Today’s prompt for #Blogtober20 is “Fame”. For this reason, I’m going to share some music that was famous or that I liked as a teen. I once heard that people’s lifelong taste in music is shaped between the ages of 14 and 24. I don’t know how true that is, as I’m still developing my taste. Anyway, here goes.
1. The Backstreet Boys. Okay, I didn’t really like those, but I pretended to. When I was about eleven, so still a preteen, my mother encouraged me to develop a taste in music, because that was what my peers were into or so she thought. I have shared before that I hung Backstreet Boys posters on my wall without ever having heard any of their songs.
2. Anouk. She is a Dutch pop singer. I had two of her CDs, although I was never a huge fan.
3. ABBA. Well, the A-Teens, an ABBA remix band. Until I was about 20, I didn’t even know they were an ABBA imitation and spelled the band name “Eighteens”. I thoroughly enjoyed this music though and often danced to it.
4. The Corrs. I got a CD because it was recommended in my high school newspaper. Then I got two more CDs. Unlike Anouk, I truly loved this music.
5. World music. Particularly Latin. I had a lot of CDs with Latino music on them, although that included Spanish pop music like Macarena too. When I first met my now husband, he asked what type of music I was into and I said “world music”. I later played one of my favorite Latin music CDs for him and he was glad he hadn’t known this was what I’d meant by world music.
6. Protest songs, particularly Dutch ones. These were the songs my parents listened to on LP. I had some copied onto cassette tape too, specifically an LP from Robert Long. He was a protest singer in the early 1970s, but converted to Christianity later on and his older songs are hard to come by now.
What was your taste in music like as a teen?
A Multitude of Musings 
It was all pretty wild in the mid to late 60s!
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Yes, I bet! My father was born in 1949, so he did live through that too, although in the Netherlands, so it wasn’t as wild.
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Your taste in music was awesome as a teen. Mine was varied but much more mainstream still!
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That’s understandable. In addition to these, I did listen to Sky Radio, which mainly plays pop music too.
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I like The Backstreet Boys more now than when I did as a teen. lol I thought they were overrated.
You had great taste in music. As a teen I loved Take That and the Spice Girls. lol x
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Oh, I understand that about the Backstreet Boys, though the Spice Girls and Take That were pretty much hyped up similarly.
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I listened to The Corrs as a teen too and liked them. I still do, but somehow listen to them less.
And I also like a lot of world music but Latino has never spoken to me.
Protest songs are interesting even if I don’t necessarily always agree with them, the genre itself is quite fascinating and the more so for me that they often have a lot to do with folk. Actually one of my music fazas (as I call them, so like major music fascinations) has been Dutch-Swedish singer, songwriter, guitarist and poet Cornelis Vreeswijk (I believe he’s much more known in Sweden than the Netherlands as he mainly wrote and sang in Swedish) whose political views and views on all sorts of other things are probably as far from mine as can be, as he was a socialist while I’m conservative as well as a Christian, so I was wondering and still continue to wonder why did I actually get a faza on him, but such things seem largely based on my brain’s whims rather than my own, conscious will. 😀 He also has a lot of non-political and less controversial, but very lyrical or satirical and sarcastic songs and also over time I have learnt that him and me do have a lot in common, in terms of thinking in general and on a menta level sort of, though still it amazes me how it actually happened that I liked him in the first place. 😀 Anyways, he wrote a lot of protest songs, and I think that was the first time I came across this curious genre.
As for what I listened to as a teen – I think a lot of the same things that I do these days, but also a lot more mainstream music. – I started getting into all things Celtic and all things folklore at about the age of 14 and really enjoyed exploring Celtic music. I also started getting these faza things which drove my different interests further and my first faza was Enya. Then I also developed my continuing love for harp music and a liking for famous Celtic folk musicians like Clannad or Loreena MCKennitt or The Corrs. Back then I also had some rather fleeting but fairly intense interest in trance music, especially Armin van Buuren, and a much longer one with Gothic music (bands like Nightwish, Xandria, Within Temptation). I only stopped listening to Gothic and symphonic metal after I re-converted to Christianity. In my later teens, but before I re-converted I also discovered pagan folk and folkmetal and found them fascinating. I also listened to some new age-y relaxing music. My next faza was Declan Galbraith from the UK (now performing under the name of Child of Mind) and he was more mainstream and more in the pop genre but not particularly popular over here, but at the same time he had Irish and Scottish roots so that motivated me even further to listen to more Celtic music and learn more about it. I can hardly remember the names of mainstream artists and songs that were popular at the time that I liked, because mostly I liked themm from the radio and listened to them on there and so now I can identify something that: “Oh yeah, I liked it as a teen”, but I have no clue how it’s called. I only remember clearly that I liked Black-Eyed Peas but only their earlier songs. Oh yeah, and in my early teens/preteens I was wildly interested in Polish Radio BIS (BIS is an acronym for Very Different Station) and they played things like reggae, alternative/indie rock, hiphop, folk and other weird things on there. Back then I was particularly interested in the reggae/rock part – the more strange and rarely heard the language in which they sang or the weirder the lyrics, the more likely I was to enjoy it. – But my most favourite reggae band was Vavamuffin. And at the age of 17 I got the faza on Cornelis Vreeswijk and from there I started discovering a lot of other Swedish music (not necessarily in a similar style to him, mostly not) and after a while I already had a general fascination with Nordic folk music, but also modern Scandipop. So quite a crazy mix overall I guess. 😀
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Wow, you’ve had quite the varied taste in music over the years. I also understand you appreciating music by artists whose views you don’t agree with, such as Kornelis Vreeswijk. I mean, I am quite progressive and still occasionally like to listen to right-wing country such as Merle Haggard. Thanks for your extensive comment. You’ve given me some ideas for music to check out.
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Most welcome. 🙂
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I love reading about other people’s music tastes. Mine have been ska, punk, psychobilly and rockabilly.
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Oh, that’s interesting. My husband was into Ska and Punk for a while too.
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Thank you for sharing your music tastes! Mine are always changing.
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Yes, so are mine. I’ve listened to and liked almost everything except for rap.
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I liked dance music, it was big in the 90’s. I also loved boy bands, like the irish band boyzone, the UK band take that, and oasis, and east 17!
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Oh yes, I’d heard some of those too, but I didn’t know much about music in the 90s.
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