Sunday, July 5th, 2009...7:02 pm
POP QUIZ: When Did You Stop Being Young?
It was all over for me in 1987 — my youth, that is. At least that’s according to the musical quiz in the Chicago Tribune, which claims to pinpoint the moment you got old by zeroing in on the first year you fail to recognize summer’s biggest pop song.
I wouldn’t say not being able to hum along with the big summer hit makes you old so much as it makes you not young. In fact, this chart pretty accurately identifies when your adolescence started — mine was launched in 1964, with the Beatles’ “Hard Day’s Night” — and when you became officially out of it.
Uncanny, because I well remember the summer of 1986’s big hit, Madonna’s “Papa Don’t Preach” — yet could not hum along with 1987’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” by U2 if you had a gun pressed to my temple. In fact, the only big summer song I really know from that point on is, sadly, the Macarena.
Makes sense, since in the beginning of 1987 we bought our first house, and our oldest child started school, and I had to make a lot of money. And it pretty much has gone on like that ever since. Hello mortgage and parenthood, goodbye songs of summer.
When did your youth end?
13 Comments
July 5th, 2009 at 9:40 pm
don’t think i ever became old. a little frumpy, maybe.
July 5th, 2009 at 10:36 pm
Youth? Going by that list, I’m not sure I had a youth. I recognize some songs, or at least some snippets of songs, because I hear them now in the supermarket checkout line, but I’d say I listen to more off-the-wall stuff now than I ever did when I was sixteen and playing in chamber orchestras and singing in the church choir. My husband and I like to go out on weekends and catch local bands performing, and we’re usually about ten years older than most of the other audience members. Not sure whether to be uneasy about that or not.
July 6th, 2009 at 10:44 am
Ack! Apparently, I crossed over in 2004 – the same year our son was born. And to think I clicked on the link confident that I’d know every song right up ’til now.
July 6th, 2009 at 12:09 pm
Abby, If you stopped being young in 2004, you’re STILL young.
July 6th, 2009 at 7:30 pm
It was 1987 for me as well……
July 11th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
When I get there, I’ll let you know….
July 12th, 2009 at 9:10 pm
OMG, it was 1988 for me. We bought our house in October of 1987 (so I still remembered U2’s “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for”). But apparently acquiring a mortgage immediately makes you old. I didn’t recognize any other of those songs except, yes, the Macarena.
August 1st, 2009 at 8:09 pm
This is a cute quiz, but it isn’t the kind of music that I have ever listened to. I only do know the songs through the year I graduated college, but I can precisely pinpoint when I got old: the day I turned 30.
August 6th, 2009 at 9:45 am
64-76, 07+ so I hit adolecents at age -30 then it ended at age -18 then restarted at 07 (age12) and has been goin strong eversince
August 10th, 2009 at 10:19 am
My youth ended when all my high school/college friends (in no particular order) got the ” gotta buy a new car, buy a house, get married, have kids, work for corporate America, and turn conservative” disease – about age 22.
August 10th, 2009 at 2:51 pm
Apparently, in 1997…..when I was 19. I only know one song after that, and that is by force (I worked mall retail for awhile.)
Funny, I didn’t feel old until this year, when those little lines under my eyes from sleep weren’t gone by 9 am.
September 16th, 2009 at 11:27 am
The last song I remember is from 1986 (I was 26 then).
I remember that turning 20 made me already feel a little uneasy, I really loved being a teenager. But turning 40 was really tough – now I was “middle-aged”. I was in a foul mood, licking my wounds while listening to the Blues.
But the Blues is a healer, Baby…
March 5th, 2010 at 4:52 pm
I was in college in 1986 when I realized that, due to the incessant repetition of Billy Squier’s “Everybody Wants You” and Jefferson Starship’s “We Built This City on Rock and Roll” I could no longer stand to listen to the radio.
Most of the music scene since then has been a blur. I loved REM’s “What’s the Frequency Kenneth?” in 1994, but today Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Beyonce et al leave me flat. It’s all Jonas Brothers to me.
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