Youth and Popular Music: A Study in the Sociology of Taste

Abstract

Preferences in popular music among teen-age girls vary according to the neighborhood in which a girl lives and her relative popularity among her peers. Highly popular girls are shown to conform more closely than the less popular to the prevailing neighborhood norms in popular music. Musical tastes and preferences for particular songs and for particular disk jockeys are found to be anchored in relatively small groups of friends, suggesting that personal relations play an important role in musical fads and fashions.