middle age and music, a meme gakked from Shalmestere

[ppfuf]

"Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn suggests the following test to determine when you became middle-aged: scan his list of #1 summer hits, and the first one you can't hum (even a little bit) marks the year in which you became middle-aged. "
Hmm, it appears my loathing of "rap" music caused me to become middle aged in  August 1997: "I'll Be Missing You" -- Puff Daddy & Faith Evans.
Do I get a delay because I knew songs ten years before I was born?

Comments

[baroness-eilis.livejournal.com]

Odd -- I seem to have started drifting in and out of middle age starting in the 70s...

[ppfuf.livejournal.com]

O, yay! Just the person I needed! Who's autocrating October Crown, please?

[baroness-eilis.livejournal.com]

Titus...

[evil-macaroni.livejournal.com]

Ha - I also failed in 1997.
It's a bad test. A person can listen to one genre of music *obsessively* and miss the popular stuff because it never enters their station's playlist. Most of the songs on that list never entered the alt-rock playlists so I couldn't have heard them, even when I was listening to radio. All except the mad crossover smash hits, of course ("Crazy in Love" comes to mind).

[shalmestere.livejournal.com]

Indeed--all points that came up in discussion over in my LJ.

OTOH, it might be a testament to the "stickiness" of mainstream pop culture that although my musical tastes in college ran to Simon and Garfunkel, Pentangle and Malicorne, leavened by the likes of Thompson Twins, Adam Ant and Haircut 100 (one of my friends had an alt/prog rock program on one of the dorm radio stations)--I was still able to hum all the '80s songs on the list :-)

[cryptocosm.livejournal.com]

Going by the strict rules, I apparently became middle-aged in 1958 (at age 1.) There is, however, a more distinct cut-off: I'm familiar with all but 5 up through 1987 - and none of them from 1988 on. Not that I stopped listening to radio - just Top 40 stations - but I guess if I quit following children's music (or what passes for it) the author's point is made.

[kahnegabs.livejournal.com]

Doesn't work for me: 35 years as a middle school teacher really screws up your natural aging process!

middle age meme

[ktmcg.livejournal.com]

I stopped at August 1989: "Right Here Waiting" -- Richard Marx - I do know a couple after that, then I am mystified.

That was the fall of the Loma Prieta quake, and becoming Lady of the Mists...

[metageek.livejournal.com]

Apparently I became middle-aged at 18.

...even though I listened to current music more in my mid-20s. Just not Top 40.