Do you talk to your friends about music?

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MBTI
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I saw a quip somewhere—might have been a newspaper column—about how Gen Z doesn't talk about music the way previous generations did. You know, exchanging recommendations, trading records, that kind of stereotypical Boomer and Gen X thing.

Does this ring true to your experience?

I'm no Zoomer, but a younger millenial, and my memories of conversations about music were mostly being quizzed by hipsters about whether I knew this or that band, or people questioning whether I was a "real" fan because I claimed to like a band but didn't know all their albums. So I don't really like talking about music because I find it saps from my enjoyment of it, and I think Gen Z might be getting this one right.
 
I'm a xennial and I enjoy talking about music but only if others are receptive and open about it
 
I’m Gen X and married to a musician, so… yes, music is part of daily conversations. It really was a major part of social bonding for us when younger.
 
Although I don’t think there is much validity to generational categorizations, I was either the end of gen X or the beginning of gen Y, depending on the researcher. I do relate to X a bit more. I do recall sitting around with friends listening to entire albums. We would talk about the music, the lyrics, and meanings. Sometimes pick on each other’s tastes with the upmost immaturity. It brought us together in a way that helped define our friendships, our cliques, and our individuality.
 
Only with my partner. Too many other times in my life, doing so resulted in the other person(s) withdrawing in general because they came to see me as weird, manic, obsessive, mentally ill, or some other variety of “touched.”

I’m open to receiving, but so few want to share.

Results are always better with artists and specifically, musicians.

Cheers,
Ian
 
In talking about music, I want to explore movements, and scenes, dissect styles and pollination, consider bands, musicians, and performers.

I want to talk about songwriting, arrangement, and orchestration. Melodies, harmony, chord progressions, motifs, and lines. Vocal ranges and mic technique.

Recording engineering, mix techniques, and production. Soundstage, and ambience. Preamps, power stages, speakers, pickups, guitars, bases, drum kits, and snares. Discrete analog synths and digital algorithms. Tape at 15ips and jitter and clock. Pedals and compressors and equalization. Vocal frost and combo snarl and warm thumpy chunk.

Studios, the where and the who. The managers, the labels, the venues. The stories. Timbre and rhythm. The references. The symbolism. The math. The feelings, subtle and overwhelming. The meaning for each individual. What someone loves, and why.

The singles, the albums, and the charts. The decades. The public. The politics.

It’s fair, I may appear to be obsessive. I’ll offer that despite my ADHD, this has always compelled my interest and attention, all my life, from the very start.

A few things in life get me really excited and passionate. Music is one of those things.

Cheers,
Ian
 
I always find it difficult to have a discussion about generational behavior because there is a difference in behavior based on the generation of the parents. For example, a GenZ could have been born to Millennial or Gen X parents just as a Millennial could be born to GenX or Boomer parents. It could even extend an additional generation with some parents having a child later in life. I added the following chart (conducted by Pew Research) as reference to demonstrate my meaning. With that in mind, the children of parents from one generation are more likely to behave differently than one born to a different generation even if the trends, fads, and technology are different. When it comes to music, the trends, fads, and tech play a role in the type of music; however, the approach and connection to that music could be very different based on how the child related to the world with respect to the generation of their parents and grandparents.

So, does GenZ talk about music in the same way as other generations - it all depends. Is there a spectrum, yes, but does that spectrum overlap, yes. Some GenZ's will behave like Millennials and the perspective the older generation has is usually related to the viewpoints of how their children (and peers) behaved and communicated. From my experience (GenXer) the GenZ still talked about music and could relate all the way back to my generation and music from the 60's. The shared experience was different because parent and kids don't talk as much as kids and their peers but there was still a shared experience - though perceived lesser than I had with my peers. In general, kids don't talk about the taboo (sex, drugs, music) with their parents as much as they do with their friends and that's not so different from us. This does not mean that they don't among their own peers, yet part of relating to people requires some immersion into their culture (which is diminished by larger gaps between parents and the target generation).

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A couple of friends try to talk to me about music, but it's hard to reciprocate for three reasons:
1. My taste in music is very different to my friends. (I like baroque music, especially JS Bach).
2. I rarely listen to music. Perhaps twice a month, I'll retreat into isolation to intensely listen to a couple of pieces of music.
3. Discussing music falls short of just listening to it.

Occasionally, I wish I could share my experience and enjoyment of music with someone else, but I'm too idiosyncratic in the combination of what and how I listen.
 
That's funny—I don't know how I wrote the original post without thinking of or mentioning that fact that I am a musician with lots of formal training in classical and western theory. I love talking about music with other musicians, analyzing what makes a song works, the interplay of lyric and melody, etc. Basically what @aeon is getting at.

What I don't like are those pointless "Have you heard X?" conversations. They always leave me feeling lame for not knowing more bands, or awkwardly pressured to like a band just because the other guy does.

The worst is when someone is like, "Oh my god, you have to hear this song" and then immediately plays it for you on their phone speakers and keeps looking at you expecting a positive reaction. If a song is halfway decent, then it usually takes me a few listens before I really form an opinion, so getting excited about a song on the first listen is hard enough, but then having someone staring at me and measuring my reaction all but guarantees that I will not like it...
 
I used to try to talk to my friends about music but very soon realized no one else in this world has the same taste in music as myself. I supposed that’s the reason why most INFJs like myself think they are complete freaks! I like music, bands and artists that are obscured and non mainstream, even when I love a very popular band or singer, I can bet on it that my favorite songs from them are totally misaligned with what everyone else likes, it’s a curse or a blessing I guess, depending on how you look at it. 🙄
 
Danze said:
I used to try to talk to my friends about music but very soon realized no one else in this world has the same taste in music as myself. I supposed that’s the reason why most INFJs like myself think they are complete freaks! I like music, bands and artists that are obscured and non mainstream, even when I love a very popular band or singer, I can bet on it that my favorite songs from them are totally misaligned with what everyone else likes, it’s a curse or a blessing I guess, depending on how you look at it. 🙄
Click to expand...
Welcome to the site.

INFJ’s are fairly diverse in their tastes. In fact we have a thread where people post music regularly and there’s a wide range of genres that comes from all over the world.
 
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Also don't really have friends.

I shared some prog with some coworkers once, but had to suppress the urge to go down rabbit-holes because I think they were just trying to make shallow idle chit-chat - which I'm not good at (go deep or leave me be).
My boss at the time - a cool guy I still keep up with monthly - and one of my coworkers listened to a few tracks and later said they really liked it. Most seem to enjoy the same stuff everyone's force-fed on the radio/tv, so I think people sometimes find it refreshing to hear something a bit different.

When I was friendly with that dude I no longer keep up with, he would periodically text me - I think as an attempted icebreaker - almost always to let me know some band he knew I listened to had a new album coming out or he liked some new band he thought I'd like. So I suppose it's something I was comfortable talking about, and often a bridge to some deeper conversation (I think that was just his way). We went to a number of concerts together over the years as well - a few with our wives, many before they were our wives.

I'm GenX/Xennial.
 
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