what kind of music did your parents listen to?

[chickpea]

what kind of music did your parents/parental figures listen to when you were growing up? do you think it influenced your taste in music?

I've noticed that a lot of people in my age group inherited a whole 80s rock nostalgia thing that I totally missed out on. my mom was a) slightly snobbish and b) kept up with newer music even though she was older so I was a lot more influenced by 90s alt rock. older than that she liked REM, violent femmes, Elvis Costello, that kind of stuff. I realized the other night that my boyfriend has a very limited knowledge of rock music, his mom listened to more soul and r&b and the only rock album he had in his house was Fleetwood Mac. I tried to give him a little history lesson.

anyway, post videos of your childhood music too! it'll be fun!

 

[Totenkindly]

My parents listened to:
- Opera and classical
- Easy listening
- Easy listening Christian
- Musicals

Pretty much I was on my own, although they let me listen to pop and top 40 rock and comedy records and stuff. My biggest regret from my childhood in the 70's is that I missed out on actual influential rock of the time (like Jethro Tull and Alice Cooper, etc.) since I didn't get exposed to it in my immediate environment.

I've always hated 50's music.

Pretty much I still find myself listening to 70's and 80's music (I was just going through all my old Alan Parsons stuff yesterday -- lots of stuff that didn't hit the radio), and I like opera and classical but rarely listen to it. I also like musicals. But I listen to a wide variety in passing -- if I hear a song I like regardless of genre, I snag it. (Deftones, Civil Twilight, etc.)

 

[prplchknz]

my dad: bluegrass
old school country (think like johnny cash and i don't know a lot of bands, he actually hated pop country and the country that came out nashville)
rock and roll
blues
jazz
bright eyes (i didn't think he'd like it he hated 99% of my music but really liked that)
local music
classic rock

my mom:
50s doo wop
the beatles or anything that sounds similar
stuff produced by stax and mo-town
destiny's child (that was my fault i played a cd when i was 12 in the car and she fell in love)
classic rock
hippy music (like buffalo springfield, not the grateful dead, or jimi hendrix)

 

[Qlip]

'Oldies', which I'm not sure even exists as a classification, Motown and my mom had a thing for The Carpenters, Gloria Estefan, Crystal Gayle and country music.

As far as how it influenced me. Well, I actually do like the Carpenters, I'm willing to listen to some country, but not the stuff my mom liked. And, how could you be human and not like Motown and Richie Valens? But, it's only a very small part of my very eclectic musical tastes.

 

[gromit]

Oldies... esp 60s music.

They also had a CDs collection of "great orchestral melodies" or something, so we got exposed to about 4 discs worth of classical music.

Also, on the weekends, my dad would put on Bruce Springsteen and we would do yard work. Hahaha.

He has recently started listening to country music. So that is... interesting.

 

[gromit]

[MENTION=7991]chickpea[/MENTION]... I feel like your friends' parents are waaaaaay younger than my parents somehow, if the parents came of age in the 80s.

 

[chickpea]

[MENTION=7991]chickpea[/MENTION]... I feel like your friends' parents are waaaaaay younger than my parents somehow, if the parents came of age in the 80s.

nah, my mom graduated high school in '75! she just always listened to newer music, even now in her 50s she still keeps up a little bit. she was definitely into the music of her time, led zeppelin and whatnot, but didn't listen to it all that much with me. my dad was a lot less trendy, but was more into movies than music anyway.

 

[five sounds]

My dad's favorite band has always been the Beatles. He was in a band when I was young, and they played mostly oldies/classic rock. I also grew up in the church, and my dad was always involved in the music there too, so a lot of church songs.

Elton John, Linda Ronstadt, Buddy Holly, The Doors, Talking Heads all remind me of my parents.

Also my parents were DJs for weddings and stuff for a good 10 years while my sisters and I were in school as a side job. (My dad's like the King of side gigs) This was during the CD days, so they had like billions of CDs. We listened to all kinds of stuff.

My dad introduced me to weezer, haha.

 

[Kullervo]

what kind of music did your parents/parental figures listen to when you were growing up? do you think it influenced your taste in music?

My mum and dad mainly listen to late 70s and 80s rock music seeing that's what they were exposed to growing up. My dad took a paper on Russian music for extra points in his degree though, and he said that really opened his eyes to the power of an orchestra. My parents never started listening to Classical style music until I was 10, when my dad bought a CD of Beethoven's 6th symphony. One of my strongest early memories is listening to it when we were driving through the Roxburgh Valley - [MENTION=20828]Deceptive[/MENTION] and [MENTION=5871]Southern Kross[/MENTION] will know where I mean. The scene was so fitting and the music really impressed me. Both pairs of grandparents are obsessed with opera, especially Italian opera (Verdi, Puccini etc) which I can't stand.

A lot of my musical tastes and ideas were inborn I guess. Nobody in my family really liked Mozart's music that much until I started playing pretty much every composition he wrote on the stereo, courtesy of my iPod (and learned the piano sonatas), and I've introduced my dad to Haydn, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms and Dvorak and expanded his knowledge of Beethoven a lot. Good luck getting my mum to sing much except John Mellencamp though, unless you play something by the Dixie Chicks My dad is a lot smarter than her and more open-minded, though mum thinks she is because she refuses to take a side in almost anything...that's Fe for you lol.

anyway, post videos of your childhood music too! it'll be fun!

OK.

Dad:

Mum:

And this is the Beethoven piece I was talking about:

 

[93JC]

Over the course of most of my childhood my parents mostly listened to country, although my dad listened to orchestral and classical stuff every once in a while which definitely stuck with me. As far as I know my mother still listens to country, and I haven't the foggiest idea what my dad listens to.

 

[small.wonder]

Dad
Led Zeppelin, Gun N' Roses, Thin Lizzy, Johnny Cash, Big Head Todd and The Monsters, Aretha Franklin, etc.

Mom
Musical Theatre, "Contemporary" Christian, oldies (40's-60's).

I'd say I can see myself a bit in the mixture of the two.

 

[Raffaella]

My parents taste in music didn't influence my taste much.

My parents used to listen to classical music and the wailings of a mad woman and some other chick. When I was 7 years old, they purchased a classical music collection for me and I listened to Tchaikovsky (mother's favourite) so much that I damaged the cassette.

I then listened to pop music until I was about 15 years old when my indie friends introduced me to indie bands (The Strokes, Babyshambles, Yeah Yeah Yeahs etc.). Ever since then I've listened mostly to indie artists and instrumental music.

I don't come from a family that appreciates music a lot, most of our road trips were filled with the sound of the news.

 

[miss fortune]

my dad loves classical and classical piano music especially, though he mostly listens to public radio instead... set up my old cell phone to play science podcasts for him and he's delighted

my mom always listened to john denver, peter paul and mary, bread and the carpenters while I was growing up... she still does, but has also added to her repertoire thanks to pandora and now has an appreciation of all of the hair bands she missed in the 80s

we lived out far enough that you couldn't get all that many stations on the radio and most of those were country, which I had no desire to listen to, so I mostly listened to things like the talking heads and madonna and such until nirvana came about... then nirvana and pearl jam and co. after that I ended up spending most of high school listening to red hot chili peppers, rage against the machine and sublime

as I get older I keep my fondness for the bands of my youth with more punk added in and a good deal of classical... along with anything else that catches my fancy

 

[Mal12345]

My mother listened to the pop rock station, so I was raised on 70s rock music and the top 40. My dad listened to country music and old timey western music. We also had a lot of these around:

 

[EffEmDoubleyou]

My mom listened to Motown, Billy Joel, The Beatles, Kenny Rogers, and Barry Manilow. I definitely adopted the first three, not so much the latter two. I used Motown to jump into soul, which I love but my mom can take or leave.

My dad might be the only person I've ever met who doesn't really like music very much. He has Abba "Gold", a Perry Como Christmas album, and will listen to my mom's stuff but doesn't really love it. Very odd.

 

[violett]

My mother liked The Cars, Billy Idol, and Michael Jackson. She's a 4w3 and actually hand drew and recreated this album cover: https://a2mcdermottj.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/oeppamjt2.jpg

My father The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Cream and Led Zeppelin. Actually at one point I am pretty sure he had every Beatles album ever made and ended up losing his collection in a move and periodically feels a sense of disbelief in losing them all and is convinced someone stole them.

 

[Polaris]

When I was growing up, my parents listened almost exclusively to Country music, which I rarely found better than tolerable and still do not particularly enjoy (my overall attitude toward it is neutral; Country music has either improved or I've become more capable of appreciating it). I think it influenced my taste in music in the loose sense that everything I hear tells me a little more about what I do and don't like.