Its pretty obvious stuff though really isn't it, I have always felt the music you hear in your teens hits you with an intensity that you will probably never get again, it connects to your developing mind and your unbalanced emotional soul and leaves a indelible mark, no doubt about it. So its never the same again but thats not to say its less enjoyable and you have to lose your passion, I'm enjoying music as much and maybe more than ever right now. Yeah I listen to some retro stuff its not like you are going to ignore the past but i think it would be more foolish to ignore whats happening right now. Who wants to live in the past anyway, its like friends who were raised on older brothers or parents record collection and never got any further in their muscial development, they know every Dylan track and album but hardly know a band since 1975 on. So Alex is listening to Johnny Cash now? how original! I'm sick of this Johnny Cash overdose.

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Have to say I think Coxon is on to something there.

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? Alex James, not Graham Coxon. ? Anyway, I don't know about the backwards journey necessarily starting at 20. I think for me, it probably started much much earlier. I was heavily influenced by what was in the house, and by my older brothers, whose musical tastes differed wildly. In the early to mid nineties, when i was just starting secondary school, I would've had one brother into heavy stuff (Pantera, Slayer), another brother going through a kinda baggy britpop phase, and a third brother into musicals and theatrical scores (The lyrics of so so many musicals still stick in my mind thanks to him singing them in my face when I was 11..). Then in addition, the metal brother introduced me to older stuff, like the beach boys, who I became obsessed with (I remember asking for beach boys studio albums for Christmas when I was about 14 and being too embarrassed to tell my friend what I got coz I thought she'd laugh) plus loads of blue note jazz stuff, beatles, simon and garfunkel etc. THAT's the stuff that sticks with me always. I was a sponge and just soaked it all up and it stuck. Since then, I find newer music will come and go, without having much lasting effect. It's definitely the older stuff I'd find myself returning to in search of comfort. I think my point is it can also work in reverse - you can easily explore the 60s stuff first, while still a teenager, and you might only start to pay real attention to modern stuff when you're about 16/17+. Interesting stuff though.

that's so weird - I was just saying to some mates last night that the music we listen to between 13 and 18 is the only music that makes a real emotional impression. Dangermouse said something like that in the Observer music monthly mag yesterday. In other news, can I please have some sympathy for how hungover I am right now. Cry.

Could it be that when you're in your teens and discovering music for the first time everything seems new and you're so overwhelmed by all the stuff that's happening now you think most of it is great. As you get older you develop filters to cut out all the s**te that's current but if you haven't lost your hunger for music it's natural that you'll look backwards for the great stuff that came before your musical awakening. I agree that you always hold on to the stuff that really meant something as a kid, I've always loved Springsteen, ever since my Dad bought the live 75-85 boxset and I listened to it over and over for years, I really think my liking for Johnny Cash stems from hearing my old man playing "Sunday Morning Coming Down" (I know Cash didn't write it but anyway) on his guitar while I was growing up and I doubt that any band will ever mean as much to me as Radiohead did when I was 17 (and still do, but not quite as much). That's not to say that there isn't music happening now that really excites me and lights a fire under me but I find it really hard to get behind the "new big thing" whenever it comes along now whereas when The Strokes first hit I thought they were the bestest thing ever (still really like that first album), but maybe it's just that my filters are working well. Here's the thing though, aside from occasional forays into 80's American indie most of the older stuff that I'm listening to can't really be easily traced to the modern stuff I like (or even the stuff I liked as a teen), the older music I've been buying has been Jazz and Blues, some Soul, occasional bits of country, even Elvis. But I own no Pink Flloyd, no Led Zeppelin, no Who, the only Beatles CD I own is that number ones thing and the first anthology CD and I've got no desire to remedy that situation (although if someone could recommend a good Kinks compilation I'd be greatfull). I've got tons of Dylan and Waits though.

Unicron. Everything you say is right.

I can't trust your judgement, you're hungover.

Interesting topic this. Personnaly, i jettisoned a lot of the crap that i listened to in my early teens when i was being swayed by "popular culture" and terrified of admitting to my schoolmates a liking to anything outside of the accepted norms. It was only when i got into the left of centre (but still mainstream at the time) David Bowie around 14 years of age that i went on my own musical journey and started to explore the late 60's and early 70's fashioning, as it did, a love for The Stones, The Beatles, Led Zep etc. Through listening to this stuff it informed me of how derivative and emotionally empty the bulk of the mainstream was at the time (and continues to be) and defined what i needed and what i wanted in music even though i didn't know what it was until i heard it. When I was a teenager I felt I was raging with potential, boiling over and discombobulated with a mixture of feelings and an inability to temper those emotions. Only music reflected how i felt and i still get swept away with the embers of those feelings when listening to something from my "formative" years. However, "old" music and new music still does it for me. Still makes me feel like a teenage and still taps into that emotional core that seeks validation and seeks outlets of expression and empathy. I think that while music from my teenage years still has an emotional impact that is partly because of the quality of the good stuff but is also partly nostalgia for that time and for those teenage years. I see musical tastes and likes as an aural genome of sorts. I got into what i'm into and went where i went because i walked into my local record shop with my pocket-money, bought a record and listened to it non-stop; because i went ploughing through my parents collection with no affectations and/or expectations revelling in the sheer joy of a good cut because there were no social paramaters through which i viewed the artist or the scene that i would have oblivious to their being a part of. Bottom line? It just takes one good record and God knows where it'll take you!

everyone is mean.

*Hands Una black coffee to make up for meanness*

i've already had black coffee. Now I have gum. I like the way the word gum sounds.

Yer all wrong! OK, maybe not but there is a theory that music is kinda hardwired into our brains, like language. Some take this even further and speculate that in fact the music we really like is the stuff that matches whats already in our brains "wiring" and emotional makeup. It's also a proven fact that the prime age for musical development is 0-10 years of age (If my Mum hadn't confiscated my harmonica when I was 3, I coulda been the greatest bluesman ever! probably ... well maybe... ok I was rubbish) Personally, a lot of the music I listened to in my teens doesn't really mean as much to me now, on the other hand, music that has it's roots in stuff I liked before my teens (mainly 1950s rock and roll, beach boys, really simple stuff like that) has defintely stuck.

I feel that it is pretty obvious that the music you listened to in your late teens will stay with you in life; it’s the same as a lot of other things from life around that period. Girlfriends/boyfriends, college, jobs, gigs, nights out, as those couple of years are your first real tastes of freedom and once those couple of years are gone, (I reckon 16-24), it starts to get a bit boring and you can look back on it and remember landmark dates, with that music as the soundtrack of your life at that time. Good times, good fun and good music.

Don't agree with that, I started at 16 with Old Masters like Johnny Cash, John Lee Hooker and Robert Johnson and I've been forward looking ever since. Sounds to me like old Alex didn't have a good musical education to start with, that or he's done too many C4 '100 Greatest Ever' shows and has turned into 'rent a pundit'. Personally, I think too many young bands are 'faux retro', like Franz Ferdinand.

I like Jules point of view, theres no reason to constantly hark back to your teens out of a misguided sense of nostalgia. There is lots of music that I've discovered in the last 5 years (not neccesarily new music, just new to me) means as much to me as anything I'd come across in the preceeding 20. At the the same time, I can always see a thread running through my tastes that's an echo of something previous. e.g. The reason I liked The Breeders in my teens (and still do) and Miss Kittin now, is that I loved simple fun surf rock as a kid. I know it's probably a little hard to see a real conection between those three things, but I think they all share a certain amount of musical "genes"