Study: no same song to celebrate Valentine’s Day

Love songs will obviously be uppermost in our minds on Valentine’s Day today.

But a 30-year-old would most likely be celebrating with Beyoncé’s ‘Crazy In Love’, 45-year-olds with Van Halen’s ‘When It’s Love’ and 60-year-olds with Marvin Gaye’s ‘Let’s Get It On’.

An informal study of Spotify listening habits data and Billboard charts by American economist Seth Stephens-Davidowitz suggests that the songs music fans most like as adults depends on what they were listening to in their early teens.

For women, the strongest music preference is when they were 13 years old. For men it is when they were 14.

This is why, Stephens-Davidowitz suggests, writing in the New York Times, siblings and friends who are even just a year apart will argue furiously as to which song was better.

He says, “This research tells us that the majority of us, when we are grown men and women, predictably stick with the music that captured us in the earliest phase of our adolescence.”

Hence women who are 35 now (and 11 in 1993) would say that their favourite song is Janet Jackson’s ‘That’s The Way Love Goes’, released that year.

A 41-year-old today would consider The Cure’s ‘Just Like Heaven’ (1987) as their highest ranking, and a 69-year old would opt for Roy Orbison’s ‘Pretty Woman’ (1964).

A 38-year-old man would rank Savage Garden’s ‘Truly Madly Deeply’’ (1997), a 63-year-old would tear up over Van Morrison’s ‘Crazy Love’ (1970) and a 72-year-old would opt for Ray Charles’ ‘I Can’t Stop Loving You’ (1962)

Stephens-Davidowitz writes: “Consider, for example, the song ‘Creep’ by Radiohead.

“This is the 164th most popular song among men who are now 38 years old.

“But it is not in the top 300 for the cohort born 10 years earlier or 10 years later.”

He also notes how the men who most like ‘Creep’ would have been around the age of 14 when the song was released in 1993.

Similarly, Coolio‘s ‘Gangsta’s Paradise’ is described as “extremely unpopular among women in their 70s.

Stephens-Davidowitz concludes, “But I did find it interesting how clear the patterns were and how much early adolescence matters.

“The key years, in fact, match closely with the end of puberty, which tends to happen to girls before boys.

“This also adds one more piece of evidence to the growing scientific consensus that we never really leave middle school and high school.”