Timeline of your interest in music

This here is a lovely idea for a thread! <3

Here would be my timeline:

Age 3-4 (1995/1996):
Primarily Raffi. Pretty sure my mum took me to see him live in Downtown San Diego.

Age 4-7 (1997-2000):
We mostly listened to Red Grammer (Andy Grammer’s father, a children’s music musician) whenever I was in the kid, though I did recognize some pop songs during this period as well, such as “Wannabe” by Spice Girls, “Ray of Light” by Madonna, “Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)” by The Offspring, and “I Believe I Can Fly” by R. Kelly.

Ages 8-9 (2000-early 2002):
This was probably the first time I truly started to listen to real pop more regularly. My sister was obsessed with Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys during this period, so I was exposed plenty to them and enjoyed them from what I remember. However, I also listened a lot to the soundtracks to The Parent Trap ‘98 and Shrek, both of which are kid movies but still featured non-kiddie music.

Ages 10-11 (2002-2004):
Around this time, I got hooked on the American Now That’s What I Call Music! series, thus immersing me completely with pop music from the late ‘90s and early 2000s. I also listened plenty to some of my sisters albums, such as her S Club 7 albums and also her soundtracks to The Princess Diaries and the remake of Freaky Friday.

Age 12 (2004-2005):
Mostly a continuation of the previous era, except I was even more attuned to current music because I listened to San Diego’s top 40 station. I was also particularly interested in The Ataris, and also began listening to music from DDR, which I got into on 5 November 2004 (the day The Incredibles hit theaters).

Age 13 (2005-3 November 2006):
Because pop music started to really suck in America around mid-late 2005, I turned instead towards older albums, as well as more DDR music. The Beastie Boys, Captain Jack, and The Offspring were my favourite bands during 7th grade. I hardly followed pop at all during this period.

Ages 14-17 (4 November 2006-2010):
My taste in music was revolutionized overnight when I listened to Super Eurobeat 172 and this song came on. During a period when pop had become so crass, simplistic, and childish, this song, plus the several that followed it on the compilation, had a similarly seismic impact on me that “Smells Like Teen Spirit” did for Generation X 15 years earlier. In part thanks to the enormous length of the Super Eurobeat series, eurobeat was almost exclusively what I listened to for a few years. The vast majority of American pop at the time sounded absolutely dismal to me by comparison.

I’ll finish my timeline later, but my work break is over, so I have to get back to what I was doing before.

Thanks! Glad to hear that you like it.


Sorry if I've asked this before (it's 4:42am here, so at the moment, I can't remember if I have or not ), but just out of curiosity, how did you become interested in the American Now series? Was it through listening to your sister's albums and then just deciding to give the Now! series a listen? 

Ages 18-21 (2010-mid-2014):
Eurobeat continued to dominate my playlist, but I also integrated a little more diversity as well. Steely Dan became my favourite band in 2010 and served as a soothing counterpoint to the very manic and fast-paced eurobeat I generally blasted. Around the same tine, I got highly into ‘80s music and bought a variety of songs from the decade that I would listen to on custom CD’s in my car. Also on my playlist starting in 2012 were They Might Be Giants, Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder (starting more in early 2011), and occasionally a bit of hip hop like Nas and Jay-Z (I got into Nas in summer 2011 and Jay-Z around early 2014).

Ages 22-25 (mid-2014-early 2018):
Due to a drought of worthwhile new material, I lost most of my interest in eurobeat for a few years and instead spent the coming few years not only familiarizing myself with pop music from throughout the decades, but becoming an expert on them, too. I bought probably several hundreds of albums during this period, in addition to collecting not only the entire British Now series, but also making several Now-style compilations of my own to represent the hits of specific points in time and in specific regions. I started off this period sort of forcing myself to listen to what people seemed to considered truly artistic music because I felt super insecure and wanted to lay claim to my perspective, but gradually, my taste in music veered more and more towards bubbly dance pop like S Club 7 and 80s synth cheese.

Age 25- (early/mid-2018-present):
I still have a super diverse taste and appreciation of retro pop music, but eurobeat has finally found its way back to the forefront of my interest in music, thanks to a recent series of albums from a eurobeat label I always really liked. In fact, I am actually producing my own eurobeat music now (I don’t feel I can post a sample of it yet, though).

Thought I would do an updated version since i'm turning 22 tomorrow and I have been reflecting more on the past as a result. Also, I have re-discovered a number of songs from my childhood since I last made a post almost three years ago, so this version will be more accurate.

There's a lot to cover, so i'm going to keep adding to this when I get the chance:

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Age 9 (2008):

My favourite mainstream hits at the time -

* "Untouched" - The Veronicas
* "Where The City Meets The Sea" - The Getaway Plan
* "Twisted" - Brian McFadden
* "Crawl" - Kings of Leon

2008 was the last year where I mainly chose to listen to the nu-metal bands that I had enjoyed since my earlier childhood. I did closely follow the music that was on the charts that year as well, but Linkin Park, Static-X and System of a Down were still the three bands that I listened to the most often. Part of the reason for that was probably due to how stale and radio-friendly rock music had become by 2008. Most of it wasn't too my liking.

Looking back, age 9 was arguably the first age where my tastes in music slowly started to expand. I started to take a bit on an interest in The Beatles when I was 9. My Dad, who has always been a massive Beatles fan and owns a collection of Beatles memorabilia, burnt a few songs on CD for me to listen to, just to see if I liked them or not. My favourite songs off the burnt CD were "Strawberry Fields Forever", "I Am The Walrus" and "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"; to this day, I would still consider them as being some of my favourite Beatles songs.

I absolutely loved "Untouched" at the time. I was introduced to it when I was sitting in the backseat of my friend's Mum's car after his party and when the song happened to come on, they started singing along to it and asked me if I knew the song. It instantly become one of my favourite songs as I loved the guitar riffs in it. A few days after, I asked my Mum to download the song for me off Limewire and burn it onto a CD so that we could listen to it in the car. Thankfully, she did, so it meant that I got to repeatedly listen to it in the car for the next few months.

Age 10 (2009):

My favourite mainstream hits at the time -

* "My Life Would Suck Without You" - Kelly Clarkson
* "Waking Up in Vegas" - Katy Perry
* "Broken Leg" - Bluejuice
* "Hey Boys & Girls" - Evermore
* "Sweet Disposition" - The Temper Trap
* "Love Story" - Taylor Swift
* "The Fixer" - Pearl Jam
* "Revelry" - Kings of Leon

This was the first year where I started to dislike a lot of what was being played on the radio. I liked a lot of the pop-rock songs that were on the charts, but I was never able to take an interest in electropop or dance music in general (which is what led to me falling out of touch with music for most of the early 2010s). The biggest guilty pleasure of mine at the time was "Love Story" by Taylor Swift. When I was in the car with my Dad and Grandparents one day, I asked them if they could play the radio (which my Grandparents never normally did in the car) just so that I had a chance of hearing "Love Story". It was secretly a huge favourite of mine!

I have a lot of music-related memories from when I was 10. I can remember the All-American Rejects' "Gives You Hell" being used as a background track in ads for "Packed to the Rafters", as well as "Know Your Enemy" and "Let It Rock" (it was used in a Hyundai ad for the A-League too from what I remember) both being used in the WWE. However, I was never much of a fan of those songs. On our road trip to the Gold Coast for a holiday during the Spring school holidays, I was sitting in the back seat of the car with not much to do and I asked my Mum if I could use her headphones and listen to songs off her iPod Classic. When I was looking at the songs playlist, I decided to listen to ABBA (just for the sake of it) and I actually ended up enjoying listening to songs such as "Waterloo", "Knowing Me, Knowing You" and "Dancing Queen". In the end, I think I spent almost an hour just listening to ABBA, lol.

I can also remember being at my friend's house for the day and we were watching Channel V in his bedroom. He was a huge fan of "21 Guns" by Green Day (which was played a lot as it was a hit at the time), but I never got into it as I thought of Green Day as just being one of those 'emo' bands. That's the downside to having been a 5 year old kid in 2004 and having American Idiot being my first experience of Green Day, I was 'conditioned' into thinking that they were like MCR and Fall Out Boy.

Age 11 (2010):

My favourite mainstream hits at the time were:

* "Whataya Want From Me" - Adam Lambert
* "Rock It" - Little Red
* "Dance The Way I Feel" - Ou Est Le Swimming Pool
* "Baby, I'm Gettin' Better" - Gyroscope
* "Lying" - Amy Meredith
* "Only Girl in the World" - Rihanna

By the time I turned 11 and started to transition out of my childhood, I had largely lost interest in new Top-40 music due to electropop's dominance on the charts. I did still like the occasional 'non-electropop' song though and I was still vaguely in touch with what was popular as a result of my age. 

Age 12 (2011):

My favourite mainstream hits at the time were:

* "What You Want" - Evanescence
* "Check Yes Juliet" - We The Kings
* "The Edge of Glory" - Lady Gaga
* "Animals" - Neon Trees
* "What The Hell" - Avril Lavigne
* "You and I" - Lady Gaga
* "Somebody That I Used To Know" - Gotye
* "Rolling in the Deep" - Adele
* "Wild At Heart" - Birds of Tokyo

Ironically, my interest in Top-40 music actually increased when I was 12 and I liked quite a lot of the songs that were on the charts at the time, despite the fact that electropop was arguably at its peak. All in all, I generally liked the direction that music and pop culture in general were heading in. Even my Gen X'er parents liked Gotye and Adele when they both bursted onto the scene; my Dad was actually the one who introduced me to Linkin Park's cover of "Rolling in the Deep". It seemed as though Top-40 music had improved in overall quality.

I was introduced to "What The Hell" and "Check Yes Juliet" when I was in a motorbike store with my Mum's fiance' and both songs happened to come on the radio. Even though the former is arguably an emo song (which was a point of contention for me as a kid), I liked "Check Yes Juliet" as it sounded like the rock music I could remember hearing on the radio several years earlier and that was the thought I actually had at the time. It was kind of 'homely' for me to a point. I really liked "The Edge of Glory". In fact, I liked it so much that my Mum even bought it for me off iTunes. She bagged me out for openly liking a Lady Gaga song, but it didn't worry me. I knew it was a good song.

Evanescence's then-new self-titled album was a huge guilty pleasure. My Mum had been a fan of their music since 2003, and she bought the album off iTunes and played it in the car on a regular basis. I never admitted to liking any of the songs as I was never a fan of the band and I would always pretend that I 'hated' the album whenever it would come on. However, deep down, I actually really enjoyed it, and I particularly enjoyed "What You Want". I eventually grew to like "Somebody That I Used To Know" (despite the obsessive overplay) as I recognised it as being a good song and it sounded quite unique. For whatever reason, I thought the chorus sounded '80s-ish at the time, but I don't perceive it that way now. My Dad even bought the album that STIUTK was on and he played the album in the car a few times while the song was charting. I became aware of "Wild At Heart" as the song was used in the television coverage for the 2010/11 Premier League season and it had that alt-rock sound which I especially like. 

Age 13 (2012):

Eww, 2012. Too much electropop and dubstep.  This was the year I became a teenager and started high school. I'm not kidding when I say this, but there wasn't a single Top-40 song at the time that I actually liked. I've come around to liking some songs from back then as I have gotten older, but I still don't like the vast majority of them. It doesn't help that they bring back memories of being in Year 7. 

Seriously though, if you had to be 13 in 2012, you wouldn't like it either, lol. I can remember standing in the history/geography corridor after the bell had gone and kids would repeatedly play "Boomerang" by Skrillex on their smartphones. Songs like "Lonely Boy", "Tongue Tied", "We Are Young" and "Shut Up and Kiss Me" were played over the loudspeakers at the end of every break, all five days a week. Linkin Park, who had been my all-time favourite band, released Living Things that year and the electropop-inspired sound felt like a huge kick in the teeth. One of my friends loved "Burn It Down", but I could never get into it. I chose to listen to Hybrid Theory and Meteora on the bus to/from school instead. 

Age 14 (2013):

My favourite mainstream hits at the time:

* "Southern Sun" - Boy & Bear
* "I Sat By The Ocean" - Queens of the Stone Age
* "It's Time" - Imagine Dragons
* "Seether" - Veruca Salt (obviously not a then-current one, but I discovered/heard it a lot on a rock station I listened to and liked it).
* "Clarity" - Zedd ft. Foxes (guilty pleasure)
* "If I had A Tail" - Queens of the Stone Age
* "Up Up Up" - Givers

My tastes in music began to change when I was 14. This was the age where I really started to become a fan of indie-pop and the hipster subculture, which was in its peak of popularity during my early teens. Just a year earlier, as an example, I didn't like "Pumped Up Kicks" when it was a popular hit, so the fact that I started to like quite a number of indie-pop songs when I was 14 prove that my interests were definitely shifting. I also began to rediscover my love for 90s alt-rock again, and becoming a regular listener of Triple M (a rock radio station) was 'revolutionary' for me as it introduced me to alt-rock songs that I wasn't previously aware of.

That being said, being 14 years old in 2013, I was also subjected to all of the stuff that was on the charts. One of my friends played "What Does The Fox Say?" on his phone quite a lot during break, for example. The people that were in my year group especially liked "Still Into You" by Paramore. 

Age 15 (2014):

My favourite mainstream songs at the time:

* "Come With Me Now" - Kongos
* "Budapest" - George Ezra
* "All About That Bass" - Meghan Trainor (guilty pleasure)
* "Don't Forget Who You Are" - Miles Kane
* "G#" - Kitten
* "High" - Peking Duk" (gp)
* "Somebody To You" - The Vamps ft. Demi Lovato (gp)
* "Take Me Over" - Peking Duk (gp)

2014 was a strange year for music. I actually thought it was somewhat of an improvement over the early 2010s if i'm being honest and I can remember having quite a few 'guilty pleasure' songs at the time. On the other hand though, there were some absolutely dreadful songs like "I'm Ready" and "Turn Down For What" taking up a lot of airplay on the radio, and I consider both of those songs to have been some of the worst songs ever from my high school years. Kids would play "Turn Down For What" on their bluetooth speakers outside the hall during P.E. It's a year that I have something of an attachment with though. I was 15 at the time and I've got a memory associated with almost every single song that was on the ARIA Top-100 Chart for that year.

When I was 15, I gradually started to follow Top-40 radio again and made it something of a mission to see/know what was popular each week. It started off with me listening to the radio from time to time, and then I began to regularly watch a Top-40 music show (which aired after midnight once a week) towards the end of the year. 

Age 16 (2015):

My favourite mainstream hits at the time were:

* "Cool For The Summer" - Demi Lovato
* "Shut Up and Dance" - Walk The Moon (guilty pleasure)
* "Hallelujah" - The Rubens