Generation Gap

[Folder]

For the first time in my life I have no top forty or pop oriented radio stations programed into my car stereo.

 

Ever since I was a kid in the 70's I had always kept up with what was going on in popular music, yet I sometimes wondered if I'd always have a passion for the latest hit records or if there would come a time when I just didn't get it anymore.

 

The Pew Research Center conducted a study a few years ago and came to the conclusion that this is the biggest generation gap since the 60's.

 

How much does current music play into this generation gap?

 

I know that bars and restaurants in my area have been having problems with their juke box selections lately. When the kids start playing hip-hop or teen pop the Gen-Xers and Baby Boomers clear the room.

 

Is there a generational shift taking place like when Rock and Roll superseded the Jazz Age back in the 1950's?

 

I don't remember a time in the last thirty years when there seemed to be such a musical gap between generations.

[roomjello]

It's my belief that the honest art out there is part of nature, although it uses us as a medium.

And it's purpose is to help us see the present state of things clearer, an honest account, if you will, of the present.

I think some honest artists represent our time consciously and others subconsciously.

But it's the same. Note the 'honest' part.

 

That said, in today's music i hear a solid representation of how we as a society are hurting.

From the way gone kiddy manufactured nonsense to the dreadful modern version of country music to the monstrous movement of what is metal and of course to all the ghetto variations and spawnings.

It's not just in the lyrics either. You can often feel nothing, very disturbing.

There isn't a whole bunch of celebratory music on the airwaves.

 

We have created a way of living that has very little to offer in terms of a living a satisfied life, i mean truly in relation to how we are built and have lived in recent millennium.

Satisfying ourselves physically, mentally and spiritually is now set aside for ..... Call it what you like.

 

This generation of kids who are consuming the music today, consist of the lazy, careless, on drugs, angry, stupid through lack of good example, the caring, the misguided, the smart hard working (at what and for why they are not sure). They are exactly what we are allowing and in fact teaching them to be.

But through the miracle of nature they also maintain that thread of common sense in them that is in a subtle way rejecting what we have going on.

They are inherently smart enough to know on some level that they must reject all the previous generations' bull{censored} and start fixing this mess. They don't know what to do so they do nothing. It's an idle time and may be for a while.

 

The music represents those things.

 

That's what i think anyway

[MikeRivers]

 

For the first time in my life I have no top forty or pop oriented radio stations programed into my car stereo.

 

 

I don't think I've had a top 40 or pop radio station programmed into my car radio in more than 40 years. I used to listen to a "progressive rock" station almost all the time I was in my car, but that was when this was a new genre of music and the station, WHFS, was one of the first playing that music, beginning in 1968 By 2000, the station was programming more AOR and I was losing interest, and in 2005, after several changes of ownership, they started broadcasting in Spanish. By then, I was mostly listening to the local Pacifica station which had a lot of jazz programming, and the two NPR stations which had bluegrass and classical music. After a stint of all news all the time, the classical station now plays "top 40 classical" and the station that had the bluegrass moved it to HD and Internet and is now nearly entirely news and talk. There is less jazz on the Pacifica station now, and more talk/news/commentary.

 

I don't like listening to talk radio at all. I listen to Morning Edition when I wake up and while I'm reading the morning e-mail and forums and that's my dose for the day. For the first time in my life, my car radio is boring, though I usually end up with the top 40 classical just to hear something.

 

When I'm at home, I listen to a few community and college stations over the Internet that still program music that I enjoy, but it's getting so that I'm listening to specific programs at specific times on specific stations and I can't just "turn on the radio" and be entertained and kept interested.

 

I'm 68, but I don't think it's a generation gap. I find more people in their 30s who like to listen to talk radio. How can you judge the musical preferences of anyone like that other than by what's on their iPod?

[rasputin1963]

 

For the first time in my life I have no top forty or pop oriented radio stations programed into my car stereo. Ever since I was a kid in the 70's I had always kept up with what was going on in popular music, yet I sometimes wondered if I'd always have a passion for the latest hit records or if there would come a time when I just didn't get it anymore. The Pew Research Center conducted a study a few years ago and came to the conclusion that this is the biggest generation gap since the 60's. How much does current music play into this generation gap? I know that bars and restaurants in my area have been having problems with their juke box selections lately. When the kids start playing hip-hop or teen pop the Gen-Xers and Baby Boomers clear the room. Is there a generational shift taking place like when Rock and Roll superseded the Jazz Age back in the 1950's? I don't remember a time in the last thirty years when there seemed to be such a musical gap between generations.

 

 

Well, you said it. The "feelgood" quality is gone from modern music. It's all about aggression and sexual posturing now.

[Philter]

I'm 35 years old and for the life of me I can't "get" the beach-boys era stuff that some people worship here. There was a thread of some Brian Wilson stuff recently and I imagine it sounded to me like hip hop must sound to a crotchety 60-year old. So glass houses and all that...

 

Look at the state of the world that previous generations are "gifting" to the youth of today. And you complain that they're angry? LOL.

[Jeff Leites]

 

I'm 35 years old and for the life of me I can't "get" the beach-boys era stuff that some people worship here. There was a thread of some Brian Wilson stuff recently and I imagine it sounded to me like hip hop must sound to a crotchety 60-year old. So glass houses and all that... Look at the state of the world that previous generations are "gifting" to the youth of today. And you complain that they're angry? LOL.

 

 

Are you kidding me? The previous generation to us crotchety 60 year olds, handed us a crappier world than you got. In childhood, we got the daily threat of nuclear war. When we got out of high school or college, we faced the draft to be sent to a civil war in Viet Nam. Then the hyper inflation to pay for the war that took hold in the early 70s. I'm sick of the politicians that blame us for what we are passing on. That's just the way it works.

[Lee Flier]

The Pew Research Center conducted a study a few years ago and came to the conclusion that this is the biggest generation gap since the 60's.

 

Based on what? If anything, I feel the exact opposite. Kids listen to whatever they feel like listening to, now, and for a lot of them it's not the stuff that's on the top 40 stations. Most kids that I meet now are willing to listen to most any kind of music, because they've grown up with the Internet and the ability to discover music on their own, not at the whim of record labels, radio programmers or peer pressure. They also don't seem to give much of a crap about listening to "their parents' music" - I know lots of kids who regularly raid their parents' record collections. In fact sometimes I think the whole idea of the generation gap is a baby-boomer-era idea. Baby boomers certainly had a lot of reason to rebel against the previous generation in the way they did, so naturally they assume every generation goes through the same thing. Fact is, most kids don't listen to a particular type of music or dress a certain way just to piss off their parents. Some go through a phase like that, but it's not universal by any stretch.

 

I don't listen to much top 40 radio either, but neither do a lot of kids (if not most).

[blue2blue]

For the first time in my life I have no top forty or pop oriented radio stations programed into my car stereo. Ever since I was a kid in the 70's I had always kept up with what was going on in popular music, yet I sometimes wondered if I'd always have a passion for the latest hit records or if there would come a time when I just didn't get it anymore. The Pew Research Center conducted a study a few years ago and came to the conclusion that this is the biggest generation gap since the 60's. How much does current music play into this generation gap? I know that bars and restaurants in my area have been having problems with their juke box selections lately. When the kids start playing hip-hop or teen pop the Gen-Xers and Baby Boomers clear the room. Is there a generational shift taking place like when Rock and Roll superseded the Jazz Age back in the 1950's? I don't remember a time in the last thirty years when there seemed to be such a musical gap between generations.

I haven't had a top 40 station programmed into my radio since the 60s on the AM radio of the car I had at the end of high school. And that was 'cause A) it was all there was and B) despite the fact that the playlists had a lot of lame junk and insufferable pop, they also had Cream, Jimi Hendrix, the Airplane, and, of course 'old standbys' like the Animals and Stones. So it wasn't like 24/7 Britney/Justin... (What would that have even been then? Nancy Sinatra/Paul Anka? Anyhow.)

 

But as soon as alternatives appeared on the radio dial, I was outta there. In fact, even before, since I took advantage of the industry-wide die off of 4 track car tapes [in the face of 'competition' from the arguably inferior new 8 track format] to buy a player for $17 and a bunch of tapes for a buck apiece. That carried me pretty much to the mid-70s when I got my first car with FM, where a co-opted semblance of 'underground' radio still vaguely existed.

 

I was so good at avoiding top 40 that I didn't even know what Abba sounded like until '86 when I was eating in a little hotel in Switzerland and some really bland vocal ensemble pop came on the muzak and I thought to myself, I'll bet that's that Abba band that all the secretaries and shopboys loved in the late 70s. (When, in the 90s, a new barista at my favorite coffeehouse initiated his own daily Abba festival [which was the end of that institutions' formerly ironclad lead-barista-picks-the-tunes rule] I was able to confirm that, yes, indeedy, that was them.)

 

 

All that said, and while I don't have any more use for Britney, Justin, et al, than I did for Abba or Paul Anka, I certainly hear new music that I respect and like. (I sorta had a soft spot for "Boots" by Sinatra, though, I miss that level of mindless pop. I suspect, if the sound of hard-tuning or even clumsy tuning didn't make me want to tear my ears off and bury them next to Thomas Edison, I might find some mindless pop I did like... I've been impressed by Gaga's vids and her evident talent... I just can't stand what they do to her voice. If a generation gap really affects me it's there: I find the sound of tuning to be utterly, ear-grindingly annoying, pretty much unbearable.)

 

Of course, you don't hear the stuff I tend to like on the mainstream stations, I don't think, although some of the poppier stuff like Laura Veirs might well sneak into the adult contemporary type stations for all I know. And if there was any justice, folks like Andrew Bird and Iron & Wine would be all over that sort of station. But, of course, the big music machine only knows one real flavor and that is pabulum.

[MikeRivers]

I don't listen to much top 40 radio either, but neither do a lot of kids (if not most).

 

How can there be a Top 40 if nobody listens to it? That sounds like what Yogi Berra said about a restaurant: "Nobody goes there any more. It's too crowded."

 

You're right, though. Kids have a much greater variety of music to listen to today than when I was growing up. But then, so do I. I listened to Elvis, but I also listened to classical and country music because we had it on the radio here.

[Lee Flier]

 

How can there be a Top 40 if nobody listens to it?

 

 

All "Top 40" really means is that more people are buying it than any other individual song/album. Top 40 sales of today, in actual numbers, are nowhere near what they once were. So somebody is listening, but more people are listening to other stuff that's too diversified for any one of them to crack the top 40. And that includes independent releases. And people who listen to top 40 are also more likely to listen to other more diverse stuff in addition to top 40. The "average kid's" iPod seems to contain lots of more obscure underground stuff, or their parents' classic stuff, right along with Lady Gaga.

[blue2blue]

 

All "Top 40" really means is that more people are buying it than any other individual song/album. Top 40 sales of today, in actual numbers, are nowhere near what they once were. So somebody is listening, but more people are listening to other stuff that's too diversified for any one of them to crack the top 40. And that includes independent releases. And people who listen to top 40 are also more likely to listen to other more diverse stuff in addition to top 40. The "average kid's" iPod seems to contain lots of more obscure underground stuff, or their parents' classic stuff, right along with Lady Gaga.

 

This.

 

I think young folks today -- not all of them by any means, but a lot -- tend to be considerably less 'snobby' and insular than folks were in the mid and late 70s and 80s and even into the 90s. So they'll listen to cool, outsider stuff that's off the radar of what industry suits are still in the game, but they'll also listen to Gaga or other mainstream pop stuff that the terminal hipsters of my youth might well have dismissed as 'too mainstream.'

[elsongs]

 

For the first time in my life I have no top forty or pop oriented radio stations programed into my car stereo. I don't remember a time in the last thirty years when there seemed to be such a musical gap between generations.

 

 

I was also a kid in the '70s. I'm probably not that much younger than you are. I'm going to be 40 by the end of this year.

I don't really see this "huge musical gap" you speak of. Maybe we live in different parts of the country. Maybe we're of different economic backgrounds. I live in a big city (Los Angeles) and it's way more complex than "the old people's music" and "the young people's music," I hear a lot of 20somethings and teens who are into classic rock or '80s music (video games like Guitar Hero and Grand Theft Auto are likely influences).

I have some 20-something friends who were either still in diapers or not even born when certain '80s groups/songs were popular. Yet they're really into them (I get a little annoyed at that at times, mainly because the '80s were not a part of their actual experience...but then again back in high school I had a lot of classmates who were kids of former hippies and they were all into Led Zeppelin, The Grateful Dead, etc).

Then you have people in immigrant/ethnic groups whose music is mainstream sounding but is not part of the actual mainstream. There's a huge Latino population here that have several radio stations. I couldn't identify most of the songs (unless they were from crossover artists like Pitbull, etc). There's also a huge Asian American "underground" scene of singer-songwriter-type artists who will probably never get mainstream radio play in their lives, yet they have HUGE followings on YouTube and other social media. So today's music is much more complex in terms of accessibility. I don't have "Bieber Fever" nor can I identify one Young Jeezy song, but there's still some good music out there.

[elsongs]

 

This. I think young folks today -- not all of them by any means, but a lot -- tend to be considerably less 'snobby' and insular than folks were in the mid and late 70s and 80s and even into the 90s. '

 

 

In terms of musical tastes, yes. But in terms of musicians, hell no! I know a lot of 20-something musicians who are quite good but they'll either look at you funny when you want to talk about collaborating or even jamming with them, or they'll just ignore you outright. Total snobs. I think for them music is more "competition" than "art," with them having been grown up with American Idol and Guitar Hero and measuring success in quantitative YouTube hits.

[Jeff da Weasel]

 

I think for them music is more "competition" than "art," with them having been grown up with American Idol and Guitar Hero and measuring success in quantitative YouTube hits.

 

 

Hear hear.

[blue2blue]

In terms of musical tastes, yes. But in terms of musicians, hell no! I know a lot of 20-something musicians who are quite good but they'll either look at you funny when you want to talk about collaborating or even jamming with them, or they'll just ignore you outright. Total snobs. I think for them music is more "competition" than "art," with them having been grown up with American Idol and Guitar Hero and measuring success in quantitative YouTube hits.

I run* with a more art-damaged crowd.

The subject of collaborating/jamming is something that does come up from time to time with various people but my own disinclination is probably much stronger that most other folks, anyhow, so it's not much of an issue. I generally just politely decline. If they push, I generally just say, yeah, that might be fun sometime. I try to make it sound pretty let's do lunch. It's just not something I'm interested in. Not because I think I'm better than anyone or even that they're better than me (the latter never stopped me in the past ) but one day, I dunno, sometime in the late 90s I just realized that jamming is often not any fun for me, with few exceptions.

 

(Actually, in that very era, for a couple years, I was in a three+ that did wildly off-the-cuff versions of my songs [which I seldom play the same way twice] and that was usually a fair amount of fun. The pressure was super low -- audience was barely ever more than 10-15 people in a little coffee shop [now long gone] where none of our friends normally went; and which, actually was normally pretty dead, so we were heroes when we played (for free coffee, which, frankly, wasn't very good, but the proprietor was a real nice gal). But the other two guys [an excellent violist who doubled on bass and a multi-instrumentalist who played 6 string, lap steel, harmonica and clarinet] were exceptionally flexible improvisers -- and didn't give me a bunch of static when I would perform the same song entirely differently from week to week.)

 

 

*Or actually, these days, sit around a trendy coffee house jawboning.

[Folder]

In the past top forty was a collection of the top forty hits culled from various formats across the musical spectrum. Rock and roll, soul, country, disco, etc...

 

It seems that pop radio today is heavily formatted towards teen pop. Souless, mechanical, dance music with lots of effects, auto-tuning and that obnoxious electronic clappy sound.

 

If Led Zeppelin came out today it's doubtful there would be a slot for them on any of todays top forty radio stations.

 

Of course there is plenty of great music being made today but the reason I no longer have any pop station programed into my radio is because they are not playing very much of it.

 

Previous generations have had their teen pop stars Fabion, Bobby Sherman, The Partridge Family, Leif Garrett, Debbie Gibson, Tiffany etc...

 

Most of these stars lasted a couple of years until their fans got a little older, moved on and started listening to serious music.

 

It seems that a lot of young people today are not moving onto serious music. Teen pop stars who continue to pump out the same type of music without any artistic growth is considered normal now and their fans seem to accept it.

 

Consider how many fans in their late twenties are buying Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake CDs and going to their concerts.

 

Of course this is because pop radio has made a business decision to program their stations in this fashion.

 

It's just sad to me that there are no more pop radio stations where this kind of drivel can be avoided so you can hear the serious music

[Philter]

 

Are you kidding me? The previous generation to us crotchety 60 year olds, handed us a crappier world than you got. In childhood, we got the daily threat of nuclear war. When we got out of high school or college, we faced the draft to be sent to a civil war in Viet Nam. Then the hyper inflation to pay for the war that took hold in the early 70s. I'm sick of the politicians that blame us for what we are passing on. That's just the way it works.

 

 

What you didn't face was an overpopulated planet exhausted of natural resources, and a destabilized climate. Young people of today face all that, and war, and a sick economy, and the threat of nuclear war. It's silly to blame it on politicians when we're the ones who elect them.

[Lee Knight]

 

What you didn't face was an overpopulated planet exhausted of natural resources, and a destabilized climate. Young people of today face all that, and war, and a sick economy, and the threat of nuclear war. It's silly to blame it on politicians when we're the ones who elect them.

 

 

This thread is awesomely off the tracks.

[Philter]

 

This thread is awesomely off the tracks.

 

I think it's right on track. We're talking about a generation gap, right? Well now you're looking at it. Why is the music angry sounding? Why is it full of posturing and worldly concerns about things like money and material possessions? Those things might be hard for someone who grew up during a time of plenty to understand. For a kid growing up today and looking at unemployment rates north of 50% for young people and especially minorities, how can you expect them to care about anything BUT those things? Should we blame them for the broken families and downward mobility that are the staples of American life circa 2011?

 

I have no patience for older people ragging about younger generations' music. Someone who is 50 today might as well have grown up on another planet than someone who is 16 right now. Sorry if I let a little cranky reality intrude into the feel-good reminiscing of the geriatric crowd here.

[Dessalines]

Generation gap is a term used by the media to provide a sense of difference to the young vis a vis their parents. Subsequently it is used by the young to annoy their parents. I have no children, I only observe. Otherwise the term "generation gap" has no use at all.

 

If the lack of top 40 radio stations one's car stereo is now the methodology used to determine if one is too old to rock 'n roll, then we are in serious trouble.

[Jeff da Weasel]

Sorry if I let a little cranky reality intrude into the feel-good reminiscing of the geriatric crowd here.

 

 

Dude, aren't you 35? Any kid in the world would put you in that same geriatric crowd. Just saying. You're not one of them. You're one of us. We'll make room on the rocking chair for ya.

[Lee Knight]

I think it's right on track. We're talking about a generation gap, right? Well now you're looking at it. Why is the music angry sounding? Why is it full of posturing and worldly concerns about things like money and material possessions? Those things might be hard for someone who grew up during a time of plenty to understand. For a kid growing up today and looking at unemployment rates north of 50% for young people and especially minorities, how can you expect them to care about anything BUT those things? Should we blame them for the broken families and downward mobility that are the staples of American life circa 2011? I have no patience for older people ragging about younger generations' music. Someone who is 50 today might as well have grown up on another planet than someone who is 16 right now. Sorry if I let a little cranky reality intrude into the feel-good reminiscing of the geriatric crowd here.

 

I said I thought it was awesomely off the tracks. A freakin' train wreck of knee jerk spasm reactions and angry grimaces. Pressure waiting to blast! Awesome!

 

I'm not taking any sides but if I had to put money down it'd go in your court. not that I agree with you any more than what ever other side you're seeing, but you got piss and vinegar! You're like a 35 year old James Cagney or sumpin'

[WRGKMC]

The big clash in music happened during the 60s. You had stations playing everything from Mitch Miller to the Stones. Its partly because so many musical types were appealing to different buying crowds. They may have had an hour of rock and hour of easy listening elevator music, and an hour of soap opera story telling. The stations were still trying to figure out what would sell and how they could maximize their payols and advertising.

 

After rock moved to FM in the 70s then you started getting stations that would play to different age groups more exclusively.

They had top 40 songs in all the various age groups and all were considered top 40 for those various groups.

Eventually as age groups died off you quit hearing stations playing buttloads of Sinatra, classical etc.

Disco hung on 10 years too long and morphed into other things. Then thr rise of alternative, hard rock and rap took over pretty much.

Country has been pretty consistant throughout except is more rock and highly produced now.

 

The biggest changes throughout was the end of writers rulling the recording and broadcast industry, the internet, and the Digital revolution.

Back in the 60s 70s and even 80s you had to have a dedicated playback device or you listened to the radio.

 

Now with Ipods and sattelite radio people can choose what music they want to hear without the commercials.

Same goes for cable and sattelite and netflix TV where people can subscribe to material

without companies selling their products on the back of the music.

[Anderton]

Interestingly, I had dinner with a bunch of music industry people, and sat at the end of the table with a bunch of people in their 20s. I was so intrigued by the conversation, the topic became part of my "Dear Musician" column for the Harmony Central Confidential newsletter that ships this week. Check it out when it appears...I don't want to give it all away here just yet

[Beck]

The one big difference I see between earlier in my lifetime (or more like my older sisters youth) and now is that pop music is not the "One voice" it was when it defined a generation. It has a polarizing effect among people closer to the same age these days. So I don't see it as much of a generation gap as I do a culture gap. You could state it in a positive way and say there's more diversity I suppose.