Research shows most people lock into an era, usually music they heard from their teens to early twenties. After that, they seek sounds like the ones from their times. We like music that sounds like music we already like.
For some reason, I don't really like a lot of the music that was big in my teens (early to mid seventies). I find "classic rock" to be a bland era. My lock in happened in the later seventies and eighties. I listen to a lot of current artists, but I still like my guitars and punky energy. I was fortunate to have been exposed to a lot of reggae, dub, African, swing and hot jazz, blues, European classical (the baroque!) and funk early enough that I really like it. I got to listen to more than the rock, folk and pop I was "supposed to". My grandfather loved 1940s country, and for some reason, I don't like much country after about 1970 but love his favourites... My brain is trained.
A lot of other music that I know to be well played (on paper) like
@TwoTankAmin 's beloved Little Feat, or most southern rock just doesn't hit a chord, so to speak. It's well played, but it doesn't become memorable. It wasn't a sound I liked at the formative time. I have a friend who is horrified that I don't like Eminem's work, but I guess it's the same thing. I think it's awful he loathes Fontaines DC, Yard Act and the Dropkick Murphys. Other friends are metalheads with an entire different focus than me. They can argue the technical brilliance of the players, and it leaves me bored. I have friends who love later classical music, but emotionally, it does nothing for me. We're products of our times and experiences.
My blind spot is the nineties. My kids were little, we were broke, and I had three jobs. I fell out of the new music scene until the early 2000s. A fish friend younger than me got me catching up, but what did I like from his music? Nineties punk bands with guitars, ska bands, singer songwriters, all outgrowths of the stuff I liked in my "imprinting" phase. I'll sample a lot of the "who was that" bands on that site. If I don't like 'em, that's easily solved. I'll just sample another. Maybe I'll find someone who fits in the box that's my tastes but that I never got to hear.
I don't think any era had or has better music than any other era. There's as much good music being made now as in 1958, 68, 78, 08, 18... onwards we go. The degrees of corporate control and the number of gatekeepers change. Great bands have been less likely to be widely heard in some eras compared to others, as each generation tries to throttle the generation that follow's music.
There's that view that with the internet, all music is new. I know teenagers locked into all kinds of music now, and I hope that as they imprint, things will get more eclectic. When Bad Bunny begins to mix with Kneecap and K Pop, maybe I'll be in wild singalongs at the old folk's home.
In the meantime, what's with these newer aquarists and these loaches and gobies? Why, back in my day we had killies and dwarf Cichlids, and were glad of it. We walked 40 miles to the local fish store, uphill both ways in the driving sleet hurricanes, and we got better fish for it!
Some things are similar...
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