GUTS - Listening to "Young" Music as an Adult

by editor Michele Catalano

At 62, I feel as if I’ve been counted out in the new music discourse. Most people think that folks in my age bracket age out of keeping up with music. I get it. We’re old, we’re done, we don’t matter anymore. But the truth is, I have a lot to say about new music, and music in general. 

Maybe I’m an anomaly for someone in her sixties, as I listen to an awful lot of new music. I try to keep up, checking out new releases on Fridays (and sometimes Tuesdays, just like in the old days), checking in on what bands are up to on social media, and listening to my Spotify Discover Weekly playlist. Doing this keeps me current, and it keeps me from feeling as if I am drifting away from my younger self, an entity I try to keep a firm grip on.

I thought of this while listening to Olivia Rodrigo’s GUTS. Most of the music I listen to is angst-driven, emotional. It’s what appeals to me. Rodrigo manages to capture that type of music, and she backs it with hooks for days. The album is a perfect storm of two things I enjoy: crying and rocking out. Maybe rocking out while crying. 

The discourse surrounding GUTS when it came out made me feel as if I was injecting myself into a timeline in which I didn’t belong. The general consensus was, Why are you, as an old person, listening to a 20-year-old sing about a breakup? It wasn’t aimed specifically at me, but I still took the shot hard. But as I listened to the album over and over again, as I connected with it and fell in love with it, I decided to say to hell with the gatekeepers. I am going to listen to what I love. I am going to talk about it, and write about it, and embrace it.

Angst does not belong to the young. Breakups are not the sole domain of twentysomethings. There’s no reason why a 50- or 60-year-old who has gone through a heart-wrecking divorce can’t identify with those feelings of loss, anger, and grief that encompass so much of what I listen to. We may be old(er), but we are still works in progress. We are still people who grow and change, who face difficult situations, who agonize over past relationships, who long to be loved. It only makes sense that the music some of us choose plays into that. You don’t have to be young to know what it’s like to be hurt, to want to take that pain and infuse it with a song that makes a point of acknowledging your angst.

I don’t like to be told what to listen to or read or watch in accordance with my age. It’s not as if you turn 60 and have to hand in your cool card in exchange for a Barry Manilow record that you are now required to like. We’re not out here putting on stretch pants and setting our rocker out on the porch and giving in to the kids. We’re here, we are thriving and vital, and a lot of us are listening to new music, keeping up with the youth, skewing those numbers.

I still listen to a lot of the old stuff; Steely Dan is one of my most listened-to artists. I have an easy-listening playlist that has the likes of Boz Scaggs and Traveling Wilburys. But I also have an everyday playlist I listen to a lot. It has 1,500+ songs and includes bands such as Turnstile and Thursday alongside Rodrigo and boygenius. It’s got the aforementioned Steely Dan and some Todd Rundgren deep cuts, but it also has a ton of the National and Band of Horses—music to keep me crying and emotional.

Sometimes I feel weird listening to a bunch of emo, championing Taking Back Sunday, or singing the praises of Olivia Rodrigo. I let people make me feel that way. I don’t know what they want from me and others my age who listen to new music. Do they want us to pack all our emotions away and live the rest of our lives listening to Led Zeppelin IV over and over again? 

Of course I identify with emo and emo-tinged music. I am human. I have a heart and a brain and so many feelings. That a 20-year-old has spoken my feelings out loud does not make the words and music less valid in my life. It just tells me that heartbreak is universal, all encompassing, a shared rite of passage that hurts no matter what age you experience it. Having someone back this all up and say that these feelings are real, that they are deep and unforgiving, does wonders for me. I feel comforted, less alone, heard.

For people my age who don’t listen to new music because it all skews too young for them, or is too loud and noisy, I say let your guard down. Put away the classic rock—not permanently, just for today—and listen to some new artists. Or listen to the new music your old favorite artists are still putting out. Be open to new experiences, new sounds. And don’t worry about people telling you what you should or shouldn’t be listening to. That’s nobody’s business but your own. Check out GUTS. Check out the band Hurry. You might really like what you hear. If you let it happen, you might connect with it in a deep way. I know I have, and I am better off for it.

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