This is a thread for discussing when you or the people you know personally fell out of touch with popular music and to also compare at what age most people tend to stop following the new releases. From what I've gathered, most people tend to fall out of touch with music in their Early-Mid 30s, although there are exceptions of course.

Myself (you know when I was born :P): To be honest, I don't think I have ever completely been in touch with popular music. I was never a fan of the majority of new Top-40 releases when I was a kid and as all of you know, i'm definitely not a fan of EDM, trap or the other crap genres which are currently on the Top-40 charts. Even though I have always been a big fan of rock, I never liked Nickelback or the other crappy post-grunge bands from when I was a kid.

Dad (born in 1967): He fell out of touch with popular music in 2000/2001, around the time that teen pop and nu-metal were the dominant genres on the charts. Even though my Dad fell out of touch with music when Millennial culture had completely taken over, he does like the Y2K acts, Korn and Creed. In fact, my Mum and Dad even went and saw Creed perform live at the time!  :o He also likes 3 Doors Down's "Kryptonite", as well as "How You Remind Me" by Nickelback. I think the main reason as to why my Dad fell out of touch with popular music, is because of the noticeable decline in quality of mainstream music. He thinks that the 90s were the last good decade in music and that music went downhill after the 90s. I suppose it's easy to see why when you went from bands such as Pearl Jam and Oasis in the Mid 90s, to Aqua and the Backstreet Boys in the Late 90s!

Mum (born in 1964): Amazingly, she still stayed in touch with popular music until about 2004! She liked Linkin Park, Black Eyed-Peas, Audioslave, Anastacia and Nickelback, as well as songs such as "We Used To Be Friends" by The Dandy Warhols and "Hey Ya" by Outkast. I'm amazed that my Mum liked and stayed in touch with popular music for as long as she did, especially considering the fact that she turned 40 in 2004 and she has always been a fan of 70s classic rock and 90s music.

Nan (born in 1949): I don't know for sure, but I think she might have stayed in touch with music until the Late 80s/Early 90s! Even though she has always liked and preferred 60s music over anything else, she does like Queen and John Lennon and George Harrison's solo careers from the 70s, as well as Van Halen, Split Enz, Chris Isaak and Julian Lennon from the 80s. She thinks that new music is "all screaming and loud", so it's possible that she completely fell out of touch with music when Grunge broke into the mainstream in the Early 90s.

Grandad (born in 1947): My Grandad only likes 50s and Early-Mid 60s music. I don't think he actually likes any songs released after the 60s. He never liked the counter-culture era of the 60s and he hates bands such as Queen and AC/DC.

I'm 28, and still trying to keep up with music. I have not lost touch with popular music...yet. I guess it depends. The 00's and 10's teens got the short end of the stick when it came to good mainstream music, which, like man of you say, went down starting in the late 90's.

I'm 28, and still trying to keep up with music. I have not lost touch with popular music...yet. I guess it depends. The 00's and 10's teens got the short end of the stick when it came to good mainstream music, which, like man of you say, went down starting in the late 90's.


That's why if the 2020s are good I will claim that as my decade and disown my teens and 20s. I don't have to own anything I don't like.

That's why if the 2020s are good I will claim that as my decade and disown my teens and 20s. I don't have to own anything I don't like.


I hope music is good in the 2020's.  8)

I lost touch with popular music after 2014. The last popular songs I know from heart are Shake It Off and Uptown Funk.

I'm still in touch in music of all genres, and there are many songs out there that are great; however, it sucks how most of them mediocre. :(

Now that I am currently based in a foreign country, I have certainly lost touch of today's popular music back home.

I do still like some songs on the radio but the problem is it's not as good as it used to be when the radio was the source for "everything" music.

I'm still somewhat hip with it, but I barely know any songs past the top 10. I only listen to what Spotify tells me to, I'm not really listening to Top 40 radio these days. I still listen to new music, I'm just too hipster for mainstream stuff.

My parents were both born in the '60s, and they both started losing interest in popular music during the mid-to-late '90s. All four of my grandparents were born in the '30s (except my maternal grandmother who was born in 1940), and they all mostly started losing interest in popular music around 1964 or 1965, after the British Invasion and the beginning of Hippie Culture. My paternal grandfather, though, is the oldest of the bunch (born in 1933) and he actually started to lose interest during the mid 1950's with the rise of Elvis and Rock 'n Roll. He didn't like anything more recent than swing or big band.

As for me, as a 1987 born, I was very heavily into popular music from late elementary school up through when I graduated college in 2009. Like, really heavily. So much so that I could probably tell you 80-90% of the songs on the Billboard Hot 100 Year-End chart for every year from 1997-2009. After college, though, my interest started to wane. The Great Recession was going strong at that time, and between having to deal with the pressures of finding a job and other responsibilities, I just didn't have time to follow music anymore. Plus, the rise of things like Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga just didn't really suit my tastes. The collaspe of rock music (my favorite genre) as a mainstream force around 2010 didn't help either. I continued to follow mainstream music a decent bit throughout the early '10s, though, with 2012 being the last year I really followed it closely. After I turned 26, I just started tuning most of it out. I couldn't tell you two songs on the Billboard Hot 100 right now.

So, to sum up that long-winded answer, I'll probably look back on the mid 2010's as the years that I "lost touch" with popular music.

I have not lost touch with popular music but I have lost significant interest in most popular music. When I was a kid in the 2000s, I used to know pretty much every popular song and I used to like or love most of them. I used to have dance competitions with my nephew (but I call him my cousin) who was born in 2000 all the time. Now, I'm basically 18 years old and while I don't know every popular song now....I still know enough and haven't lost touch with it yet. The only thing I want is there to be more of a variety in music today...that's all.

My dad is full-on Generation Jones. He became a music fanatic in 1975 and played drums all throughout his adolescence (he still picks his kit up once in a while, but not as much when I was a kid). His favorite music acts tended to be artists like Bruce Springsteen, Dire Straits, Cat Stevens, Billy Joel, Steely Dan, and Blood on the Tracks-era Bob Dylan. He was never a fan of new wave aside from the Talking Heads and mostly abstained from popular rock music from the early 1980s onwards, aside from the artists he grew up liking and with a few exceptions that could trace their influences back to the stuff he grew up liking.

My mom, despite being just a year younger than my dad, continued listening to a lot of popular music throughout the 80s and 90s. She was a fan of Madonna, as well as certain other MTV acts, and often kept up with popular music through her aerobics tapes. Even by the early 2000s, she continued to find new songs and artists she liked and bought Now 8 and 10 herself. As vulgar hip hop became more commonplace throughout the decade, she found less and less that she could personally stand, but every once in awhile, there is something other than A/C that blows her mind, like Kanye West's "Jesus Walks," Avicii's "Wake Me Up," and Hozier's "Take Me to Church."

I was mostly introduced to popular music around the turn of the millennium, when my little sister got into Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys and my mom played the radio instead of Raffi and Red Grammer (Andy Grammer's father) when I was in the car with her. I got super into Now That's What I Call Music in 2002 and continued listening to the series, eventually listening to our local Top 40 station, until about the time I turned 13, when the quality of popular music took a sharp turn for the worse. All throughout the second half of middle school and the first half of high school, I listened pretty much strictly to eurodance, eurobeat, J-Pop, and other obscure genres that none of my classmates listened to; the cool kids would continue listening to mostly boring pop and atrocious snap, while the nerds and artsy kids would always drift towards indie rock, which I always found incredibly dull and overrated at the time I was growing up. It wasn't until 11th grade that I had any interest in popular music again; the Super Eurobeat series was going through a brief hiatus at the time, and stuff like "Bad Romance" and "Nothin' on You" reminded me why I got into pop in the first place. By the time I entered college, however, popular music began falling down a downward spiral, which it has never fully recovered from since.

My parents enjoyed listening to Doo-Wop music on CBS-FM but now they don't care one iota for today's music (but maybe for some specific artists)

I haven't lost touch yet. But I feel like I'm getting there unfortunately and I'm only 21! I think something happened after 2012 in music that I didn't like. Something changed that made me not love it as much as previous music.That said there are still many songs from now that I like!

I haven't lost touch yet. But I feel like I'm getting there unfortunately and I'm only 21! I think something happened after 2012 in music that I didn't like. Something changed that made me not love it as much as previous music.That said there are still many songs from now that I like!


I do like some people such as Bruno Mars and Adele but other stuff I just cringe at.

Dad (born in 1953): Liked 50's and early to mid 60's music. Lost touch with music in around 1968.

Mom (born in 1960): I really do not know - she lived in Indonesia (she is Chinese Indonesian) until around 1997/98.

Me (born in 1999): Never liked popular music - I am more of a hard rock, industrial, and heavy metal listener.

Dad (born in 1953): Liked 50's and early to mid 60's music. Lost touch with music in around 1968.

Mom (born in 1960): I really do not know - she lived in Indonesia (she is Chinese Indonesian) until around 1997/98.

Me (born in 1999): Never liked popular music - I am more of a hard rock, industrial, and heavy metal listener.



My Parents were born in the 1940's and they liked 50's and 60's music, maybe some 70's and My Father lost touch a long time ago.

Me (born in 1999): Never liked popular music - I am more of a hard rock, industrial, and heavy metal listener.


Although i'm not a fan of industrial and heavy metal, I have always found myself being in the same predicament as well. My parents both really like 90s rock, so I was introduced to bands such as Pearl Jam, Collective Soul and Soundgarden at a really young age. I have always enjoyed listening to these bands (particularly Pearl Jam), but as a result of that, it has meant that I could never really connect with a lot of the current Top-40 releases. Post Grunge was still popular when I was in my core childhood, but by that point, it had become a shadow of it's former self. Bands such as Nickelback, 3 Doors Down and Puddle of Mud never appealed to me, nor did the "Emo" bands such as Fall Out Boy and Panic at the Disco.

I'm turning 30 and I mainly liked popular music in the '00s along with late '90s and early '10s. It's not that I think '00s music was the best (it's not '60s-'70s is really the best), it's just that's what I grew up with. I still listen to music in the car and stuff but I'm older now and pop music just doesn't do it much for me anymore. So it's not necessarily that's it's "bad", it may be better than the '00s actually, it's just I'm older and it just all kinda blends in and doesn't matter as much anymore as when I was say 16-20 years old.

I'm turning 30 and I mainly liked popular music in the '00s along with late '90s and early '10s. It's not that I think '00s music was the best (it's not '60s-'70s is really the best), it's just that's what I grew up with. I still listen to music in the car and stuff but I'm older now and pop music just doesn't do it much for me anymore. So it's not necessarily that's it's "bad", it may be better than the '00s actually, it's just I'm older and it just all kinda blends in and doesn't matter as much anymore as when I was say 16-20 years old.


I think the reason I don't like today's music isn't because I'm becoming older but because it's getting worse. I think I will like the music when it changes again.

Seems like here in the Midwest anyway, a lot of people who grew up on classic rock get burned out on it when they hit their 30's or 40's and start listening to country.

Including me.  :-[  ;D

As for me, as a 1987 born, I was very heavily into popular music from late elementary school up through when I graduated college in 2009. Like, really heavily. So much so that I could probably tell you 80-90% of the songs on the Billboard Hot 100 Year-End chart for every year from 1997-2009. After college, though, my interest started to wane. The Great Recession was going strong at that time, and between having to deal with the pressures of finding a job and other responsibilities, I just didn't have time to follow music anymore. Plus, the rise of things like Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga just didn't really suit my tastes. The collaspe of rock music (my favorite genre) as a mainstream force around 2010 didn't help either. I continued to follow mainstream music a decent bit throughout the early '10s, though, with 2012 being the last year I really followed it closely. After I turned 26, I just started tuning most of it out. I couldn't tell you two songs on the Billboard Hot 100 right now.

So, to sum up that long-winded answer, I'll probably look back on the mid 2010's as the years that I "lost touch" with popular music.


That sounds a lot like me. I'm the same age, and I've gradually 'lost touch' throughout the 2010s. 2014 was probably the last year that I at least knew the major hits (Happy, All About That Bass, Stay With Me), but now I don't know anything on the Hot 100.

Since I'm a big fan of Pitbull, I find myself still very in tune with what's popular these days.

Since I'm a big fan of Pitbull, I find myself still very in tune with what's popular these days.


You can't say that about Starship. :P

You can't say that about Starship. :P


No, but Starship's music is so influential it transcends generations. I can imagine a lot of young people nowadays picking up albums like Knee Deep in the Hoopla and enjoying songs like Sara and We Built This City just as much as young people did in 1985 and 1986. 8)

I think the reason I don't like today's music isn't because I'm becoming older but because it's getting worse. I think I will like the music when it changes again.


I'm not crazy about today's music either but I do enjoy listening to some artists and songs.