ABSTRACT
The physicality of an ageing body is inescapable, and for this reason the processes of ageing and the signs that mark ageing identities often appear as something beyond one’s social and cultural self, something innate. The hegemonic image of a successful adult necessitates doing away with the more obvious displays of youth that might be evidenced by dressing in alternative or extreme forms of clothing, wearing radical haircuts, retaining facial piercings, attending all-night dance parties or following new music. Popular music is often perceived as dependent upon communities of youth to propel and invigorate fan bases and style, while the aesthetic value of music for older fans is commonly passed over as nostalgia, and at worst aligned with discourses of failure whereby subjects are understood to have delayed or failed to progress into ‘proper’ adulthood.
