A Very Peculiar Notion

Originally posted by richardh

Originally posted by richardh

I knew this to be true as a 13 year old but not so sure now. I rarely get the same affect from music I had then. Its hard to sum up the affect music has now but I wonder if when you are young the mind altering affect of music becomes less obvious over the years. No expert but at that age the brain is still creating connections and developing so music is more exciting (perhaps)  

That's certainly true for me too. When i was younger I was much more receptive to music, I would pick it much faster and was more emotional about it. All the albums I discovered and loved until my teens I knew by heart after some listens, all instruments nearly note by note and many of the lyrics even when I knew little english back them.
Of the albums I have discovered in the last 10 years there are very few I know in such a detail, even after having listened to them many many times.

I guess it's because of a combination of factors. Surely our brains become less maleable with age, and we probably become less emotional and less influentiable. Many things other than music gain more importance in our lives. 
There may also be a quantitative element, the first 100 albums you come to love you can get to learn them by heart, but when you have listened to many hundreds or even thousands of albums it becomes increasingly difficult to retain all their details. 