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"It's before I was born"

This has been playing on my mind for a while now. I simply cannot work out when the above phrase became acceptable when it comes to music.


Since I have been hosting quizzes, as time has gone on, I have found that more and more of the younger places frequently use the phrase "It's before I was born though" as as excuse for not knowing a song. The more I think about it, the more it doesn't make any sense whatsoever.


I was born in 1981, to the tune of Don't You Want Me Baby by The Human League being number one at the time in the UK. As I grew up, I listened to all my parents music and became an avid lover of music in general. Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin, Isley Brothers, The Beatles to name a few. I always loved to listen back to those records and even discover music for myself that my parents weren't necessarily into. For instance, my parents were never really into Stevie Wonder, I had to discover him all on my own. This also being in an era where you would need to BUY the format of music in order to be able to listen to it as well.


Fast forward to today and in a society where you can get music from YouTube, Spotify, Apple... where you don't have to leave your seat to go and physically get the music, you can just hit play and it's there... why are more people not just listening to older music?


As my daughter was growing up I always used to say that ANY music can be new music to YOU, if you've not heard it before, you don't even have to wait for it to be released, just look up some of those artists that people talk about all the time and listen to the albums that made them so great.


I once found a list online of the top 500 albums of all time by Rolling Stone magazine. I decided that as I had access to most of them through streaming services, I would take on the project of listening to as many of them as I possibly could. My main rule was that if I wasn't enjoying it by halfway through, I could move onto the next. In that period of time (it took about 6 - 10 months) I educated myself LOADS on music that I simply would have never listened to before. I discovered I liked artists that previously I didn't think I did.


So why is this excuse so common? My only theory is that perhaps there is TOO much music to even comprehend now? Maybe it seems like such a big task to try and listen to as much as possible because online music gets turned around so quickly. It seems backwards if anything that with so much access, there is so little knowledge. It makes no sense at all. I would genuinely love to hear people's thoughts on this, even more so from a younger person that can give me a genuine reason as to why they don't feel bothered by listening to anything older than the date they were born.


If you are a big fan of music, check out my LIVE monthly music quizzes on the last Thursday of every month at the Bierkeller in Birmingham. Tickets can be grabbed here: www.mrqzstoo.com/tickets



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