A shift in favorite PJ albums

Johnny Abruzzo

I really love Dark Matter. It kind of made my year.

Anyway, are we all delusional? I've been angry at Pitchfork (what else is new) and their putting down of Dark Matter. It was not in their top 10 albums of the *checks notes* week. But I haven't seen our guys' album in any lists for 2024 - Top 100 albums, rock albums, whatever. It did get the Grammy nom, along with that ridiculous Rolling Stones album. How out of touch are we? Whatever, I was stuck in a waiting room watching videos of the "hits" last night and I don't think I'm missing anything.

mace1229

Part of my problem is I am extremely loyal to my youth, I don't think I could ever admit to myself if VS ever stopped being my favorite album of all time.
But I have noticed some gradual changes over the last several years. Until LB (and later Gigaton) stole the honor, Riot Act was easily my least favorite album. But some of those songs have grown on me more and I enjoy the album more than I used to ( I still can't stand You Are though).
Binaural was never a favorite, but I enjoyed it more than RA. Now, I don't care for it as much with the exception of Grievance and Insignificance, which need to get more rotations into live shows, I don't understand why they don't!
LB and Gigaton are the only albums I don't see myself probably ever just listening to as a whole again. But even LB, when some songs come on PJ radio, I find myself liking them more than I thought I did. 

mace1229

BF25394 said:

julieooliern said:

For the last 34 years it has been Ten, Vs and Vitalogy. This year something happened. I find I am totally into Binaural. Yield, Backspacer, and Riot Act are right up there too. Even 🥑  holds a special place in my heart now. Weird, right? I think when I was younger I wouldn’t give any of their new stuff a chance because I was so stuck on the Ten/Vital era…

"This year something happened" for me, too. They released Dark Matter, and that has been the album I have wanted to listen to more than any other Pearl Jam album for the last eight months. I'm still listening to it two to three times per week. The CD has still not left my car since release.

Weezer's Pinkerton is that album for me. But that's because my car's CD player broke and it won't eject. Been in there about 2 years now. I'm getting full use out of the aux. function and got a portable XM radio. 

jstu39

I think Gigaton is their best album in 20 years. When Dark Matter came out and I saw all the praise I wondered what I was missing. I wanted to love it, but it’s more of a like for me. Even after seeing a couple of live shows I prefer Gigaton over Dark Matter. But I do think it’s their best back to back albums since the 90s. Really splitting hairs, a lot a great music. Truly lucky! 

MikeDigs

Usually, these album shifts are due to the timing of where we are at in our lives when we listen.  For me, Riot Act had the biggest leap.  Incredible album.

brianlux

MikeDigs said:

Usually, these album shifts are due to the timing of where we are at in our lives when we listen.  For me, Riot Act had the biggest leap.  Incredible album.

Good point Mike.  Often, there will be an album that always to take one back to a great time or special occasion in your life.  Sometimes though, it can work the other way where a song or an album brings back a difficult memory making it more difficult to enjoy.  But given enough time, that can change as well.

BF25394

There is so much psychology attached to why people like the music that they like and, for many people-- probably most people-- they will always feel the strongest connection to the music from their youth. The average music listener stops listening to new music some time around age 25 at the latest. There are a number of reasons for this, but the primary one is that the obligations of adult life start to crowd out the activities that people used to be consumed with in their youth. Jobs, children, maintaining a home, etc., all eat away at the "free" time they had in their adolescence and early adulthood to immerse themselves in music and other forms of entertainment. This has only been exacerbated for people who came of age with Pearl Jam because this 30-year period has also coincided with the rise of the internet, the smartphone and social media, all of which take up people's time in a way that they didn't in the early to mid-'90s because they were anything from nascent to non-existent.

Anyway, one thing that all of a person's favorite songs and albums have in common is that they were things that the person likely listened to a lot. They played Ten over and over. They heard "Even Flow" and "Alive" on the radio and MTV a lot. They've seen them performed live for 30 years. Familiarity breeds love in the context of music. As people get to know every word, every riff, every beat and every rhythm, their attachment to and fondness for a song tends to grow. (Sure, sometimes a song can get "played out," too.) As we get older, we are much less likely to give music the time we gave it when we were younger. We listen once or twice and, if it doesn't immediately grab us, we move on to something else, which often means we revert to listening to something old and familiar. This is why so many artists face the same fate with audiences, who show decreasing interest in the artists' output over time regardless of its quality. It's a strange thing where, in most fields, it is assumed that people get better with experience, but when it comes to music, a lot of listeners believe that most artists get worse over time. The reality is that, in many cases, it's not the artist who has forgotten how to write and perform good songs-- it's that the listener is no longer the same person they were when they were younger and they may not really be open to appreciating new music in the same way that they used to be. There's a reason why every generation tends to think the music of the next generation is shit.

brianlux

BF25394 said:

There is so much psychology attached to why people like the music that they like and, for many people-- probably most people-- they will always feel the strongest connection to the music from their youth. The average music listener stops listening to new music some time around age 25 at the latest. There are a number of reasons for this, but the primary one is that the obligations of adult life start to crowd out the activities that people used to be consumed with in their youth. Jobs, children, maintaining a home, etc., all eat away at the "free" time they had in their adolescence and early adulthood to immerse themselves in music and other forms of entertainment. This has only been exacerbated for people who came of age with Pearl Jam because this 30-year period has also coincided with the rise of the internet, the smartphone and social media, all of which take up people's time in a way that they didn't in the early to mid-'90s because they were anything from nascent to non-existent.

Anyway, one thing that all of a person's favorite songs and albums have in common is that they were things that the person likely listened to a lot. They played Ten over and over. They heard "Even Flow" and "Alive" on the radio and MTV a lot. They've seen them performed live for 30 years. Familiarity breeds love in the context of music. As people get to know every word, every riff, every beat and every rhythm, their attachment to and fondness for a song tends to grow. (Sure, sometimes a song can get "played out," too.) As we get older, we are much less likely to give music the time we gave it when we were younger. We listen once or twice and, if it doesn't immediately grab us, we move on to something else, which often means we revert to listening to something old and familiar. This is why so many artists face the same fate with audiences, who show decreasing interest in the artists' output over time regardless of its quality. It's a strange thing where, in most fields, it is assumed that people get better with experience, but when it comes to music, a lot of listeners believe that most artists get worse over time. The reality is that, in many cases, it's not the artist who has forgotten how to write and perform good songs-- it's that the listener is no longer the same person they were when they were younger and they may not really be open to appreciating new music in the same way that they used to be. There's a reason why every generation tends to think the music of the next generation is shit.

Good post, BF, and interesting points. 

The average music listener stops listening to new music some time around age 25 at the latest.

This is quite true, yet for me as a so-called "boomer", I find that a bit sad, really.  So many of my peers stopped listening to new music after some time in the mid 1970's.  For me, the 80's music offered tons of stuff I found particularly enjoyable and interesting, somewhat the same in the 90s but admittedly, less so in the 2000s (though I still keep listening and occasionally find things I like.)  I'm actually much more inclined to listen to music from the late 70s, into the 80s and 90s than I am music I grew into in the late 50's through much of the 70s.

As people get to know every word, every riff, every beat and every rhythm, their attachment to and fondness for a song tends to grow.

Another good point generally quite true, and yet again I find myself somewhat different that way.  My wife asked me why I don't listen to Jimi Hendrix so often anymore and I told her, "Because all I have to do is just think about those records and it's all right there in my head."  I still do listen to older stuff occasionally, but my interests are far stronger in things I've more recently discovered (for example, Lee Ranaldo and Lee Ranaldo and the Dust,  and Green on Red- an older band I recently "discovered" are current huge favorites of mine.

There's a reason why every generation tends to think the music of the next generation is shit.

I easily and eagerly moved on from boomer music to Gen X and Millennial music, but admittedly, I'm finding it more difficult to find Gen Z music I like.  

But that leads into another whole discussion/ theory I have.  The basic premise is that it's much more difficult today to come up with anything unique in music based on the fact that there are many more people today than there decades ago, the internet has made access to making and disseminating music broadly much easier, and because to much music is shared to widely, it's getting more difficult to create new genres and styles of music.  The only thing I've thought of that might change all that would be the introduction of new instrumentation, and even that is a bit hard to picture, or it would probably have already happened.  What would a new and unique wind or string or percussion instrument look like?  Computer technology of course could create new sounds, but without an organic, tangible base, to me that would simply equate to artificial sound, not music.  And I'm sure my premises could probably be argued emphatically, lol!

rummy

I thought Vs would always be my favourite studio album but it seems many of the songs from the album are a challenge for EV to sing these days. For this reason, I now question whether or not it’s their best album (for me).

Reflection: Do live renditions of songs impact your rating/ranking for their corresponding studio album?

BF25394

Not for me. It's always about the studio versions.

rummy

BF25394 said:

Not for me. It's always about the studio versions.

Makes sense. I suppose I don’t listen to their studio albums all that much anymore. Instead, I just keep tabs on how well/often they’re performing various songs from their albums.