Why Do Millenials Hate Genre?

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
"Genre doesn't exist maaaan" "I don't want to have to be bound by rules." "We get to do anything we want!"

I don't need nuance here. Blurt it out baby. I know some of you are the millenials, and some of y'all are not and hate us, and some of you do both. Let's make it happen baby.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
Ironic detachment. They don't want to commit, or be sincere, or stand for anything. they don't want to be associated with anything. they want to be everything, which makes them nothing.
 

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
is the answer, dubstep?

Dubstep was something. The ultimate millenial saga is the post-dubstep saga. Everyone deciding rather than be stuck doing dubstep, running away in any direction "I'LL DO HOUSE!""I'LL DO TECHNO!""I'LL DO GRIME!" and leaving behind dubstep frantically. Only OLDS like Mala stay behind in Dubstep and dedicate themselves to the field. A bunch of white euros with no self-consciousness temporarily hijacking footwork, a black American genre, and tossing it away out of boredom after two years unless it becomes IDM (JLin) is emblematic of millennials fear of having to be stuck doing something for the rest of their lives.

The whine of the millenial is a feeble cry of 'why do I gotta be put in a BOX?'. Dedication implies confinement, subjugation, entrapment. Better to do anything you could want and anything you desire.

The irony is if you're a millenial who believes in investing in an aesthetic, its about orthodoxy, fulfilling the expectations to a letter that becomes a costume. J KOLL as The Rapper. Festival rock Bands who do soulless lifeless blues rock. House Purists trying to make songs that would've sounded redundant in 1991 but feels 'soulful and earnest' compared to the insidious evil of EDM's modernity which itself is parasitic and cannot stay in one mode/style as its a genre that doesn't actually exist.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
I think it's more that an absolute subcultural tribalism looks less attractive when there are more than simple binary choices.

In my first year at secondary school you could either like heavy metal or two tone. (Or pretend to like metal, but harbour a secret love for Soft Cell in my case).

When I was a teenager you were basically either a casual or a goth.

There was an intensity to this which was quite appealing at the time, but this intensity was policed by verbal and physical violence.

I think kids are just more accepting of each other, and difference, these days.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
I think it's more that an absolute subcultural tribalism looks less attractive when there are more than simple binary choices.

In my first year at secondary school you could either like heavy metal or two tone. (Or pretend to like metal, but harbour a secret love for Soft Cell in my case).

When I was a teenager you were basically either a casual or a goth.

There was an intensity to this which was quite appealing at the time, but this intensity was policed by verbal and physical violence.

I think kids are just more accepting of each other, and difference, these days.

And social media and communications tech makes it virtually impossible for things to survive and grow in the dark or "underground" as it quaintly used to be called.
 

firefinga

Well-known member
Millenials lead happy lives via their smartphones. There are two genres though, one is IOS, the other Android.
 

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
I think kids are just more accepting of each other, and difference, these days.

Not to be rude but you probably think that because you're so much further from being an adolescent. (Also are you a father now or do I mis-imagine that detail? Without trying to be overly familiar.)

The whole franticness of identity politics in the modern age in my opinion comes out of voracious policing kids do of each other "If you like x you're y". It doesn't always translate into external violence like it would in say the last 50 years of the 1900s has an established history of, but in the absence of the physical violence even when it doesn't exist is the emotional/mental pressures by peers or even by adults. Which is why when millenials come into adulthood, they're often obsessively attempting to redeem what they liked beforehand that invoked scorn.

I can't compare the UK and the US because as similar as they are obviously there's loads of differences but even in a genre like rap there's so much loaded in selecting artists, liking music, social contexts, associations.

The actual reason that I brought this up was an article about a popular R&B singer in America where the author feels reluctance, frustration and almost resentment that he is a traditional R&B singer making R&B music in the tropes of soul/post-90s R&B rather than the sort of... pop everythingness of say modern artists like a Weeknd or Frank Ocean. I don't have a context that necessarily fits for anyone else's perspective but to me that reads of a weird punishing for someone who willingly accepts a cliched role based on his genre, the expectations placed upon him. He 'should' be as Barty said "Everything and Nothing", not Something Very Specific.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
Yeah I have 15 year old daughter, so my perspective is definitely skewed by that and it's hard to say how typical she is. But she has friends who span the typical North London ethnic and class matrix.

I think my point is that, sure, these things are policed, still. But they are policed a whole lot less than they used to be.

So my daughter seems pretty OK with kids being gay, vegan, trans, emo, into grime, gamers, those dudes who are into my little pony, etc.

Her own musical tastes are pretty much "urban" and actually seem to focus specifically on some artists rather than a general breadth of stuff. But I mean she is 15 so I wouldn't expect her to actively embrace a tonne of different things yet. She knows about drill and trap and all this stuff I'm only vaguely aware of.

I think that being able to be a black punk who is also gay, or a muslim skateboarder who supports Arsenal and likes grime is in some ways still quite confining but it's not as confining as not being able to be these things, which is what we had in the 70s and 80s.
 

Numbers

Well-known member
is the answer, dubstep?

The surprising thing about dubstep is not so much the exodus, but the fact that it managed to create a sense of belonging/identity to begin with.

I am not convinced that this is something exclusive to millenials either. True, I am one and I love nothing more than the moments before a new musical idea falls into institutionalised patterns. But at the same time, it seems a matter of a simple opposition between mainstream and countercultures based in music, which has been around for at least half a century. What changed is the speed by which that opposition loses its meaning and so degrades its potential as a means for distinction. It's hardly cool to like and identify with dubstep when your neighbour as well blasts it all day.
 

firefinga

Well-known member
The surprising thing about dubstep is not so much the exodus, but the fact that it managed to create a sense of belonging/identity to begin with.

For what it's worth, Dubstep is probably the last time that template of a music-based "scene"/underground vs mainstream thing worked, at least in the western world.
 

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
John, without trying to kiss up to you, that's possibly a reflection of you and not every kid is going to be as good as yours obviously. And not to sound like I'm baiting you but objectively there's no doubt people inflicting the expectations on your daughter as much as she might NOT do that.

But then again you're in London and maybe my American-ness influences that expectation though...
 
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