Open-earedness refers to an individual’s desire and ability to listen and consider different sounds and musical styling. Research has shown that adolescents exhibit higher levels of open-earedness, with a greater willingness to explore and appreciate diverse musical genres. During these years of sonic exploration, music gets wrapped up in the emotion and identity formation of youth; as a result, the songs of our childhood prove wildly influential over our lifelong music tastes.
Weird, I feel like the older I get the more diverse my musical tastes have become.
On the one hand I have a similar experience. More then ever I love searching for artists with a sound that surprises me and that is engrossing.
On the other hand the top comment of every YouTube video of a popular artist from the past is “there has been no good music since [decades ago]”.
Same. I’m 37 and I do regular playlist exchanges with my dad’s 70 year old friend (my dad passed away a few years ago and both of us strongly connected to him through music, so we decided to keep that going through each other). We’re both constantly seeking out new music.
My kids (early 20’s, out and about) are doing the same…I accidentally deleted an entire playlist and they gave me our cobbled lists to create one mega playlist.
Same! However I’m neurodivergent and the study is only talking about an overall trend among all people.