Birth Order and Culture

 

It's interesting how generations overlap regarding the music they listen to. There are the younger people in a generation (the "firstborns") and the older people in a generation (the "laterborns"). For example, someone born in 1956 is a younger Boomer and someone born in 1966 is an older GenX, and they usually listen to the same music within a range of about 10-20 years.

Take the year 1994 for example:  Younger Boomers were in their 30s, Older GenX were in their late 20s and older Millennials were teenagers and probably remember some of that music, older Silents were in their 60s, younger Silents in their 40s and 50s. But what exactly are we remembering in terms of culture in the early-mid 90s? It differs drastically because it has to do with how a generation interprets the music through their unique cultural lens, as well as their personal values. Some Boomers may have completely tuned out of music at that point and won't know anything about what was popular then. They might only remember 70s music. GenZ interprets 90s music perhaps as Boomers viewed music from the 30s and 40s, either negatively or positively. After I began studying music, I began to like Big Band and BeBop. But if my exposure to that era was through bad pop music produced at the time that was in my parent's record collection, and I didn't learn to appreciate it, I would view it negatively. Older Silents who are in their late 80s and 90s may already have passed away--or have entered a period in their life where pop culture doesn't matter, perhaps because of sheer indifference or the nostalgia is too depressing. Younger Silents would know absolutely nothing about 1994 and probably couldn't care less because they could have dropped out by the 1970s. If the pattern continues symmetrically, you could take any year and predict who will care and who won't.

David Rowell's recent book The Endless Refrain posits that we're now completely running on nostalgia. This is because cutting-edge experiments are not interesting to any generation and we go back to the material that actually works. But if it wasn't for the true innovators who lots of other people copied or were inspired by, recordings would all be generic. What people react to is the sound of something and experimental sound would seem like a waste of time or too woo-woo, when part of the history of pop music involved some musicians exploring the more esoteric and arty things. All the innovative prog rock emerging in the late 1960s was "arty". In fact, at one point it was called Art Rock, not Prog.

Different Access Points

There is a young musician in Spain who is covering some of the more unknown Elton John songs. She was talking about it being an access point. Access points can be difficult to show to other people because they may seem controlling or arrogant. People won’t explore it because it might seem pushy. A person needs to be open to finding new doors to open, and they will all lead to somewhere unique, and you would have done of your own volition. But her experience is wildly different from mine, someone who bought the Yellow Brick Road album in 1973.

From the article, John Lennon wasn't the 'cool' Beatle. Paul McCartney was:

"I learned about the Beatles in the spring of 1980 from my older brother Craig. I was only a kid, but I started listening obsessively to their music and reading everything I could get my hands on about the band."

My understanding of April 1980 is different from all other generations in some way and would have been affected by his assassination 6 months later.

Someone who is now 17 might just be listening to Double Fantasy and watching videos made about it and would be perceiving it in different ways than all the other generations. Silents would still be saying they never liked the Beatles at all, let alone their solo work.