There are of course a lot of factors why you like some kinds of music and get really annoyed listening to others. The general populair musical genres we use these days to categorize todays music have only existed for some decades now and every year a few dozen "new" genres are added. These genres have over the years become important standards, and not just musically but also in terms of different lifestyles that seem to fit the different musical genres. I.e. you won't see a lot of guys dressed like "Pimps" at a Maiden gig. With Music Television blasting away 24/7 on different channels the "looks" accompanying the music have become much more important than, let's say, during the "pre MTV years". By looking at the album pictures of the first HM albums I bought during the late 70's / early 80's I became aware of the denims and leather most of these guys wore. It instantly appealed to me and although my parents wouldn't let me buy a leather jacket, the stiched denim and band/concert T-'s were certainly there! But no matter if I would adapt to one look or another: The music had come first. And my musical heart beats for Heavy Metal still, even though I have adopted some other other musical genres over the years aswell.
Nowadays I think it's much harder for teens to find a band they really like, as it is for bands to get a real solid following like Maiden has. Top 40 radio plays stuff most people don't relate to because the Top 40 has become more of a "wishlist" for record companies (we wish for the people to buy these records) instead of a real chart, compiled by true national recordsales!
Heavy Metal, though never intended to appeal to the masses has found it's way into the Top 40 on several occasions, as did Punk. But it would never have happened without some well-oiled and well-financed marketing machine to back it all up.
The upside of Metal not appearing in charts is the actual reason for this: Metal doesn't need it anymore! No other Musical genre in the past few years has seen such an overwhelming growth in sales of cd's, dvd's and, very importantly: MERCHANDISE! Also: there's a lot of small indie labels that do however cover quite a large national market and put out international releases trough befriended labels abroad. This way each small label nows its potential market best and though upstart bands may not get the Caddilac, the Coke and the Cash they may have imagined, they sure as hell get the right promotion and some "real" people that aren't trying to cash in on the band's eventual succes...
The downside of Metal not appearing in charts is that a whole lot of "old" bands (yes... that includes IM) are like a financial guarantee to major record labels, thus are they given the largest financial backup for their tours and will they eventually gross the largest amount of money during these large tours! All that the newer bands can hope for is to become the support act with a major Metal band's tour.
Now back to the songs:
Why can songs you didn't care for earlier suddenly sound so great? It all comes down to your personal "musical maturity". "Now WTF is "MM" I hear you think, I'll try to explain: Usually a boy starts to become interested in music around his 8th birthday (note: it's all different with girls, really!). Depending on his other interests like sports, technics, (computer)games or sex he will be able to absorb more or less musical information, forming some distinctive preferences regarding different styles of music. A lot of these preferences are linked to an almost infinite number of factors such as emotions or events occurring during or around the time a certain song or musical style was heard. However, for most boys the gathering and categorizing of musical information will start decreasing around the peak of their puberty (+/- 14y). Whatever musical styles they will be subjected to as listeners after this period will be subconciously compared to their "database" and either be qualified as good, or kick-ass music or plain rubbish. This is actually an example of early musical maturity. The "ears" have been trained to their limit within a relatively short priod because the listener has no deeper affinity with music, either though a musical education or a larger personal interest.
People who study music, whether this study is official or more like a hobby, will consiously and/or unconsiously stretch their ability to define whatever is going on in a piece of music. I.e. they will be able to hear what (some of) the individual instruments play or they can determine certain "musical signatures" from different (well known) musicians and songwriters. The age of reaching musical maturity for these people is much higher generally ranging between their early twenties and mid thirties and in some cases even up to in their fifties. So reaching musical maturity actually means that you've reached the top in your personal musical learning curve.
Now let's just say that you've heard a song you liked for the first time at age 12, while you were still maturing musically. If you would have become musically mature at age 14 you would probably still like the same song, for the same reasons for the rest of your life. If however your musical interest expanded over the years and you've reached your musical maturity at age 25 or are not even "mm" yet, the same song you heard at age 12 may reveal some musical content you weren't aware of earlier. This newly discovered content might make you like the song more. It also might make wonder what the hell you liked so mouch about the song at age 12. (That could very well have been the sexy bikini of the girl in the music video!)
As a large part of any kid's early musical development take place during it's puberty one cannot disgard the influence of hormones. I will not get too deep into this whole story but evidently record companies, that are responsible for an artist's recordsale and the obligatory music video, promoting an artist's music, are well-aware of the influence of hormones on their, mostly adolecent, niche and carefully produce many a "wet dream" for boys and girls alike. This actually closes the circle on my post: From commercialism to music and back again!
By the way, is there a prize for the largest original and uneditted post ever placed in this forum? And if so, do I get it? This post is 6464 characters long... I just got a little carried away I guess. [!--emo&
--][img src=\'style_emoticons/[#EMO_DIR#]/blush.gif\' border=\'0\' style=\'vertical-align:middle\' alt=\'blush.gif\' /][!--endemo--]
--][img src=\'style_emoticons/[#EMO_DIR#]/tongue.gif\' border=\'0\' style=\'vertical-align:middle\' alt=\'tongue.gif\' /][!--endemo--]... but well... now Maiden is my favorite group
