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Thread: Music of your teen years

  1. #1
    Senior Member Canuck21's Avatar
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    Default Music of your teen years

    Music is a big part of most adolescents. It kind of defined your image and we all know that image is very important to a teenager. In my time, a lot of teenage girls liked the New Kids on the Block. I liked some of their songs but I only admitted it to a friend of mine because to us, it was lame liking a boys band. Cool for some but not cool for others and to us, it was definitely not cool. Music that was too popular was not very well appreciated with my surrounding. The more obscure groups were preferable but that was just an image because in reality, the things I listened to were quite popular also, just not quite the New Kids on the Block popularity. I must say that there was one pop singer that I was crazy about and was not shy about it; Rick Astley. You can't go more pop than that but he was it for me. You can't avoid being superficial as a teenager and I was no exception. Of course I liked his songs but it was his cuteness that made me a huge fan. If he was ugly, I don't think I would have been such a big fan. Mind you he was not a hottie, just very cute and that's how I liked them then. At least this guy could sing and had a beautiful voice, he was not just a product.

    Aside of the pop sensation Rick Astley, I spent most of my teenage years listening to four synth pop groups; Depeche Mode, Erasure, New Order and the Pet Shop Boys. I also listened to Information Society (the only non-British) and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark but not as much as the first four. Those were the music I listened to as a teen. I liked electronic music and I also liked the fact that the bands were less known although Depeche Mode was quite popular at the time and everybody knew the Pet Shop Boys.

    To this day, I still like alternative music which synthpop derived from, but I'm not as much into the electronic sound anymore. Among the groups I used to listen to, only New Order still keeps my interest because it is a group with much more history and diversity. Their music was electronic but they also used the guitar, bass and drums. Because of their diversity, I now am discovering songs from their old albums and singles that I gave little time to when younger but that I now find very good. In fact, New Order is the reason I'm still interested in popular music and like to discuss about it in this forum.

    So what was the music you listened to when you were a teenager? What was considered cool and not cool and did you cared at all? What was popular then and where? Do you still like the same music now or have your taste changed? To those that are still in your teen years, what do you like now and what do you think of the other music genre that you don't listen to? What do you consider as not cool or not in? It's easy to say that you don't care but I know that it's not quite true, please be honest.
    Last edited by Canuck21; 12-17-06 at 06:33 PM.
    My obsessions: Joy Division, New Order, Bones, The Office.

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  2. #2
    Senior Member Azn Dude's Avatar
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    Too many to list but a short recap will include a lot of things I won't admit to listening to. I'm not a big fan of the pop music but I have to admit some of them were so catchy you can't help but hate them since their stuck in your head.

    Bands like : Duran Duran, Depache Mode, The Cure, The Clash, Nirvana, Alice In Chains, David Bowie,Yngwie Malmsteen,Def Leopard, AC/DC, Modern Talking, Pet Shop Boys,Elvis Costello, Brian Setzer, Van Halen, Bon Jovi - this is the more pop stuff I listen to.

    But I spent most of my time growing up listening to metal or punk music like : Iron Maiden, Metallica, Slayer, Judas Priest, Megadeath, Guns N Roses, Cannibal Corpse, Danzig, Misfits, Deftones, way too many for me to list.

    So I consider myself a metal head overall.
    After Hours - Velvet Underground

  3. #3
    Moderator Ken Cheng's Avatar
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    The history of my musical tastes have taken, to quote my favorite band, a long and winding road. Where my musical tastes lie today (and have lain for the past seventeen or so years) hardly reflect where they started out, although I still have a fondness for the stuff I started with.

    My teen years were the late 1980s. Hair metal (Bon Jovi, Motley Crue), teen dance pop (Debbie Gibson, Tiffany, New Kids on the Block), superstar pop/rock (Michael Jackson, Madonna), and early pop rap (MC Hammer, Vanilla Ice) ruled the charts then, but I was never a fan of those styles of music.

    I need to start from the very beginning. The first music I could identify as liking was the music of my parents during the mid-1970s. They have rather conservative music tastes, so it was mostly easy listening stuff and early rock 'n roll: the first performers I remember from the car radio were the Carpenters, Andy Williams, Nat King Cole, Connie Francis, Patti Page, Elvis Presley, Simon and Garfunkel, Bread, Diana Ross (1970s), etc. Occassionally, I heard some disco on the radio too, and I knew there were heavy metal bands like Kiss out there (although at the time, heavy metal music scared me). The MONKEES television show, which was in reruns at the time, introduced me to their music, and eventually, through the Monkees, I would discover what would one day become my favorite band: the Beatles (although for many, many years, the only two Beatles songs I knew were "Yellow Submarine" and "Yesterday"). In my other thread about the Beach Boys, I discussed how it was during this time that I also discovered their music (and for years and years, I got certain Beach Boys and Beatles songs confused because the two bands could, sometimes, sound like each other). My parents were also big fans of Cantopop, so the family car's 8-track tape player (yes, 8-track) frequently featured 1970s hits by Sam Hui, Theresa Teng, Adam Cheng, Roman Tam, Paula Tsui, the Wynners, etc. The thing that all these musicians, Western and Chinese, had in common was a strong sense of melody. To this day, melody is as important to me in music as the beat (which is probably why much of current pop music doesn't appeal to me).

    During the early 1980s, when I was in elementary school, New Wave was all the rage among my peers. I can remember a time when Michael Jackson wasn't widely regarded as a pedophiliac freak, but a great singer and dancer and the idol of millions of teenagers. Michael Jackson, Madonna, Prince, Duran Duran, and a flurry of New Wave performers ruled MTV, the Billboard charts, and the schoolyard recess-time discussions. Always out of step, I disliked these performers at the time (although I like them very much now that the hype has disappeared). I suppose I always did rebel against popular taste. During the 1980s, I was completely into Joseph Koo's TVB theme songs...THE BUND, THE SHELL GAME, LOCH '82, ROCH '83, LUK SIU FUNG, THE ROMANTIC SWORDSMAN. That's literally all I listened to between 1982 and 1985. My first crush at the age of twelve was Michelle Pau, the singer of the theme song to TVB's 1984 THE FOUNDATION series (starring Felix Wong, Barbara Yung, and Miu Kiu Wai).

    From 1985 to 1988, I developed a taste for cheesy 1980s power ballads. Acts such as Chicago and the solo work of their former singer, Peter Cetera, particularly interested me. I also liked "Take My Breath Away," the theme song to TOP GUN. This was a musically awkward time for me, as I really wasn't into music at all during those years. There was an occassional song that I liked, but my interest in music overall was at a low ebb.

    For years and years, I had been hearing and reading about the greatness of the Beatles. An uncle who was living with my parents and me at the time, and who had grown up during the 1960s, was particularly into the Beatles (although not as much as I soon would be) and told me much about the band. All through the 1970s and early 1980s, I would often hear a great song on the radio and ask my parents or elders who it was who sang that song, and half the time, the answer would be "the Beatles." I was already impressed by how many great songs the band had, and how affecting each of those songs were (melodies that stick in your consciousness coupled with words that were simple, but actually had deep personal meaning).

    A personal crisis in late 1988 caused me to reevalute much of my previous life, and with it came a great shift in musical taste. Much of the music that I had previously liked I could not bear to listen to for a long, long time, and it was during this era that the music of the Beatles became like a tonic for me. Each one of their songs seemed to convey a feeling I had at the time. By 1989, I was a full-fledged Beatlemaniac, buying as many of their records as I could get my hands on, reading as much literature as I could about them, and watching various documentaries about their career. It was also around this time that, inspired by the Beatles, I began taking guitar lessons.

    When I reached college in 1990, my roommates and peers began to introduce me to the world of classic rock outside of the Beatles. I had already developed an interest in the 1950s rock 'n roll performers that had inspired the Beatles (i.e. Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Gene Vincent, etc.), and now my peers were helping me to discover the performers that the Beatles subsequently inspired (the Rolling Stones, the Who, the Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin, etc.). As the 1990s progressed, so did my musical tastes. Gradually, I added a bit of everything: 1920s and 1930s blues and jazz, 1940s country music, 1940s crooner pop, 1950s rock 'n roll, 1960s pop/rock, 1960s soul and R&B, 1970s hard rock, 1970s singer-songwriter pop, progressive rock, country rock, punk rock, 1980s New Wave, 1980s heavy metal, 1990s grunge/alternative rock, etc. By the time the 2000s started and I was an adult in the world, my musical tastes covered a huge swath of 20th Century popular music. Fundamentally, my musical tastes today center on two characteristics: a strong sense of melody and extensive use of guitar. Because of my Beatles and classic rock fandom (and the guitar lessons I took for fourteen years from 1990 until 2004), I have a strong affinity for guitar-based music in particular. I tend to really *listen* to music when I listen to music: I pick out the instruments, the vocals, and the production and critically analyze how it was all put together. I'll listen for things such as how the guitar is mixed, how the drums were miked, and the timbre of the vocalist's voice. I also like to watch/listen to live performances to compare them to the studio versions of songs.

  4. #4
    Senior Member Huang Rong's Avatar
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    This thread is really very cool. So interesting to find out what people listened when they were at their teenage periods.
    In the old days, the allowance my parents gave me per month couldn't afford to by CDs so I mostly listened to my parents' and my brother's CDs. Thus, my childhood was filled with the music of the Beatles, Deng Lijun (aka Teresa Teng) - one of the most famous Chinese female singers ever, ABBA, Bee Gees, Elvis Presley n some famous classical composers.
    Lol, the only CD I bought when I'm < 15 is a CD of Backstreet Boys: "The Hits: Chapter One", it cost 2 months of my saving.
    Last edited by Huang Rong; 12-18-06 at 10:46 PM.
    Yang Guo & Zhou Botong said in Chapters 6, 11 & 25 of ROCH:
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    - 原来郭伯母竟是这般美貌,小时候我却不觉得。
    - 龙姑娘,我瞧你品貌才智,和那小黄蓉不相上下,武功也跟她差不离。

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    Senior Member Canuck21's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Azn Dude
    But I spent most of my time growing up listening to metal or punk music like : Iron Maiden, Metallica, Slayer, Judas Priest, Megadeath, Guns N Roses, Cannibal Corpse, Danzig, Misfits, Deftones, way too many for me to list.

    So I consider myself a metal head overall.
    I can't help myself, but I have to mention my favorite group (yes again), New Order. They made a parody of Hard Rock/Heavy Metal bands and I find it hilarious. For those who don't know the band, what you see in the video is totally out of character. Needless to say, they're not fans of the genre and neither do I .

    My obsessions: Joy Division, New Order, Bones, The Office.

    Do bears bear? Do bees bee?

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    Senior Member KeongJai's Avatar
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    oasis and presidents of united states.

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    Four Heavenly Kings - Jacky Cheung, Leon Lai, Aaron Kwok and Andy Lau. In that order. Some Madonna and Michael Learns to Rock. Not much exposure at all. Now I look back on it and wonder how I ever liked Leon Lais out-of-tune crooning. He was cute though.

  8. #8
    Senior Member pemberly's Avatar
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    My teen years were the late 90s. I started paying attention to western music right after the grunge era. so this basically means boybands. i was never a big fan, like the obsessive girls on trl (and i remember when trl used to be just carson daly in a dark room with a computer). the songs were catchy and easy to sing along to. what i really liked were the more goth ppl. rob zombie was catchy (to me) and i thought his videos were very cool. manson songs were overhyped, but still not bad. that was me in highschool. rob zombie and bsb.

    in college, i started to branch out a little. especially since this is when i discovered napster. but i was never the type of person to try to download whole cds. i used it to mainly get obscure, hard to find songs. it was around this time that i developed a slight obsession with oasis. i bought all their cds, singles, and even an interview disc shaped like liam's head. i was a regular poster on the oasis forum as well. my love for their music introduced me to all the bands that had influenced them. i started listening to the beatles, bowie, the who, etc. and i listened to their contemporaries, other bands oasis fans recommended to me, garbage, pulp, radiohead, the stone roses, etc.

    it was also at this time that i started to listen to more chinese music from taiwan and the mainland, as opposed to soley hk. at college, with the lack of a tv, i mainly watched serials on my computer. and the most readily available to me at that time were china and taiwan serials. i started liking their themes, d/led a bunch of them, and started listening to those artists: alec su, jimmy lin, etc. and that started me on a lot more chinese music and theme songs in general.

    (sometime around then, one of my friends introduced me to shinhwa. and an obsession developed. )

    after that, i sorta wanted to mix genres a little and find some chinese rock. the closest i got was nic tse, which isn't very close at all. but i really like some of his lyrics anyways.

    this all progressed into me looking for asian rock, with a little freaky edge like rob zombie, but with sentimentality like tvb themes, sung in a language i don't understand like shinhwa, and by a good looking dude. and we have come to gackt. i wonder what will be next?
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    Member Waiyinnie's Avatar
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    ahahaha, im still in my teen years. haha. i do listen to classic rock stuff though like the cure, the ramones, bon jovi, nirvana, pet shop boys, the beatles, depeche mode, the misfits etc. im not completely ignorant of 90's music XD
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