Music to Our Ears

Does it matter when we start listening to a musician?

I am a big fan of John Mayer’s music. I have been listening to him ever since my little sister Emily introduced me to Room For Squares in 2001. I’ve bought every album and seen him live several times in Tinley Park, Milwaukee, and Chicago. I’ve seen the progression of his music, as he’s grown from a pop musician into one of the most respected guitarists of our time.

I have also become a big fan of The White Stripes. While the duo of Jack and Meg White has been officially split and the band broken up since February of this year, I’ve only been listening to them for the past 6 months, since Jack White appeared on the Colbert Report and piqued my interest. I’ve downloaded a lot, though far from all, of their music and have loved every bit of it. I’ve excitedly researched their career and read reviews and articles about their music.

Now I ask myself—holding personal preference constant—is it possible to love The White Stripes as much as I love John Mayer? Put another way, can I appreciate The White Stripes as much as I would have if I started listening to them when they started, the way I did with John Mayer? Does our musical appreciation depend on when in their career we are introduced to an artist?

Falling in love with someone else’s music is about the personal connection. I’ve often said that Mayer’s discography was the soundtrack of my young adult life. I'm sure most people have a similar connection to their favorite artist. Room For Squares fed directly into my adolescent romanticism, singing that girl’s body is a wonderland and dreaming of running through the halls of my high school, “screaming at the top of my lungs”. From there, the aptly named Heavier Things came out right when I was entering college. The lyrics “Someday I’ll fly, someday I’ll soar, someday I'll be so damn much more, cause I'm bigger than my body gives me credit for” embodied how I felt entering my adult life, with nothing but opportunity before me.

Continuum came out when I was a senior. Capturing my realization that my college days were coming to an end and that it all went by too quickly, in “Stop This Train” Mayer sings “so scared of getting older, I’m only good at being young.” And then the songs “Slow Dancing In a Burning Room,” “Dreaming With a Broken Heart,” “In Repair,” and “I’m Gonna Find Another You” got me through a painful breakup at the end of my senior year. Finally, when I was single and finally happy again, Mayer came out with Battle Studies. In “Who Says” he asks “who says I can’t be free, from all the things that I used to be?” In “Perfectly Lonely”, Mayer sings about blissfully belonging to nobody, but the lyrics below described exactly how I felt about starting a relationship with Tegan.

And this is not to say

There never comes a day

I'll take my chances and start again

And when I look behind

On all my younger times

I have to thank the wrongs that led me to a love so strong

But hearing the song when it first comes out is certainly not required to feel a personal connection to the music. Just because I listen to The White Stripe’s “Icky Thump” four years after it came out doesn’t mean I feel the anger behind that song any less than I would have had I heard it in 2007. I’m sure that if I were to go through a hurtful breakup now, The White Stripe’s angst filled rendition of Bob Dylan’s “Love Sick” would help me just as much as “I’m Gonna Find Another You.” I will always feel the same exciting motivation and energy whenever I listen to the chest thumping beat in “Seven Nation Army” or the charged guitar riffs in “Hello Operator.” By their very nature, songs will always be the same as they were when they were first recorded in the studio. We’re free to enjoy them whenever we want.

So, there has to be something that goes beyond the personal connection to music. And I think the temporal difference of appreciating music comes from the social element. When I was in high school, I went through a Beatles-mania faze after purchasing the compilation album “1” in 2000. I listened to nothing but The Beatles for a significant portion of my sophomore and junior year. I love listening to The Beatles and understand their impact on music as much as someone my age possibly can. But compare that to my mom, who not only knows about the hysteria that gripped the nation during that time but was a part of it. To this day, she still holds a tiny grudge against her mother for not letting her go to Midway airport to welcome the Fab Four to Chicago. Her appreciation is based in the history and deep connection to anyone growing up during that time.

As anyone knows, seeing music live is always better and more exciting than listening alone. But that reality goes beyond the concert hall. When we’re learning to love an artist in tandem with the progression of their career, we are experiencing their music live, in real time. We wait anxiously for every new album and discuss it with our friends or fellow fans. We hear their music on the radio and listen to DJs interview them on the air. And, yes, we go to their concerts and humbly watch as our favorite artist sings to us and thousands of others. The fact that our favorite music usually comes from our youth makes sense as that is the time when our social lives were most important to us.

My appreciation of John Mayer, therefore, comes not only from the music itself but the discussions I had with my sister about his new album or his personal antics. It comes from going to see him at Tinley Park or at the United Center with my mom and my sisters. It arises from the excitement of what’s to come. My internet research on The White Stripes and the ability to listen to their entire discography all at once cannot equate to the enjoyment of growing with them over the years and experiencing their career with others.

This past summer, Paul McCartney put on a couple sold-out and very expensive shows at Wrigley Field. There were two kinds of people in the audience—those who had experienced the entire span of The Beatles’ music and those who had not. The younger people in the crowd no doubt love and feel connected to McCartney’s and The Beatles’ songs. They were there to get a taste of the excitement that a musician like Paul McCartney can bring to a crowd. But it was more an attempt to get a slice of history. The older fans, on the other hand, were there to remind themselves of what it was like back when they were young—when an entire nation first saw the The Beatles together. That social experience can never be recreated no matter how many times they listen to Abbey Road. And that is why being there in the moment is so special.