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[BillyH]

I read this quote on a music blog almost four years ago, when I was 22. At the time there was very little in the charts I didn't like and tried to imagine what music would sound like by late 2014 when I turned the age mentioned - with the (brilliant) commercial dubstep explosion just starting at the time, I wondered if, perhaps, things would get even more intense to the point that the #1s when I'm 26 would be impossible to comprehend, mad speedcore/dubstep/D&B combinations that the teenagers love but sound alien to my ears.

Instead, almost four years on, everything seems very much the same but blander. What I adored in 2011 - that David Guetta (& now Calvin Harris) urban dance-pop sound - is still around with no obvious evolution, there's been no massive rock or indie breakthroughs (although it's a bit more than it was at the start of the decade), dubstep fizzled out into something Taylor Swift does to get a hit, and so-called "deep house" - bar the occasional one I'll admit to being brilliant (Jubel, you rock) - to the most part is immensely underwhelming and nowhere near as good as the actual deep house of the late 80s/early 90s I've been listening to since my mid noughties teens. Then you've got dull manufactured pop and The X Factor seemingly unstoppable and all the wrong songs selling over a million, seemingly those as boring and commercial as possible - I really, really dislike any of the Pharrell Williams crap over the last eighteen months, and this is someone who did like the stuff he did a decade ago, both solo and as part of N.E.R.D..

So yeah, the quote was right and something wrong has happened although I'd put it more as a slow fizzle-out since 2011 rather than a sudden change - there were less songs I liked in 2012 then '11, less in '13 than '12, and less this year than in '13. I asked my parents, they both turned 26 in 1993 and while loving everything the 80s had to offer were really put off by all the Eurodance that was around by then and agree wholeheartedly with the quote, while going further back to my Grandma, she was a huge rock & roll fan but by the time she turned 26 - in 1966 - the likes of the Beatles and Stones she couldn't stand and never got their appeal.

So if you're over 26, when did you turn that age and did music make a turn for the worse when you did? And if you're lucky enough to be under, what can you see happening to music by the time you are and will it put you off - or, alternatively, did the age (or will the age) make no difference whatsoever?