Music & The Impressionable Years

source: Lisa Loeb's Facebook page

I was reading a Billboard magazine article on females and Billboard records by Gary Trust when I came upon this line: "(and one of my favorite years of music ever, with it coinciding, unsurprisingly, with my sophomore and junior years of high school, given that those years are generally accepted as among music fans' most impressionable eras, as many of us retain a strong bond with the songs we like early in our musical histories. It's also when songs serve as intense soundtracks to crushes, which surely helps those songs linger in our ears, and hearts, years later.)"

Okay, so that was more than just one line. I've always assumed one's most impressionable years were in one's middle school years, I've been in the "business" of all things teens and pop culture and tweeny for years now -- since I was one myself -- and I have never assumed that ages 15-17 were one's most impressionable years, musically. Is it true? Is or was it true for you?

For me, it started at 13 and lasted until about 17, so I'm not really sure. I still think the best year in music during my adolescence was 1997-1998ish, with the going of alternative music and the coming of teeny pop. The Lisa Loebs, Wallflowers and Third Eye Blinds mixed in with the Spice Girls, Backstreet Boys and 98 Degrees (Motown Records-era). I was 13. This era was my favorite not because I was crazy in love with a boy (Nick Carter of the Backstreet Boys aside), but because I spent hours upon hours listening to pop station Z100 while doing my homework. (This would be loving through repetitive listening, an idea I was introduced to by the 1995 film "Mr. Holland's Opus.")

My second favorite "year" was 2000ish (age 15): Nelly, Lenny Kravitz, Eve 6, Janet Jackson, Incubus, Christina Aguilera. A sobering little-bit-of-everything, with the reigning teen idols moving into their twenties. I was, now, crazy in love with a real, live boy and true, many of these songs remind me of him and of that time, but few of them are linked to romance or in any way linked to how I felt about him.

While Googling this "phenomenon," I stumbled across something called the Impressionable Years Hypothesis, which more or less says that tastes (and music, even more so) are set during these "impressionable years," though the definition of what is "impressionable" varies, ranging from age 10 to age 30.

So that being said, which years would you consider your most impressionable years, musically? What sort of events were they linked to, if any? In terms of musical taste, has yours changed outside what is deemed "the impressionable years"?

In 2008, when I was 23, I took a road trip down South that helped me look at country music with a more open mind. I'm a country music fan now, though not of the uber-twangy stuff. Yet.