u/SilverEarly520

From my totally unscientific and highly biased point of view, I think this is one of the most persistent psuedo-scientific myths on the internet today. I've heard A&R people repeat this in a professional capacity as if it's a hard fact, I've seen it on reddit, and I often see articles in the news trying to confirm it with a new study.

The story goes that your brain stops developing at a certain point and that the music you listen to during its developmental stage becomes what you think is "good" and anything else becomes unlistenable noise.

I turned 32 this year, and my experience has been the exact opposite. It seems that with age I have become more attracted to interesting and challenging sounds, and my attention span has grown despite being notoriously short compared to my peers. A few examples:

At age 29 I suddenly got into cloud rap. For whatever reason it didn't hit me when it came out despite being absolutely huge in my friend group and pretty much the defining sound of my generation. I remember I was in highschool when Lil B went insanely viral with Wanton Soup and then a few years later Yung Lean put out Ginseng Strip 2002 and it got shared all over the internet. But when I was young my mind just wasn't open to these songs. Wanton Soup was too musically abstract for me to understand (the production was so raw!), and Yung Lean had layers of irony that went over my head combined with drug and violence references that just turned me off from his music for a long time. It wasn't until much later with age that I found perspective to listen in a new way and hear the emotion, power, and humor in these songs.

I couldnt get into the Smiths until this year. Their music just didn't resonate with me, and Morrisey's politics later in life were (and still are) a massive turn off. But with age I really appreciate the guitar and even Morrisey's depressed sounding obnoxiousness is honestly very charming and entertaining in that context.

I didn't really get into jazz until I was 30. I always respected the musicianship, but I didn't FEEL it until recently. The complex emotions and sense of presence just wasn't something I had the capacity for at a younger age. Yusef Lateef's album Psychicemotus is now an all time favorite.

Bands like Xiu Xiu and The Microphones, I was very aware of for decades as I've always been a fan of bands that cite these artists as influences, but these albums were just too intense for me. They are so intense and so raw. For some reason I started listening to this music just this year, and it really hit me and touched me emotionally and profoundly. These songs are very harmonically complex, there is no way I could have handled it at a younger age.

MF Doom is an artist I've always liked since I was a kid, but back then it was mostly just the vibes I liked. My brain genuinely could not comprehend the wordplay until much later in life, around my mid to late twenties, and that's when I really started to appreciate him as an artist.

Gojira just went way over my head in high school. I didn't listen to a lot of heavy music back then so it just went in one ear and out the other. But listening to them in my late twenties they became an all time favorite band.

I watched a Sun Ra documentary in high school and was always fascinated by his character and art, but I didn't connect emotionally with his music until more than a decade later. His solo albums including his rhodes piano performance are truly beautiful and underrated works of art.

Those are artists I heard at a younger age and couldn't get into but tried again at an older age and absolutely fell in love with. There are also artists I know I probably wouldn't have enjoyed at a younger age but that I've discovered recently and I absolutely LOVE: Suburban Lawns, Whale, Ulver, White Ward, Amon Amarth, and Photokem all come to mind. Also worth noting although it's not entirely music related, but Poppy's art genuinely scarred me when it first came out and now she is one of my favorite artists.

In short I'm having the biggest musical awakening of my life starting around 28 and continuing into my early to mid 30s. Considering the new layers of depth I keep hearing in music, I don't see this trend in my life stalling anytime soon. I know my story is anecdotal, but I'm curious to hear what other takes redditors have on this phenomena. Is it true? Is it a myth?

I only joined to this sub because I didn't know what it was about. And after 2 months lurking I still have no idea.