I was a teenager in the eighties. My first love (pre-teens) were The Beatles. I watched the film “A Hard Day’s Night” in 1982 and it seem to come from another world, completely unrecognisable to me, and yet it was only 18 years old when I saw it.
When I was early teens I only really listened to contemporary music. I guess I was around 16 when I expanded my musical knowledge beyond what I saw on Top of the Pops or my brothers’ record collections. Like most teenage boys of that age, I had a Jim Morrison obssession. I also loved The Byrds, and of course The Velvet Underground (like any other indie kid).
I went to see The Rolling Stones at Wembley in 1990. They seem ridiculously old and I felt so young, like grandparents. We were on the front row and I got told off by an “adult” for dancing too vigourosly. And yet Mick Jagger was only 47, younger than I am now.
I have two teenage kids now. One night a week we have a family YouTube session where we each pick two videos of songs we’re currently into, and everyone has to vote Hit or Miss. My kids pick stuff up from Tidal and TikTok and they generally have no idea how old stuff is, and they don’t care. They age stuff on YouTube based on whether it is widescreen or the old 4:3 layout. My lad played Slowdive’s Alison the other day and until he saw the video he had no idea it was from his dad’s generation and not a contemporay artist - not least because many of the contempory bands he is into sound exactly like Slowdive. Some of the music my kids listen to is over 40 years old. This seems crazy to me. It would be like me listening to Glenn Miller as a kid.
I thought about all this when I realised that Daughter are about to release their third album ten years after their debut. I can’t believe it’s been ten years already, where does the time go, etc etc. But I also realised that it is 10 years between their first and third album and yet it was just 14 years between The Beatles’ releasing Love Me Do and The Sex Pistols releasing Anarchy in the UK. Just 14 years!
This post is really just an old man yelling at clouds, so feel free to ignore.
Loads of bands and mainly the big famous ones that you’d hear on the radio and was on TV. The Beatles and Bob Dylan mostly but even then not hugely as a teen and really only got hold of Blood On The Tracks, his best album for me, when I was in my 20s.
The biggest album for me that fits the “over 20 years old” cut off is Pet Sounds. I was 18, maybe 19 as I bought it from an Our Price in NW London in summer 1995.
I only knew The Beach Boys surfing style stuff and people kept telling me that “it’s not like that and you gotta buy it”. I heard Hang On To Your Ego on Virgin Radio and loved that track and the DJ said it was from The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds and so I bought it after that.
Naming your favourite ever album might be a hard one for some people. R.E.M. are my favourite band but Pet Sounds is my favourite album after first hearing it nearly 28 years ago.
I remember as a teenager ignoring a lot of older stuff to distance myself from those kids who used to bang on about classic rock being the pinnacle of music or whatever
But older bands wot I did like as a teenager were
My dad’s Tangerine Dream records (mainly Phaedra at that point)
The Cure
Television (by way of Interpol and postpunk revival, ofc)
Echo and the Bunnymen
Other than that I was big into 90s stuff like Sunny Day Real Estate, Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana and so on but that was like 10 years older rather than 20, guess I was into some older stuff like Tim Buckley, Bowie, The Cure etc
I reread what I just posted there and realised I sound like the spin class instructor who tried to get me to join her class because she was playing old school R&B, “you know, like Drake”
I was a teenager in the 00s, I listened to a lot of 90s music but very little before that until my late teens really. Started getting quite into Bob Dylan at uni, and IRS-era REM. Was gonna say Pixies but Doolittle turned 20 the same week I did.
Was just coming into the thread to post about how I was well into Emerson, Lake & Palmer and King Crimson in my early teens, maybe even when I was eleven or twelve. Loved Hawkwind too.
Pink Floyd, Rory Gallagher, Zeppelin, others that fit the usual “I’m 13 and listen to real music from the good old days” vibe. The phase was pretty short-lasting though once I discovered the rebellious/hormonal delight of music that isn’t real. (still like those artists though)
Look, at least you avoided Emerson, Lake & Palmer. Proper dogshit stuff that.
I did listen to this album quite a bit. Thought the singer’s voice was wild at the time but now I hear that he’s just a bit of a yelper with a ridiculous vibrato.
Aged 14-18 from '96-'00 most of the music I listened to from 76 or earlier was basically what you’d expect to see on an Uncut or Mojo cover - Beatles, Rolling Stones, Kinks, The Who, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd. Very much driven by working backwards from Britpop.
I fit into the 80s teenager demographic so predictably for me it was the Byrds, Velvet Underground, Neil Young, Nick Drake - only just sneaking in under the 20 years old rule.
