Psychology says the reason you still listen to the exact same albums you fell in love with at 17 isn’t because music was better back then — it’s because adolescent brain chemistry creates a biological baseline for emotional intensity that no adult release can ever recreate

The standard explanation, muttered at barbecues everywhere: music was just better then. Psychologists Carol Krumhansl and Justin Zupnick found what they called cascading reminiscence bumps: young adults showed elevated recognition and affection not just for their own adolescent music but for the music of their parents’ adolescence — and even, faintly, their grandparents’. Which means the strange pull you feel toward certain songs from decades before your birth isn’t taste, exactly. Let the barbecue argument go; the music was never better, you were just louder, and so was everyone else at their own 17. And when life gets loud again — the love, the loss, the upheaval — do future-you one favor: put something new on.