By Melvin Moses Kiyimba
There’s a moment in life when you realize the songs on the radio don’t move you the way they used to. You hear a new hit, and instead of feeling exhilarated, you shake your head.
“Music was better in my day,” you say, convinced of this truth. But was it? Or is something else at play?
Music shapes us, especially in our adolescence and early adulthood. Studies confirm that we form our deepest connections with music between the ages of 12 and 22, a phenomenon called the “reminiscence bump” (Krumhansl & Zupnick, 2013). This isn’t just about preference, it’s neurological.
The emotions we experience during these years are heightened, and the songs playing in the background become imprinted in our memories. Music is no longer just sound; it’s a time machine.
But here’s where nostalgia plays its trick. The songs we loved as teenagers feel significant not necessarily because they were objectively superior, but because they remind us of who we were.
The first dance, the long bus rides, the heartbreaks, we weren’t just listening to music; we were living in
The brain processes music and memory in deeply intertwined ways. Research by Janata et al. (2007) found that the medial prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for linking music to personal memories, stays active even as we age.
That’s why hearing an old favorite can transport us back decades in an instant. But this same process skews our perception. We remember the best songs from our youth while conveniently forgetting the forgettable ones.
We compare today’s music to a highlight reel of the past, rather than the full spectrum of what was actually playing back then.
And let’s be honest, every era had bad music. For every timeless classic, there were plenty of throwaway tracks. The difference is that we’ve filtered out the noise, leaving behind only the gold.
Another factor at play is that popular music is, and always has been, made for young people. The industry is driven by the tastes of teens and twenty-somethings, the most engaged audience in streaming, social media, and live events.
So if you’re 30 or 40, it makes perfect sense that today’s chart-toppers might not speak to you. They weren’t designed to.
That doesn’t mean today’s music is bad. It just means that your music is now out of the mainstream. And that’s okay. The good news? Music discovery has evolved dramatically.
Streaming platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube use algorithms to cater to specific tastes, but if you’re not actively searching for new music, you won’t stumble upon it the way you did in the past.
The radio, once a universal tastemaker, has been replaced by personalised playlists, which means great music still exists, it just isn’t being handed to you.
So when you feel that familiar pang of longing, when the new songs don’t have the same magic, it’s not because today’s music lacks merit. It’s because you’ve changed.
Your life experiences have shaped the way you listen, and what once felt like the pulse of the world now feels distant. But this doesn’t diminish the value of new music.
It simply means that, just like your own taste, music will always evolve, and it will always be a reflection of the time and place in which it was made.
The beauty of music is that it grows with us. Whether you’re drawn to the past or find yourself discovering something fresh, the soundtrack of your life is yours to define.