I've been saying this for like 10 years, ever since I saw some of my friends' daughters wearing Nirvana shirts. Granted, in my teens in the 90s, we definitely had kids wearing Led Zepplin shirts, but I felt like most of the Gen X and older bands we became fans of, it was because of some musical prowess or musical style influence on future bands, etc. But personal opinion, Nirvana wasn't great, and other than getting Dave Grohl a platform to spring Foo Fighters from (a much better band IMO) but they were a cultural touchstone, Nirvana nailed that 90s ennui of the dying punk scene that was being replaced by grunge. That moment in history is totally foreign and largely irrelevant to the raised-on-iPad generation, so seeing those 10 year olds in those shirts was really jarring. (For that matter, I find it weird when I see middle-aged black women wearing Nirvana shirts too. Not that they can't like Nirvana, but... I was there, and they...didn't? Nirvana was one of the whitest bands ever, I don't get it.) But that was what got me thinking of this "the internet never forgets" thing, where my kids are listening to 70s songs in my car, which are even before my time, but at least I can relate a bit to them. But 60s oldies I'm like "blah, boomer slop!" But my kids have no sense of time, of cause and effect, and they can't place a song in history, even in a guess just based on the style or recording quality. And yeah, that was my conclusion, there's just going to be one big cultural dead-end where everything is permanent and the past is still happening.
On this note, since even old memes make their way back around occasionally, it makes me wonder if there will be less and less generational divide in general online activity. We have more and more adults who grew up playing video games still playing games on their phone, that sometimes their kids are playing too, like Pokemon Go. Or like my teen and I, we are both on X, but we haven't disclosed our screen names to each other, so that we can maintain our privacy on both sides, lol. But we show each other tweets and talk about current events, with the same enthusiasm and relevance, it's really weird. It's not like when I was on Something Awful and my parents had no idea what that was, nor did I want them to. I think the Eternal Summer effect is coming to IRL in the next decade or so.
The other aspect that I see is that we already have Gen Alpha Brainrot slang, and from what I can tell, it's as common among right wing dissidents as it is the general elementary school population. This probably stems from the parents learning it from their kids, every time I see a new turn of phase, I hear it from my kids first, then I see it among those guys online. It's odd that the kids don't get immediately off put by their parents using the same slang to me though, like my kids seem to think it's cool that I understand them, whereas I def made fun of my mom if she pulled a "NOT!" on me as a teen. I feel like this is part of that "end of history" vibe too.
Having lived in Oakland during the '90s, I can attest that some Black women listened to Nirvana. I went to a house party thrown by one, and looked through her CD collection. It was mostly hip hop and R&B— which I would've guessed, from what I knew of her— but there was some alternative rock in there, including Nevermind.
This is really well articulated. I see the same trend in young activists that seize upon old movements and ancient sins as if they occurred yesterday. Big idea here!
I work with art students. I've thought a lot about this issue. My answer is to lecture on modernism. Why? Because that's what all of this is running on. If you understand modernism you understand Western culture. This may not make it easier to navigate the internet ocean, but it at least provides an anchor of understanding of how this situation came about and why modernity is the way it is.
This argument around the "Archive" and the "Flattening of Cultural Time" is so thoroughly similar to Simon Reynolds' argument in Retromania, that I had to Ctrl-F to see if Reynolds was mentioned
As a zoomer/millennial cusp I’m a lot more swayed towards your side Katherine, the point presented here very much feels like old man yelling at clouds.
Using 100 gecs (both these guys are in their 30s) as a touch point for “gen z music” disqualifies you from having an interesting take on the subject im sorry. 😭
Nettspend is actually a decent place to start in exploring some of the new approaches to hip hop this generation are taking - his peers feng, fakemink, Rico ace, etc. are genuinely innovating in a genre millennials ruled stagnant years ago ..
Popular music had already plateaued by the heyday of the millennial (my adolescence) and it remains stagnant, but if you dig a little deeper I think you’ll find the generations are not so different - you are just getting old!
Still tho to me 100gecs hit their peak of relevancy a few years back and outside of the millennial music press hype (and some terminally online RYM users) I would hardly call them a generation defining group.
Previous generations were broadcast generations which is a means of broad enculturation into what is new. Now we are networked which sustains media subcultures to varying degrees but without the sense of something big and new.
There's also a general trend of enshittification of music production, culminating in Spotify genre slop. Music has always been a production and hype mill but this existed alongside other factors. The 80s had new modalities to explore via synthesizers, new aesthetic sensibilities. There was a lot of crap but it was genuinely creative.
The 90s had a thriving local band scene, raucous punk and an anti-commercial instinct. It then got processed by the mill in the hard rock, darker version of punk that was grunge but the people elevated had come up from an authentic scene.
Agree the live scene is where things really happen. More recent times it's more of the system, less unique elements. The aesthetic of a lot of music is adolescent girl writing in her diary in bed. Stars like Ed Sheeran aren't doing punk 'fuck the system', they're like how can I be the best version of myself in this system.
I know every generation thinks they have the golden era but compare Sinaed O'Connor to Taylor Swift and tell me honestly who is more original.
I'm an early-wave GenXer, and one thing that amazes me every time I hear it is the whole "Sweet Caroline" phenomenon. I was born in 1967; the song came out two years later. It was an AM radio hit, and had the usual pop song cycle of going from a hit to a recurrent to disappearing for a bit to popping up on oldies stations.
Just another pop hit (albeit from the talented Neil Diamond) from that weird period from the late 60s into the early 70s that saw the wrapping up of the British Invasion, the rise and fall of bubblegum, the explosion of album rock and all of its variants (acid rock, prog rock, arena rock, heavy metal, etc.), and the mainstreaming of R&B. A "normie" pop song from that time period like "Sweet Caroline" didn't have much currency once it fell off of Top 40 radio.
Even well into the 90s, if you heard it anywhere, it was on an oldies station, usually sandwiched between the Turtles and the Lovin' Spoonful.
Then all of a sudden it becomes this big audience-participation thing, what, 30-40 years or so after it was on the charts? What happened there? It might have been a bigger thing in Boston at Bosox games, but not elsewhere.
We were at Oktoberfest (in Munich) and the big songs they played there once everyone had their share of beer were (besides a bunch of ABBA) guess what? "Sweet Caroline" and John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads". I bet most of those Germans couldn't find West Virginia on a map.
Have you ever read 17776/What Football Will Look Like In the Future? Off topic but your references to a Borgesian labyrinth and Herman Hesse's Glass Bead Game make me think you'd enjoy it.
While I agree with the basic premise here, I do question calling the trap an "archive" rather than an "algorithm." Archives are something you have to search out and understand--implying effort and a desire to learn. Most of this time-collapse is instead caused by an algorithm using data it has on the past and people passively accepting the discover, which feels like an important distinction.
This article makes me think of someone trying very hard to describe a good thing as a bad thing. I am Gen X and what I loathe is the idea that everyone needs to follow a trend, care about mainstream, stay current and reject the past and the, frankly, wonderful musical history we have. What you describe as Gen Z music habits are actually mine as well. I do not care if music I listen to is "current" or if everyone is following it. I care that it elicits something good in me. It is wonderful that we can search for the obscure and appreciate music that came before us instead of flocking to one hit wonders on pop radio and snubbing old stuff and great music that pop radio doesn’t know exists.
Music creation hasn't stopped at all. We are fine on the music front and this piece follows the pattern of internet journalism where we take some neutral or good thing and weave words around it in pessimism because we are such elite critics.
I’m a Millennial who grew up listening to classical music and this article reminded me of my own music listening habits (but in a good way) as well. I listened to Bach, Beethoven, Mahler, Sibelius, Debussy, Prokofiev, you name it. It’s not that historical style doesn’t matter, but that one can find things to like in many styles — at least, that’s what I think.
I think the best way to be is in the timelessness.
The terrible way to live is to constantly be on the edge of your seat needing to know what’s cool, current, “in” and trendy before you get permission to like it and to immediately discard what you thought you liked the moment it’s not “the in thing.”
The article weaves pessimism around young people loving actual great music from the past when the situation which preceded this was a corporate industry churning out mass market pop music calculated to be fed to pre-teens through even more corporate channels, leading to shallow pop consumers with zero knowledge, care or interest in anything old or not mainstream enough.
What is happening now is a massive improvement and I will die on that hill as a Gen X music lover who never sat around as a teen listening to indie music which I found through zines and thinking "Man, it sure would suck if the mainstream corporate pop music industry disappeared or no one listened to that anymore."
I remember Kurt Cobain being very bothered at the idea of people just listening to his music because it’s mainstream and having no care or appreciation for the bands that influenced him, which he considered better even if they didn’t get mainstream promotion.
It's a downward slope, mass market pop and promotion has always been a thing but the 90s had a thriving local band scene with a punk attitude. Lately the mass marketing includes the whole package, including the system itself creating the music.
In another comment I compare Sinaed O'Connor to Taylor Swift. I don't think you can deny that Sinaed is a more original and authentic artist.
I live in a city with a very active local music scene and college radio to spread local and new artists. I don’t see any problem with the times now.
There is a bad trend in journalism on culture which can be reduced to “Men are going on daily jogs - could this be problematic and unhealthy?” followed by a bunch of word weaving and psychobabble.
I always hate starting a comment with "As a" but here we go. As a GenXer, I think Millennial angst about what Gen Z is doing/about/going to do is just as overblown as when the Boomers did the same to us, and to you. Leave the kids alone! They're figuring it out, give them some room to do that without having to get your "old" person funk all over it.
Gen Z is going to make some great art, let's all get out of the way so they can.
I find it so weird in an era where Spotify is guiding people to playlists it created using AI that people think everything is the same it has always been. Some elements are timeless big there are also long term changes that have massive import. It's like saying history is all the same, humans be humans. I'd suggest it's a cultural myth put out by a media system that has increasingly enshittified.
Honestly, the hot slop on Spotify is part of why I think Gen Z is going to make great art. They have a lot of great shit to rebel against. While history doesn't always repeat, young people responding to terrible things with great art is pretty consistent through history.
The trend described here was a product of Millennials, refined by Zoomers. Sometime around 2010 a guy at a bar told me with annoyance that the kids were the first generation to not rebel. Around the same time a woman with a 13 year old son told me, "I've tried to get into what the kids today are listening to, but it's all stuff from my generation. My son last week asked me with excitement if I'd ever heard of The Eagles!"
Millennials only had their own style in retrospect. At the time, they were known for nostalgia. "Stomp clap hey" music and its associated fashion were intended and acknowledged as a callback to folk music and aesthetics. Zoomer culture is what happens with the generation AFTER nostalgia has become the norm, combined with the lack of in person socialization you mentioned where everything is an abstract head game.
zoomers don't annoy their parents with music, that's impossible now, they do it with gender.
What a banger article
I've been saying this for like 10 years, ever since I saw some of my friends' daughters wearing Nirvana shirts. Granted, in my teens in the 90s, we definitely had kids wearing Led Zepplin shirts, but I felt like most of the Gen X and older bands we became fans of, it was because of some musical prowess or musical style influence on future bands, etc. But personal opinion, Nirvana wasn't great, and other than getting Dave Grohl a platform to spring Foo Fighters from (a much better band IMO) but they were a cultural touchstone, Nirvana nailed that 90s ennui of the dying punk scene that was being replaced by grunge. That moment in history is totally foreign and largely irrelevant to the raised-on-iPad generation, so seeing those 10 year olds in those shirts was really jarring. (For that matter, I find it weird when I see middle-aged black women wearing Nirvana shirts too. Not that they can't like Nirvana, but... I was there, and they...didn't? Nirvana was one of the whitest bands ever, I don't get it.) But that was what got me thinking of this "the internet never forgets" thing, where my kids are listening to 70s songs in my car, which are even before my time, but at least I can relate a bit to them. But 60s oldies I'm like "blah, boomer slop!" But my kids have no sense of time, of cause and effect, and they can't place a song in history, even in a guess just based on the style or recording quality. And yeah, that was my conclusion, there's just going to be one big cultural dead-end where everything is permanent and the past is still happening.
On this note, since even old memes make their way back around occasionally, it makes me wonder if there will be less and less generational divide in general online activity. We have more and more adults who grew up playing video games still playing games on their phone, that sometimes their kids are playing too, like Pokemon Go. Or like my teen and I, we are both on X, but we haven't disclosed our screen names to each other, so that we can maintain our privacy on both sides, lol. But we show each other tweets and talk about current events, with the same enthusiasm and relevance, it's really weird. It's not like when I was on Something Awful and my parents had no idea what that was, nor did I want them to. I think the Eternal Summer effect is coming to IRL in the next decade or so.
The other aspect that I see is that we already have Gen Alpha Brainrot slang, and from what I can tell, it's as common among right wing dissidents as it is the general elementary school population. This probably stems from the parents learning it from their kids, every time I see a new turn of phase, I hear it from my kids first, then I see it among those guys online. It's odd that the kids don't get immediately off put by their parents using the same slang to me though, like my kids seem to think it's cool that I understand them, whereas I def made fun of my mom if she pulled a "NOT!" on me as a teen. I feel like this is part of that "end of history" vibe too.
Having lived in Oakland during the '90s, I can attest that some Black women listened to Nirvana. I went to a house party thrown by one, and looked through her CD collection. It was mostly hip hop and R&B— which I would've guessed, from what I knew of her— but there was some alternative rock in there, including Nevermind.
This is really well articulated. I see the same trend in young activists that seize upon old movements and ancient sins as if they occurred yesterday. Big idea here!
I work with art students. I've thought a lot about this issue. My answer is to lecture on modernism. Why? Because that's what all of this is running on. If you understand modernism you understand Western culture. This may not make it easier to navigate the internet ocean, but it at least provides an anchor of understanding of how this situation came about and why modernity is the way it is.
Curious if this matches the “Flashback” that Dan Simmons mentioned in his 15-year old novel … living in the past
We live in a point where the past is dying and the future is not yet born..Its an amazing times, but very disorienting to many
The present is dying and the future ain't what was promised!
This argument around the "Archive" and the "Flattening of Cultural Time" is so thoroughly similar to Simon Reynolds' argument in Retromania, that I had to Ctrl-F to see if Reynolds was mentioned
As a zoomer/millennial cusp I’m a lot more swayed towards your side Katherine, the point presented here very much feels like old man yelling at clouds.
Using 100 gecs (both these guys are in their 30s) as a touch point for “gen z music” disqualifies you from having an interesting take on the subject im sorry. 😭
Nettspend is actually a decent place to start in exploring some of the new approaches to hip hop this generation are taking - his peers feng, fakemink, Rico ace, etc. are genuinely innovating in a genre millennials ruled stagnant years ago ..
Popular music had already plateaued by the heyday of the millennial (my adolescence) and it remains stagnant, but if you dig a little deeper I think you’ll find the generations are not so different - you are just getting old!
Many bands come from a generation previous to the one they represent, though. The Beatles were Silents, but are widely understood to be a Boomer band.
Fair point!
Still tho to me 100gecs hit their peak of relevancy a few years back and outside of the millennial music press hype (and some terminally online RYM users) I would hardly call them a generation defining group.
I also just think they are fcking terrible 😭
Previous generations were broadcast generations which is a means of broad enculturation into what is new. Now we are networked which sustains media subcultures to varying degrees but without the sense of something big and new.
There's also a general trend of enshittification of music production, culminating in Spotify genre slop. Music has always been a production and hype mill but this existed alongside other factors. The 80s had new modalities to explore via synthesizers, new aesthetic sensibilities. There was a lot of crap but it was genuinely creative.
The 90s had a thriving local band scene, raucous punk and an anti-commercial instinct. It then got processed by the mill in the hard rock, darker version of punk that was grunge but the people elevated had come up from an authentic scene.
Agree the live scene is where things really happen. More recent times it's more of the system, less unique elements. The aesthetic of a lot of music is adolescent girl writing in her diary in bed. Stars like Ed Sheeran aren't doing punk 'fuck the system', they're like how can I be the best version of myself in this system.
I know every generation thinks they have the golden era but compare Sinaed O'Connor to Taylor Swift and tell me honestly who is more original.
I'm an early-wave GenXer, and one thing that amazes me every time I hear it is the whole "Sweet Caroline" phenomenon. I was born in 1967; the song came out two years later. It was an AM radio hit, and had the usual pop song cycle of going from a hit to a recurrent to disappearing for a bit to popping up on oldies stations.
Just another pop hit (albeit from the talented Neil Diamond) from that weird period from the late 60s into the early 70s that saw the wrapping up of the British Invasion, the rise and fall of bubblegum, the explosion of album rock and all of its variants (acid rock, prog rock, arena rock, heavy metal, etc.), and the mainstreaming of R&B. A "normie" pop song from that time period like "Sweet Caroline" didn't have much currency once it fell off of Top 40 radio.
Even well into the 90s, if you heard it anywhere, it was on an oldies station, usually sandwiched between the Turtles and the Lovin' Spoonful.
Then all of a sudden it becomes this big audience-participation thing, what, 30-40 years or so after it was on the charts? What happened there? It might have been a bigger thing in Boston at Bosox games, but not elsewhere.
We were at Oktoberfest (in Munich) and the big songs they played there once everyone had their share of beer were (besides a bunch of ABBA) guess what? "Sweet Caroline" and John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads". I bet most of those Germans couldn't find West Virginia on a map.
How in the world did this happen?
Ear worms.
Sweet Caroline never left the radio where I'm from.
Have you ever read 17776/What Football Will Look Like In the Future? Off topic but your references to a Borgesian labyrinth and Herman Hesse's Glass Bead Game make me think you'd enjoy it.
Oh wait, I had something to say for real:
While I agree with the basic premise here, I do question calling the trap an "archive" rather than an "algorithm." Archives are something you have to search out and understand--implying effort and a desire to learn. Most of this time-collapse is instead caused by an algorithm using data it has on the past and people passively accepting the discover, which feels like an important distinction.
I agree. That does seem like a useful distinction.
I’ll have to check it out! Thanks for the rec.
This article makes me think of someone trying very hard to describe a good thing as a bad thing. I am Gen X and what I loathe is the idea that everyone needs to follow a trend, care about mainstream, stay current and reject the past and the, frankly, wonderful musical history we have. What you describe as Gen Z music habits are actually mine as well. I do not care if music I listen to is "current" or if everyone is following it. I care that it elicits something good in me. It is wonderful that we can search for the obscure and appreciate music that came before us instead of flocking to one hit wonders on pop radio and snubbing old stuff and great music that pop radio doesn’t know exists.
Music creation hasn't stopped at all. We are fine on the music front and this piece follows the pattern of internet journalism where we take some neutral or good thing and weave words around it in pessimism because we are such elite critics.
I’m a Millennial who grew up listening to classical music and this article reminded me of my own music listening habits (but in a good way) as well. I listened to Bach, Beethoven, Mahler, Sibelius, Debussy, Prokofiev, you name it. It’s not that historical style doesn’t matter, but that one can find things to like in many styles — at least, that’s what I think.
Yes!
I think the best way to be is in the timelessness.
The terrible way to live is to constantly be on the edge of your seat needing to know what’s cool, current, “in” and trendy before you get permission to like it and to immediately discard what you thought you liked the moment it’s not “the in thing.”
I didn’t say we should reject the past at all. My point was about the kind of relationship we have to the past.
The article weaves pessimism around young people loving actual great music from the past when the situation which preceded this was a corporate industry churning out mass market pop music calculated to be fed to pre-teens through even more corporate channels, leading to shallow pop consumers with zero knowledge, care or interest in anything old or not mainstream enough.
What is happening now is a massive improvement and I will die on that hill as a Gen X music lover who never sat around as a teen listening to indie music which I found through zines and thinking "Man, it sure would suck if the mainstream corporate pop music industry disappeared or no one listened to that anymore."
I remember Kurt Cobain being very bothered at the idea of people just listening to his music because it’s mainstream and having no care or appreciation for the bands that influenced him, which he considered better even if they didn’t get mainstream promotion.
It's a downward slope, mass market pop and promotion has always been a thing but the 90s had a thriving local band scene with a punk attitude. Lately the mass marketing includes the whole package, including the system itself creating the music.
In another comment I compare Sinaed O'Connor to Taylor Swift. I don't think you can deny that Sinaed is a more original and authentic artist.
I live in a city with a very active local music scene and college radio to spread local and new artists. I don’t see any problem with the times now.
There is a bad trend in journalism on culture which can be reduced to “Men are going on daily jogs - could this be problematic and unhealthy?” followed by a bunch of word weaving and psychobabble.
Supremely encouraging but you're not necessarily talking about the cultural production system.
I like blunt conversation and I never went to a university. When I see “cultural production system” I just go “…… ?”
I don’t know what that is or what you’re talking about.
I always hate starting a comment with "As a" but here we go. As a GenXer, I think Millennial angst about what Gen Z is doing/about/going to do is just as overblown as when the Boomers did the same to us, and to you. Leave the kids alone! They're figuring it out, give them some room to do that without having to get your "old" person funk all over it.
Gen Z is going to make some great art, let's all get out of the way so they can.
I find it so weird in an era where Spotify is guiding people to playlists it created using AI that people think everything is the same it has always been. Some elements are timeless big there are also long term changes that have massive import. It's like saying history is all the same, humans be humans. I'd suggest it's a cultural myth put out by a media system that has increasingly enshittified.
Honestly, the hot slop on Spotify is part of why I think Gen Z is going to make great art. They have a lot of great shit to rebel against. While history doesn't always repeat, young people responding to terrible things with great art is pretty consistent through history.
When things are good we get stomp clap.
No. They need the guidance of an elder.
best thing i've read on substack in a minute
agreed!
The trend described here was a product of Millennials, refined by Zoomers. Sometime around 2010 a guy at a bar told me with annoyance that the kids were the first generation to not rebel. Around the same time a woman with a 13 year old son told me, "I've tried to get into what the kids today are listening to, but it's all stuff from my generation. My son last week asked me with excitement if I'd ever heard of The Eagles!"
Millennials only had their own style in retrospect. At the time, they were known for nostalgia. "Stomp clap hey" music and its associated fashion were intended and acknowledged as a callback to folk music and aesthetics. Zoomer culture is what happens with the generation AFTER nostalgia has become the norm, combined with the lack of in person socialization you mentioned where everything is an abstract head game.