FEATURE:
Teenage Dream
PHOTO CREDIT: @gemmachuatran/Unsplash
Are Our Adolescent Years the Most Important in Terms of Music Discovery?
___________
I have explored this topic before…
PHOTO CREDIT: Katie Gerrard/Unsplash
but I wanted to return to the theme because of a new series from journalist and writer Jude Rogers. For me, there are different stages of life when music took on a new significance. As a pre-teen, I was listening to a lot of my parents’ stuff and bonding with my peers and wider world through music. Although music would be more dominant and important years later, those earliest years were really instrumental and exciting. Rogers’ series explores music’s impact at various stages of life. I think that the teenage years are the ones where music is more pivotal and affecting. Before coming onto that, there is an interesting article from The Guardian regarding the notion that Classical music can make babies smarter. My earliest musical memory was when I was a couple of years old. Though Classical music was not part of my life when I was extremely young, there was a lot of different sounds and genres in the family home. It was interesting reading The Guardian’s findings and points:
“The idea that listening to Mozart makes babies smarter surfaced in the 1990s in a study published in Nature: a dubious theory, though naturally I tried it on my young, leaving us exhausted but, surely, super-alert. How the results compared with those of the Italian buffaloes whose mozzarella reportedly improved after exposure to Mozart I’ll never know. Disappointingly, the “Mozart effect” theory has long been discredited: his music may bring you joy but it won’t raise your IQ.
PHOTO CREDIT: @invent/Unsplash
How to introduce children to music, as listeners, performers or serious musicians, remains a perennial question. A new book out in July, The Musical Child by Joan Koenig, is full of sensible ideas to try out on newborn and young. American-born, the author has run a successful, multilingual musical school in Paris, l’école Koenig, for 30 years.
My feeling is that you will probably want Koenig to move in with you to help with those games-exercises, from clapping to squatting to waggling legs in the air, activities you may already be attempting with Joe Wicks. Her informative book is the next best thing.
A BBC success story
In a galling week for the BBC, especially depressing for those of us who worked there during the period under scrutiny by the Dyson investigation, or who knew some of the figures now being called to account, here’s something to raise spirits.
Those fast-receding principles – inform, educate, entertain – established by the first BBC director general, John Reith, still hold good in some quarters. The BBC’s Ten Pieces, a series of short films showcasing classical music aimed at seven- to 14-year-olds, is being shown on national TV for the first time this week, daily on CBBC”.
IN THIS PHOTO: Jude Rogers/PHOTO CREDIT: Katherine Anne Rose/The Observer
In a BBC radio series, Jude Rogers speaks to musicians, neuroscientists, psychologists and music-lovers to discover how fundamental music is at each stage of our lives. It is definitely worth listening to. I was particularly hooked on the ‘teenage life’ episode and Rogers’ experiences of music during her teenage years. I have written a few nostalgia pieces during lockdown. I think it is inevitable that we would look back at a safer and less stressful time to help us cope moving ahead. Rather than retreat in the past and argue the musical merits of the 1990s vs, today, I wanted to talk more generally about how music was impactful during my teenage years. I feel music can be hugely influential between the ages of birth and pre-teen years. We also learn a lot from music in our twenties and thirties. Also, music can take on new importance as we grow older. There is something magical, tragic, soul-searching and unique about our teenage experiences. Perhaps it is because we are still growing, finding our place in the world and attending school – a stage of life that sees us meeting new friends, challenges and undertaking huge decisions. In my pre-teen years, there was this mix of musical experiences. I was discovering different genres through my parents, though I was also discovering new artists through my friends. When I became a teenage, I think that there was this greater independence. If music pre-teenage years was a soundtrack to carelessness and a lack of responsibility, there was greater nuance and utilitarianism when I entered a more complex and rich time.
PHOTO CREDIT: @alicemoore/Unsplash
Attending high school, I was faced with the precipice of adulthood and this sense that I was growing up and the world was changing around me. Most of my experiences are positive, though there were also some scary and challenging ones that were quite tough. As someone who has lived with depression since those days, it was hard to discuss problematic and troubling moments. Music offered an outlet and, at times, provided answers. So many crucial and life-changing experiences occur when we are at high school. From crushes and new lessons through to high hopes and tragedies, so much happens during those years. Some of those moments are consciously attached to music and particular songs. For me, there are these subconscious associations where certain songs score these big moments. Away from that, and I feel the teenage years were the first where I bought a lot of music – rather than sharing music with friends and hearing what my family were listening to. There was this physical curiosity that manifested itself in so many interesting ways. I love Jude Rogers’ series, and it got me thinking about the teen days and why our musical discovery peaks here. I have sourced this article before, yet I want to return to a piece from The Verge that focused on a New York Times study regarding our teen tastes and how they enforce our adult tastes:
“A New York Times analysis of Spotify data has found that the songs we listen to during our teen years set our musical taste as adults.
For men, the most important period for forming musical taste is between the ages of 13 to 16. Men were, on average, aged 14 when their favorite song was released. For women, the most important period is between 11 and 14, with 13 being the most likely age for when their favorite song came out. It also found that childhood influences were stronger for women than men and the key years for shaping taste were tied to the end of puberty.
The NYT analyzed every Billboard chart-topping song released between 1960 and 2000. Citing Radiohead’s “Creep” as an example, the NYT found the song is the 164th most popular song among 38-year-old men. These men would have been around 14 years old at the time the song was released in 1993, making that selection consistent with the analysis. “Creep” isn’t even in the top 300 songs for those born 10 years earlier or 10 years later. Meanwhile, “Just Like Heaven” by The Cure was released in 1987 and is popular with women aged 41, who would have been 11 at the time of the song’s release”.
I think that it is important to bring that article back in. Everyone has different experiences with music during their teenage years. I think the one thing that bonds us all is how music can provide so much wisdom, stability and memories during a very important passage of life. In a way, this is why so many of us return to the music of our teens deep into adulthood.
Just to expand on this point before rounding off. An article from the BBC went into more detail regarding the reasons as to why music plays such a big part of our adolescent years:
“The nostalgia surrounding our favourite songs isn’t just a recollection of old memories; scientific studies show we remember more from our adolescence and early twenties than any other period of our lives.
The music we listen to during this period has greater lasting impact than songs in later life because of a psychological phenomenon called the reminiscence bump.
Our memories define who we are and shape our sense of identity, but they are not evenly distributed throughout our life.
We have fewer memories from birth to about eight-years-old, while at the other end of the scale our minds can easily recall memories that happened most recently, although this does decline with age.
However, researchers have found there is a key age between the ages of 10 to 30-years-old when the reminiscence bump applies, meaning our memories have a particular affinity for recalling events.
The reminiscence bump means songs from our teenage years connect with us through our lives.
The power of emotional communication
The reminiscence bump happens for everything – our favourite books, films, sports stars and music, but evidence suggests music features most highly because musical memories are stored in a ‘safe’ area of the brain which is more resilient and protected against age related conditions.
“Music is one of the most fundamental ways that we can express emotions”, says Prof Catherine Loveday, a cognitive neuropsychologist at the University of Westminster.
Prof Loveday has extensively studied the relationship between music and memory.
She spent the last eight years asking people about their music memories and their preference for music across a lifetime.
She found there is a consistently reliable peak in both memory and preference for music people listened to during their teenage years.
Even when working with people in their eighties she found their strongest musical memories take them back to their youths.
It’s not necessarily when the music was released that is relevant but rather the time frame during which the music was important to an individual.
One theory for why this happens is that our minds undergo an intense and rapid phase of development during our teenage years and early twenties so our budding brains and memory systems are at their peak absorbing as much information about the world as they can.
IMAGE CREDIT: @morganhousel/Unsplash
Neural connections
Prof Loveday explained that listening to our favourite music has a fundamental effect on the brain; there’s a surge of activity in the reward pathways that increases the levels of dopamine and oxytocin in our brains - the same pathways that are triggered when we do anything pleasurable such as eating, drinking or dancing.
“There is evidence that structural elements of music get physically tied to our autobiographical memories” she said.
“Musical reminiscence bump is so powerful because we attach music to particularly emotional times.”
The strength of these memories can also be explained by identity theory.
Our teenage years are a time of development socially, biologically and cognitively, and we start to build our own independent sense of identity.
It’s during this period when we start to make key decisions that help shape who we are – who we surround ourselves with, our attitudes to things, what job we want to pursue, what we want to study, where we want to live.
The power of firsts
It’s a lot more powerful when the brains processes exciting, new experiences than boring ones, and during this period of ‘firsts’ we start to build a bank of self-defining memories – first kiss, first car, first time travelling abroad, first time away from home, first time going to a concert.
“Music provides the soundtrack to our lives.” Matt Griffiths CEO of Youth Music, which funds music-making projects for 0-25 year olds, explained.
PHOTO CREDIT: @eliottreyna/Unsplash
“It stirs powerful emotions and feelings, recalling vivid memories.
“It defines who we are, creates precious bonds and friendships, makes us feel better.
“Again and again, the evidence we gather at Youth Music demonstrates powerfully the personal and social benefits of music-making, how young people benefit from this and develop their own coping strategies, which they draw on particularly in difficult times”.
I wonder how many of us think about music in terms of age and which periods of life were the most important. Taking ‘adolescence’ as a few years before the teenage boundary, that was a really big and personality-moulding time. I do think the teenage years are when music impacts the most. I was very fortunate that my teen years occurred during a decade as busy and excellent as the 1990s. No matter which decade you became a teen, we all have stories of the albums and songs that have accompanied some of our greatest experiences. Through such a hard time, listening to music that I first heard during my teenage years has been great. Not only was it good to reminisce and cast my mind fondly back to that time. It has also allowed me to…
KEEP looking forward.