Why we grow up loving the music our parents played, according to science
I appreciate that this isn’t going to help my credit among the jaded audience who believe that music journalists should only be people who lived through some of the canon’s most seismic events. But, dear reader, I have a confession to make: I’m actually a Gen Z.
I can already feel the troll comments being typed in my waters, but here’s something to stop you in your tracks before you do: did you know that we might just be the generation most appreciative of our parents’ favourite music? Yes, that’s right: everything from the 1960s to ‘80s, we love just as much as the sounds of today.
Speaking from my own personal experience, I can attest to this being true. I’ve previously waxed lyrical about how Thin Lizzy’s Jailbreak was one of the most pivotal albums of my childhood due to my dad’s love for the band, and the same can be said for my formative sonic memories, consisting of everything from The Beatles to The Supremes to The Pet Shop Boys.
Although it seems a pretty obvious theory to me as to why the music my parents played me in my youth has remained a constant in my listening patterns to this day, it has now been officially confirmed by science. Researchers took a sample of students, at an average age of 20 years old, and found that the music they had the strongest and most positive memories of was their parents’ tunes.
It was also cemented by the fact that the music regularly rotated throughout a person’s adolescence and early adulthood, and the soundtracks were most likely to stick with them throughout the remainder of their lives. If you’re a parent, you should know what to do by now – play your kid the music you love, and you’re sure to make them a diehard fan.
In my own case, it goes a long way to explaining why my music taste is so varied and eclectic. Plus, when it then gets mixed in with the sounds I’ve accrued of my own volition, the daily listening mix can get pretty weird, to say the least. Now that I’m thinking about it, it also does a fair amount of heavy lifting when it comes to the fact that I work in this job.
I have to say, I feel rather justified now, after I was given my fair share of grief in my teenage years for enjoying the ‘60s psychedelics of The Beatles or the stirring power of Motown, interspersed with the usual rounds of One Direction and Lewis Capaldi. My friends may not have appreciated it yet, but surely the power of science has caught up with them now.
Given that the frontal lobe doesn’t complete its development until a person turns 25, I still have two years for my formative music tastes to reach their full potential. If my parents are reading this, feel free to throw any and all recommendations at me; I’ll be more than happy to hear them. I might live to regret writing that in print.
Yet the fact remains, through it all, that science is the major leading factor that dictates the course of our lives, in everything from our personalities to the music we love. For some people, the biological odds have not been in their favour in terms of the tunes they rotate time and time again, but for others, it’s a case of natural selection doing just the right job.
