plus more widespread use of "concert toms" (only a top head, resulting in far less tone and sustain, but far more projection from the hit). There's as many ways to tune (and hit) drums as there are drummers, but the kind of "growl" I'm talking about really vanished once drum manufacturing reached a certain degree of consistency. If that makes any sense.

thinking about "Steal My Sunshine" it occurs to me that there was totally this late 90's trend of coming up with cool and unique beats first, often by looping a cool sample, and then doing some rapping over the top. or something hip-hop adjacent at least. so many big hits were built that way, not just Len but also "One Week", "Summer Girls", "Circles", arguably "Mambo No. 5". lotta people hated these songs but at least they all sounded fun and very different to anything else. I realized later this is why I had a thing for "Old Town Road", cuz in my mind that's just a 90's tune really. or at least it had the spirit of the 90's. and to think it probably all started with MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice.

also Tarfumes I appreciate you bringing up "Strangers" here because that outro always bounces around in my head because the drums sound so unique and I never figured out why, exactly

In my case this is true in one sense and false in another. It's false in the sense that very few of my favorite albums from ages 16-22 are still my favorite albums today. Most of my favorite albums I had not heard yet by age 22. However it's partly true in the sense that, roughly speaking, the styles of music that meant the most to me between 16-22 are still the styles that tend to immediately sound best to me today. I don't have to work to appreciate it.

Tarfumes, intriguing!

I guess I can hear what you call "growl" in tom decays - but to my ear it is more about peaking/distortion, i.e., an artifact of the recording technique and signal chain of the day.

Geoff Emerick seems to credit himself with inventing close-mic technique, but he is most famous for recording a certain Mr. Starkey. That dude had an inhuman, and possibly unconscious, control of his dynamics - and as a result never redlined. From there I guess we go to the Glyn Johns triangle technique, which yielded a pleasing "one instrument" vibe. From there I think engineers got intoxicated by the lure of close-micing everything individually and I doubt they were always careful about where the signal went from there. I suspect 1970s engineers just hadn't really grokked what to do with compression and gating yet.

Further (to drive this abstruse discussion even further afield) I am not sure I buy that the drums themselves were producing distinctly different sounds. Heads, yes absolutely; a double-ply oil-filled Pinstripe or Hydraulic head basically accomplishes what Ringo's tea towels did back in the day. I have lovingly played a cheap-ass plywood 1970s Rogers kit, some mid-level Pearl and Gretsch offerings, and my current DW stuff - when I put my preferred heads on them and tune them like I generally do, the sonic result is basically the same. Though I have spent many thousands of American dollars on musical gear, I suspect that a pinch I could use a bunch of yogurt containers and paint buckets and get pretty much the same sound.

I have (had) kits on the extreme ends of the tonal spectrum: a 1995 Starclassic maple set (mfd by Tama) and a 1977 Premier birch (I'm pretty sure) kit. With the same type of heads (Remo coated Ambassador) they sound WAY different from one another. There are many design factors involved in how they differ from one another, things like bearing edges and reinforcement rings and the reflectivity of maple vs. birch -- and no way could I tune one kit to sound like the other. It's not physically possible (unless I put clear heads on everything and dampened them all like crazy so they sounded like cardboard boxes). BUT I do hear what you're saying, and I've heard it with guitarists: Paul Weller's Rickenbacker-Peavey setup couldn't be more different than his SG-Marshall rig, but both sound like Weller. And there's the famous story of Bonham sitting down at Dave Mattacks' set with the 18" bass drum and it sounding just like Bonham.

mad respect to you Tarfumes, I love drum nerdery

(confession: I actually do put clear heads on almost everything and I absolutely do dampen them like crazy, so I am pretty much your sonic nemesis)

lol yeah I like resonant drums (apart from when I was in a hardcore band and took the bottom heads off for maximum volume).

is there a film you could point to that does for 90s music what "The Wedding Singer" did for 80s music?

I don't have to work to appreciate it.