Music & Growth

Content:

How does the music we listen to change from childhood to adulthood?
How do these changes reflect our inner world and growth trajectory?

* This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

Hello everyone, and welcome to today’s presentation! As we go through life, music is a constant companion. From the simple nursery rhymes of childhood to the pop hits of adolescence, and later, to the more complex and introspective melodies of adulthood, our musical preferences evolve in ways that mirror our inner worlds and personal growth.

Before we dive in, I'd like to ask you to think back for a moment: what kind of music did you listen to at different stages of your life? Perhaps there were childhood songs you loved to sing with your family, or teenage anthems that defined your group of friends. These musical moments have all played a role in shaping who we are, and even if we don't listen to those songs anymore, they still carry a certain emotional resonance.

If you're comfortable sharing, I'd love to hear about the music that marked different phases of your life. These personal experiences can help set the stage for our discussion today.

In the next part of our presentation, we'll explore how our musical tastes shift across various stages of life, and reflect on how these changes align with our emotional and cognitive growth. Let’s begin this journey through the soundtrack of our lives!

Childhood: Exploration and Simplicity

Preferences: As children, our musical tastes are influenced by our immediate environment, including family, cultural norms, and media targeted at young audiences. Simple, upbeat, and repetitive tunes dominate because they are easy to remember and enjoyable.

Reflection of Inner World: This phase reflects innocence, curiosity, and a focus on emotional immediacy. Music here often provides comfort and joy, aligning with a child’s need for security and playfulness.

*这几段感觉可以加点例子~

Adolescence: Identity and Emotional Expression

Preferences: Teenagers often gravitate toward music that feels rebellious, emotionally charged, or reflective of their emerging individuality. Genres like pop, rock, hip-hop, or indie become dominant as peers and subcultures shape choices.

Reflection of Inner World: Adolescence is a time of self-discovery, emotional highs and lows, and a desire to connect with others. Music becomes a tool for expressing identity, processing emotions, and forming social bonds.

*中间感觉可以加点jokes :D 太长了

Adulthood: Nuance and Personal Resonance

Preferences: In adulthood, music choices become more diverse and personalized. We may revisit nostalgic tunes from our youth while also exploring genres that resonate with our matured tastes, such as jazz, classical, or world music.

Reflection of Inner World: This stage reflects greater emotional stability, deeper introspection, and a nuanced understanding of life. Adults often seek music that aligns with their values, mood, or need for relaxation and inspiration.

Why These Changes Occur

Cognitive Development: As we grow, our brains become better at processing complexity, leading us to appreciate more intricate music.
Emotional Growth: Life experiences, relationships, and challenges shape our emotional needs, which music fulfills in different ways.
Social Context: In childhood and adolescence, external influences like family and peers dominate. In adulthood, personal choice and individuality take precedence.

What It Reveals About Growth

Shifting Needs: Childhood music reflects a need for simplicity and joy, adolescence captures exploration and identity-building, and adulthood highlights a search for meaning and comfort.

Emotional Maturity: The progression from surface-level enjoyment to deeper emotional and intellectual connection mirrors our psychological and emotional development.

Ultimately, the evolution of our musical tastes serves as a soundtrack to our personal growth, with each phase offering insight into the person we were, are, and aspire to be.

(Quora) How can music change the way we see the world?

Idea 1

Some things have the power to “break category boundaries.” The mind builds a “semantic model” of its experience, which you can imagine as being sort of like the book classification systems in libraries — the “life science” books are down the aisle from the “chemistry” books, right? These are seen by the librarian as separate categories, and librarians get all annoyed when there’s books which cross categories because they try to straddle the boundaries between different domains and integrate them, etc.

Similarly, our minds are classifying their knowledge and beliefs about the world, and sorting experience into “relevant to me” and “not relevant to me”, and similar boxes that are generally self-centered. Like a librarian sorting books, we’re sorting our experience and there’s a kind of psychological comfort when everything fits and we “know” what’s going on.

But those categories are artificial… they’re “constructions of meaning.” And if you sort everything neatly, and then you’re done, it gets boring and lifeless in the library. Music and art and dance and similar creative expressions run around the library and grab books from different shelves and throw them up in the air to see what happens: the setting sun and the beat of the drums and the way she told you she’d never love you again… it all blends together and new possibilities of meaning emerge as the category boundaries are broken.

Nobody “knows” where music could go, the possibilities transcend our ability to classify outcomes in advance. It creates new worlds by tearing down the walls of the old ones, and there’s no limit to that.

This isn’t just about music, of course. It’s the nature of authentic self-expression in general, music is just one form of that.

Idea 2

Music can change the way we see the world in a way we want to see

Music has a lot of impact to those who love to listen songs and it entirely depends on the type of songs and type of music we listen.I love music and this is exactly how I feel.

If I listen to love songs than suddenly I will remember my love stories and loved ones and feel good about the music and the song because of the person I am imagining at that time.I listen to melody and slow music thats when I want to relax and have a peace of mind.

when I am depressed I will listen to the songs which motivates me and tells me that its ok you still have this and this is what you can do.When I am in a party than I enjoy the party music or party songs.

If I want to show attitude and think like i don’t give a damn about anything than I will go for rap songs and hip hop music.

Now if i listen to depressed songs when i am depressed my situation gets worse and vice versa applies for all the cases.This is how I listen to the music and the world around me.

I listen mostly to HIP HOP music and POP music.

My favourite artists are:

1.TUPAC

2.BIGGIE SMALLS

3.EMINEM

4.MADONA

5.LANA DEL REY

These are my top 5 favourite songs:

Me against the world (tupac).
Juicy (biggie smalls).
American dream (madona).
Beautiful (eminem).
Dark paradise (lana del rey).

(Reddit) How has the music of your childhood affected you as an adult?

Only in that exposed me to my parent's music, which made me more tolerant of different types of music and more open to listening to that music as I grew older. My father was very big on classical and marching bands. I never really took a liking to classical but can listen to it with a bit of appreciation and without grumbling. I think his love of brassy John Phillips Sousa is why I like bright, fast power pop.

My mother preferred mainstream music, which at that time was often jazz and what has become known the American Songbook. She always had the radio on at breakfast before I went to school. While I prefer a more edgy tone to my jazz, exposure to Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman didn't hurt me a bit and all of the standards became the foundation for jazz improvisation. She probably had a greater influence on my tastes in music.

There was very little politics or opinion in American popular music before the 1960s, so my ideology was not affected. We only listened to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and such for xmas. Just for the sound, not the message.

There was Woody Guthrie, The Weavers and folk music in the 50s, but one's attitudes toward unions and leftist politics had been established earlier through contact from relatives who worked in the factory and from exposure to the benefits of Roosevelt's New Deal.