Scanning through radio stations, the majority of music played on today’s best hit stations are upbeat pop singles.

The iTunes chart of top ten singles are mostly pop or rap songs, indicating in the world today, these are the two most popular genres of music among the people who purchase most of their music off iTunes.

Somewhere among all these new hits lies the older music and other genres that don’t seem to get as much renown.

Junior Brooke Russell said she thinks high-schoolers are attracted to more recent music since it defines modern society and more of what people believe in now.

“Current songs explain our lives more as being in high school and just wanting to live life not caring about what others think,” Russell said.

However, Russell said she mostly listens to country music.

“Most country songs are sad or not very upbeat, but they explain things in life and pop songs don’t,” Russell said. “My life is all about living on the farm and that’s what most of the songs are about, either family or relationships.”

Junior Rance Rumbaugh said people have different tastes in music based on their personal preferences between older and newer music.

“One person might like classical music while someone else likes dubstep,” Rumbaugh said. “I do like the old songs I listened to when I was younger, like the song “Beat It” by Michael Jackson, but I also like new songs, too, like “Fear of Flight” by Aviators.”

Senior Alex Green believes the music students listen to today is not good music.

“I listen to stuff that no one listens to because stuff that people listen to nowadays is absolutely terrible,” Green said.

“The impact of media use on children and youth”, an article on www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc, said that music lyrics have become increasingly explicit, particularly with references to sex, drugs and violence.

Agreeing with Green, freshman Sage Nuss said older songs are more tasteful music.

“Old songs are what we grew up with and they’re what we used to look up to,” Nuss said. “When we were younger, not all the songs were about drugs or getting high. Older songs are just better.”

Junior Ashlyn Parrish shared her music preferences.

“Older ’90s-2000 songs are definitely better,” Parrish said. “NSYNC, old Brittany Spears and Shania Twain all the way.”

Most students say pop and rap are the most popular genres out there, but there are still some who prefer what they grew up with.

“I think the most popular type of music right now is rap or pop,” sophomore Bailey Wiesner said. “My favorite kind of music is country.”

15sberens@usd489.com