Music of our Generation?

Depending on who you ask, you could say that I'm a tail-end member of Generation Y, or a senior member of Generation Einstein. Culturally speaking, there are a number of criticism and a number of praises endowed upon my generation. This week's edition of NPR's All Songs Considered podcast looked at what could be Generation Y's defining song, sound and/or genre. A thing to note was that none of the members of the discussion were members of Generation Y themselves.

So what'd they come up with? Nirvana ("Lithium"), Public Enemy ("Fight the Power"), Soulja Boy ("Crank That (Soulja Boy)"), M.I.A. ("Bucky Done Gun") and Kelly Clarkson ("Since U Been Gone") have all been suggested.

It's an interesting mix of things isn't it? Nirvana and Public Enemy- one grunge, one hip hop, both from the early 90s when I was probably singing Barney's "I Love You" song. The next three however are very recent choices, none of them being popular before 2000. Soulja Boy, whose song is lambasted for it's lack of content but developed such a viral buzz inspiring a dance and the subsequent Youtube videos like this one, this one and this one, M.I.A. and her eclectic mix of styles and influences, and the first winner of, and perhaps most artistically legitimate, American Idol, Kelly Clarkson. All these choices make sense, but have their flaws in the choice.

First, consider what a generation is. It's a rough 25 year period that is defined by specific political, cultural, intellectual, social and/or demographic characteristics. 25 years. That's a lot of time- I haven't lived a "generation" yet. There's plenty of time within 25 years to have different trends and movements in music. For example, the choice of Nirvana and Public Enemy are a little bit before my own personal time like I mentioned above. They skip right over the mid and late 1990s and subsequently ignore the rise in the 'alternative music' genre, the continued evolution of hip-hop and the cultural phenomena (no matter how devoid of actual artistic merit) of bubblegum pop. Finally, the amount of music that is readily available to the public today is exponentially more than it was even just 5 years ago. More people are making music even if they're not making records by distributing their music through the internet and through commercial or media usage. Soulja Boy's song, Kelly Clarkson and Feist's "1234" are just a few example of the proliferation of music culturally. The sheer volume of music makes choosing just one genre, artist or song impossible.

So then what do I think defines my generation musically? I'm not going to chose just one song, artist or genre- that's an exercise in narrow futility. I'll limit myself to 5 choices of artists and I'll give a short reasoning to why I chose them. The following is just in chronological order.

1. Nirvana - popularized grunge to the world and ended the tail end of the musical era of Generation X. Started the whole Alt-Rock wave in the 90s.
2. Brittany Spears - the face of bubblegum pop as a phenomenon for better or worse. This wave of music is defined by a highly produced sound, the accompanying visual in the music video, choreographed dancing and unabashed sexual advertisement. She and other acts like the Spice Girls, Christina Augilera, *Nsync and the Backstreet Boys ruled the world it seems in the mid to late 90s.
3. Jay-Z - it's hard to chose one hip-hop artist, but Jigga was the choice because of his permanence and success over the last 10 years. He utilized hip hop in a bevy of ways including person expression ("Hard Knock Life"), celebration of materialism and success("Big Pimpin'"), and dance ("Dirt off Your Shoulder"). He is also one of the most consistent faces in the world of hip hop featuring other artists like Public Enemy, Wu-Tang, Biggie, Tupac, Puffy, Nas, Black Star, Kanye West, etc.
4. Soulja Boy - as much as I personally don't like his song, and perhaps claim that his act was a novelty, I can't deny how he was popularized. His success and popularization was purely user-motivated through the internet and Youtube. This, the internet as a medium, is defiantly a zeitgeist for my generation.
5. Feist - again another example of how the changing media has popularized an artist. As an independent artist, she found success with a cult following through blogs. She later broke through into the mainstream through commercial use of her music- this time by Apple. Plus musically, she represents the emerging trend of music that is "a more updated version of 60s and 70s" that bands/artists like The Shins, Spoon, Sufjan Stevens and Arcade Fire can be ascribed to.

So that's my list. It's hard to narrow it down, especially with my personal biases that contributed. What do you guys think? What music defines our generation, Generation Y, Generation Einstein, Generation Echo?

Musically inquisitive,
Greg