This week has been a walk down memory lane around our house. Our youngest started singing “Mamma Mia” by ABBA because he’d heard snatches of it during a commercial for a local production of “Mamma Mia – The Musical”. My wife took it upon herself to educate him that the song was around a LOT longer than the musical. We’ve been through this with him before; an add during the Olympics parodied “The Banana Boat Song”, and we had to show him it really has nothing to do with financial planning (or the lack thereof).
That, of course, inspired me to go poking around for other ABBA songs I haven’t listened to in several decades, which of course led me into songs from the 1980’s. After getting emotional over old Toto songs I began to wonder: are these songs great on their own, or does anyone today even hear these songs the same way I do?
I have a friend of mine who is convinced that music from the 1980’s was generally crap, but then he grew up during the 1970’s. I began to be aware of music in the 1970’s, and I do have fond memories of many of those songs (hence ABBA), but for the most part it lacks the impact of music from my teen years.
Which led me to the next question: Is there something about the combination of newly-surging hormones, first discoveries of the opposite sex, and the tentative first steps exploring who you are that combines to powerfully write these songs into our DNA? Does the emotion in the songs, amplified by our own teen-amplified emotions burn these songs deep into our psyches?
I’ll be the first to admit that my love of this music is somewhat irrational. I don’t regularly listen to it now–I’ve discovered new groups, new genres, new emotions over the years, and my tastes continue to evolve. But I’m not sure I feel the same thrill of recognition over these songs. It’s almost as if the older I get the less power impact my new discoveries have.
My kids are starting to introduce me to their music, and I’m finding some that I like. But I can see it’s not grabbing me the way it grabs them. And while it somewhat worries me that the music they may be “imprinting on” is of such inferior quality, I have to remind myself that my parents weren’t too fond of what I listened to at that age, either.
Which brings me back to my original thesis. There’s something about the music of your teenage and early adulthood years that seems to stick better than any other period, no matter how much more sophisticated your tastes may grow over time. Nostalgia is potent stuff. Hormone-infused teen nostalgia may approach WMD levels.