Wasn’t being fourteen just the best? We may think that we have sort of left all of that angst and chaos in our pasts, but recent studies have shown that it sticks with us — especially in our music tastes.
Until around age thirty, not only are our ears in their prime condition, but our cognitive development is also strengthening our senses of identity and tastes. In a New York Times article from 2014, Daniel J. Levitin, a professor of psychology and the director of the Laboratory for Music Perception, Cognition and Expertise at McGill University stated that “fourteen is a sort of magic age for the development of musical tastes.”
At fourteen, we are encountering and immersing ourselves in the world fully, while also going through significant coming-of-age experiences in romance, friendship, and identity. Levitin said, “pubertal growth hormones make everything we’re experiencing, including music, seem very important” and that music acts as a sort of “badge of identity” for us. What better vehicle to aid us throughout this chaotic time than music? Upon reading this I wondered, what music was I really into at 14?
I decided to dive deep into my digital archives to see what kind of songs my fourteen-year-old self was listening to. I logged back into my family Amazon music account and found the playlist to uncover it all: “Songs that r goodMaddie’s” from 2019.
The results were jarring. It begins with Lana Del Rey’s “Mariners Apartment Complex,” moves to “Satisfied” by Renée Elise Goldberry from, of course, Hamilton, then moves on to Caamp’s “Peach Fuzz,” and finally gets to Salt-N-Pepa’s “Shoop.” The playlist is ultimately about four hours long, with some more incredible wild cards, such as Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark,” The Temptations’ “My Girl,” My Chemical Romance’s “Teenagers,” and shockingly, Morgan Wallen’s “Whiskey Glasses.”
I found it hilarious, humiliating, and enlightening to listen to these songs that I once thought “r good” again, four years later. And while I was listening to this playlist in its entirety, I realized that somehow I still have a strange fondness for them all. Let this be the ultimate testament that whatever music you loved at fourteen, you just might love forever.
“Peach Fuzz” used to play on the radio when my dad would take me to school, and he even bought me Caamp tickets for my 15th birthday. My favorite art teacher would play “Whiskey Glasses” to no end during class on Fridays. My best friend and I would dance around her driveway to “Shoop” (of all songs), which we still know all of the words to. As for some of the others… I cannot quite explain my interesting taste, but I also cannot explain what it felt like to be fourteen, either.
I decided to ask around about Levitin’s theory. My retired DJ and Baby Boomer dad found it interesting, too. So I asked him who his favorite music artists are — and his response was so stereotypically “dad”: Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, The Temptations, The Beach Boys, and the Four Tops. We looked way back to 1968 and found that these were the artists he loved at fourteen, too (minus Led Zeppelin, who showed up during his college years). He too had connections to every artist, and it made me wonder how significant music really is to our identities, especially if it is a taste that we have held onto since we were fourteen.
Maybe that’s the reason why music from this age sticks with us: that at fourteen we are becoming actual people in the world, trying new things, screwing up, learning, growing up, and figuring it out. That “magic age” is so magic because we are forming our identities and searching for something that can anchor us.
So find a playlist that you made at fourteen, and cringe in disgust with your past self. And then, I dare you to listen to the songs again and let them take you back to who you were or who you wanted to be back then. Weirdly enough, you might find yourself dancing around to Bruce Springsteen, and weirdly enough, you might be in your sixties someday doing the same thing.