Angsty Anthems: Five songs that define Gen X
By the end of the 1970s, it was clear that everything that the baby boomer generation had preached about was dead and gone. As much as people wanted to create a utopia through the power of music at Woodstock, the aftermath of everything from Altamont to the Manson Family murders cast a dark shadow on the rest of the world for years to come. So when that generation’s kids grew up to be musicians of their own, it’s no wonder why Gen X created something so aggressive.
They had seemed to be promised the kind of world that their parents dreamed about, but right when they started making real change, they seemed to watch their own social movement collapse in on itself. So, instead of seeing them as the role models that they thought they were, Generation X’s response was to lash out through adolescence, whether that meant coating everything in irony or crying out in pain.
But channelling that anger back at them was never going to be a good idea, so making songs was the next best option. From the beginnings of alternative music to mainstream rock and roll to the golden age of gangsta rap, every genre of music relied more on its attitude than having to keep things precisely in tune or playing at the top of their game.
The next era of music was about opening up and becoming a lot more real than any other artist was willing to go. By laying their souls down on record, these artists captured listeners’ ears in a way no one had ever done before. Nothing had changed sonically, but there was a different feeling in the air for the time being.
Five songs that defined Gen X:
5. ‘Fast Car’ – Tracy Chapman
Part of the beauty behind Gen X was that no one knew where music was heading. After the 1980s started dissipating, people were leaving phoney rock and roll behind and starting to get real. And when talking about earnest songwriting, no one struck a generation in the heart quite like Tracy Chapman could on ‘Fast Car’.
Although the song itself is far from the hardest guitar performance in the world, Chapman lives every line she sings on this track, whether that’s talking about the strained relationship that she had with her father or wondering whether she’s condemned to repeat his mistakes as she gets older. Even with the semi-happy ending of living in the suburbs, those same problems are always on the verge of creeping back in. Regardless of how much someone’s taste caters to singer-songwriters, anyone knows that feeling of teetering on the edge in life and not knowing where you’re going to land.
4. ‘Losing My Religion’ – REM
By the start of the 1980s, Gen X had started moving on to college. They had spent the last few years digesting the beginnings of classic rock, but Led Zeppelin was far from the kind of music that defined them. Then, out of the college circuit, here comes REM with Murmur, and once they had their bearings after a few albums, they put out the song that took a hatchet to the entire soft rock community.
As soon as the mandolin starts, ‘Losing My Religion’ is steeped in melancholy, with Michael Stipe delivering some of the smartest lyrics of his career. After not understanding him for years at a time, this was when people started to really comprehend the power behind this kind of music and what it meant for the syrupy ballads that had come before. The Richard Marxs and Michael Boltons of the world were still riding high, but as soon as Stipe’s dance moves hit MTV, their days were numbered.
3. ‘Fight the Power’ – Public Enemy
Every generation wants to leave the world a better place than where they found it. Many kids had already seen the carnage that had come from the Vietnam War, and should they be able to see adulthood, they wanted to make sure that they wouldn’t have to subject their children to that kind of harm. The revolution starts at home, though, and riding a handful of samples, Chuck D and Flavor Flav took the revolution to the streets with ‘Fight the Power’.
While hip-hop had made its way into suburban homes years before this, hearing Chuck D emphasising the importance of understanding the concept within oneself first was the lynchpin for artists from Rage Against the Machine to Tupac to speak their minds and talk about the problems going on at street level. Many people had tried to fight their oppressors before, but Chuck probably knew better than anyone else that there’s strength in numbers when millions of people are singing with you.
2. ‘Enjoy the Silence’ – Depeche Mode
No one gets to writing a classic without some strong emotional backing behind it. Even The Beatles had the ‘Summer of Love’ as a backdrop for their finest moments, so the MTV generation was about to coat their entire musical movement in neon. So when a group came over the speakers with muted colours and one of the greatest gothic aesthetics of all time, all everyone could do was look on in awe.
There had been many goth-inclined acts before Depeche Mode, like The Cure, but Dave Gahan’s haunting vocal on ‘Enjoy the Silence’ was the first to be unapologetically pop while still leaving the audience with a lot of emotional lines to chew on. Although Gahan claims that words can only do harm, he knew better than anyone else that those same words can help millions of others overcome problems as well.
1. ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ – Nirvana
By the end of the 1980s, most people were sick of the idea of playing the same lacklustre bands over and over again on MTV. Whitesnake did get the girls screaming, but was it really worth it when the music had about as much passion behind it as someone doing their taxes? No, what kids needed was a total system reset, and the moment Dave Grohl’s drum fill kicked in on ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, fans got their answer, and then some.
Kicking off the alternative revolution, Kurt Cobain hit on the perfect storm of pop song to get people off their asses, convincing everyone who watched it to either ditch their hair metal CDs or try their best to pick up instruments and quote what was in their hearts as well. The corporate world had tried for years to entertain kids, but Cobain knew that entertainment didn’t come from someone doing whatever a board of directors told them. It came from people who actually had something to say.
