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Comment by motohagiography | Hacker News Reader

If you do something impossibly difficult that you are the only person in the world who can do it (being Lou Reed), and if you grow or change or don't do it the way other people who can't do it expect, the whole world turns on you and hates you for failing to maintain their illusions and their belief that their memories have meaning in the present.

I sympathize w/ not wanting to play those songs. Imagine you had this huge multi-decade personal journey, and no matter what you build or become, nobody will let you be anything other than the guy you were for a few weeks as a kid when you first wrote that song long before most of them were even born.

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It seems that so many people my age mustered out of finding new music sometime in their college years. As they age they return to that music to, I imagine, remember that time in their life.

I asked a co-worker what he would listen to to remember this time of their life? Maybe I'm an idiot. Maybe no one wants to remember their 30's, their 40's, their 50's....

Anyway (off on a tangent) the point is that people go to Lou Reed concerts to remember when they were in college making a mix-tape including "A Perfect Day" for their boyfriend.

While I feel bad for the artist "artistically", plenty of artist are of course making bank by playing wineries to 50-somethings that now have deeper pockets and want their love shack, baby.

>Anyway (off on a tangent) the point is that people go to Lou Reed concerts to remember when they were in college making a mix-tape including "A Perfect Day" for their boyfriend.

I think those are precisely the type of audiences someone like Lou Reed would hate to have.

> so many people my age mustered out of finding new music sometime in their college years.

There’s a collective pull too. If you’re open minded enough to appreciate new music, but your peers usually don’t, you end up enjoying things alone or only able to musically connect with college age people. The ability to enjoy music with the other similar age peers around you will generally pull you to the older stuff they enjoy too. (Unfortunately hasn’t worked for me)

The phenomenon you're describing is certainly true, but the cause doesn't resonate. I'm almost 40 and super happy with my life, much more than when I was in college. However I still gravitate towards music I've known for decades rather than listening to new stuff. I actually find listening to new music mostly unpleasant now, which is weird because I consumed records like mad till 25 or so.

I do believe there's neural plasticity we can lose as time goes on. Maybe those people, and myself, got busy for a while and forgot how to listen to new music, is all.

I’m older than you and still love new music… but have noticed the variation that exists among many of my/your peers.

My current theory is that while brain development and age plays a role, the psychological trait openness plays an equal role, maybe a greater one with age. Conscientiousness might too.

(I also do music composition and songwriting as a hobby, but I can’t figure out if that’s a contributing cause or another manifestation of the underlying psychology. Fortunately/unfortunately I don’t have the problems of fame tying me to a work I’ve outgrown.)

It's not just neural plasticity, honest.

It's the quality of the music. Most of it is the equivalent of an overly processed sugar-spiked pseudo-food. Tracks are designed to sound the loudest from streams (so they compress the living daylights out of the dynamic range). The songs don't go anywhere: monotonous repetition of one or two chords, nothing complex or surprising. Many used canned beat tracks; that same trap beat you hear over and over again.

Every once in a while you hear new music that's actually new. Music that reaches. But it's so rare to discover because all the main channels are clogged with engineered, safe, sameness. I still like discovering new artists, its just that there are so few that do what bands from the 70s to the early 2000s did. Most of the pop these days is programmed, and even the hip hop seems... artless, all texture, no lyricism.

Besides this being the kind of argument people have been lobbing since the dawn of rock'n'roll, you're slapping a broad brush over a period in music where you have access to more songs than literally anyone in history. And not just more access, but more songs, period. I guarantee if you like the notion of listening to a new band but also sort of really just want to listen to "Jungleland" again like the first time you heard it, someone made that song yesterday. The music didn't change, your priorities did. If you want new music that fits your taste, it's never been so easy to go and find it.

Sorry you feel that way. There is a lot of amazing new music out there, especially electronic.

> It seems that so many people my age mustered out of finding new music sometime in their college years. As they age they return to that music to, I imagine, remember that time in their life.

It also used to be an age where music is simply prevalent, but even that has changed.

Being associated with something even slightly popular can resurrect a 4 decades old hit familiar to the elders from obscurity. However, I haven't yet seen the reverse where something is really popular and drives across age groups.

Where the hell is the modern equivalent to Gangnam Style, for example? (I chose that because it's more modern, but you've got mega-hits that everybody knows from most decades--until about 2010 (see: check any karaoke night--start a betting pool on how long it takes until someone does something from Journey, for example--you won't reach the fifth song) or watch an entire venue join in for something from Neil Diamond)

Taylor Swift is supposedly killing it, yet I probably wouldn't be able to name anything she did in the last 10 years. Depeche Mode is releasing a bunch of new stuff--anybody heard any of it? Johnny Marr has released a bunch of new stuff in the last 10 years--I somehow actually bumped into one song somewhere in public. Has anybody not already a solid David Bowie fan heard anything off of Blackstar? How about Tori Amos? She's still just as brilliant as ever.

The modern equivalent to Gangnam Style was probably Billie Eilish's 'Bad Guy' in terms of ecumenical appeal but in terms of internet-spawned reach, TikTok is generating these hits every year. If you can't name anything Taylor Swift has done in the past 10 years, you're missing out on her strongest and most mature songwriting. From 1989 to her latest album, this has been Taylor Swift's golden era. The rest of the world is aware of this and I hope you'll take this opportunity to jump on board.

And you promptly proved my point: unless you are specifically plugged in (aka tweeny grinding TikTok) you have zero exposure to these things.

I pointed it out: go to a karaoke night. You might catch someone set up "Shake It Off" (okay, I guess I'm wrong--that counts as Taylor Swift within the last 10 years--barely). Maybe. That's it. And we're talking mostly 20-somethings--not 50-somethings.

In the 70s or 80s, you simply couldn't avoid the music. Now, it's quite easy.

A lot more people are enjoying the expansive breadth of modern music tonight in all of its inventiveness and variety through TikTok (and via streamed TV and movie soundtracks, Spotify, Bandcamp and the rest of the music platforms, via the vinyl resurgence, etc etc etc) than they are via... karaoke. Your unwillingness to notice it is a shame, but not the fault of anyone else.

The musical monolith is no doubt dead at this point. Much improved distribution of music in the last decade means now people can listen to what they like, not what the radio DJ happens to like. Which means it is much less likely that the population will converge on a shared music experience.

> Which means it is much less likely that the population will converge on a shared music experience.

Is that true? All of the music writing I see seems to contradict that.

The general consensus seems to be that the mega winners are not as big as yesteryear in terms of numbers, but, contrariwise, they are MUCH bigger in terms of percentage. ie. the market has shrunk but the remaining market is now dominated by a very few players.

I don't see the contradiction. A market requires music to have value. Most music is worthless.

Historically, there was no practical way for the average Joe to find and obtain worthless music. Only well connected hardcore music geeks had a chance, and even they often would fall short. Now it is right there at everyone's fingertips, every bit as easy to listen to as Taylor Swift, and recommended to them by algorithms.

Of what music that has been able to find value, it stands to reason that segment is shrinking with people now finding and listening to more and more worthless music. It also stands to reason that with more and more time spent listening to worthless music, it has become more and more difficult for music with potential value to find its place, thus leaving a market ripe for monopolization.

But the rise of worthless music has broken down the monolith. We're not stuck all listening to the same 1,000 valuable songs. Now we have 1,000,000,000 worthless songs that divides up the attention and some remaining segment paying for 100 songs that rose above being worthless.

No one is forcing him to go on tour. Who is the tour for, Reed or his fans?

If he's touring because he needs the money, he should suck it up and give his paying customers what they want. Maybe he'd be able to make more money short term and so be able to quit touring sooner.

If he's touring for himself, then he has every right to do what he wants. He shouldn't be surprised that his fans are clamoring to hear his older works. If he doesn't want to play them, fine. But he shouldn't be dismayed if he finds himself playing smaller and smaller venues when his old fans start showing up in smaller number because he refuses to do so.

I mean, this is a guy who we all know by name because of his contributions to music. He's one of the lucky ones. Talk about your first world problems.

I hate to break it to you but Lou Reed is dead and has been for 10 years.

Heh my bad... I like Reed butt not enough to know that.

Guess it doesn't matter now.

Imagine listening to an architect speak, finding out in the middle of his boring 2-hour lecture that he's 4000 years old, then at the end hearing him refuse to answer a question about how he designed Stonehenge because he's sick and tired of talking about that.

I can sympathize with the architect, same as you can. He is 4000 years old, after all.

But I can also sympathize with anyone who attended only to hear about Stonehenge and now wants their money back.

It seems like that person should just buy the book/album. "Do it again! and the same way!" is a weird concept if you think about it, in age of recorded media.

I feel for the man becoming a millionaire doing that degrading hard work of being an entertainer/artist. Real frustrating that must have been. I feel deeply for those struggling millionaires that keep plowing on, for.. for.. humanity’s sake.

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