Millennials are making culture — from Justin Bieber to hipsters and from Nikki Minaj to Vine celebrities. But, is any of it cool?
A Tumblr account, POWERevolution, posted how Millennials are just not cool, in the sense that they try too hard to fit in. Cool people reject corporate influences and make their own path rather than following the popular consensus.
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The authored moaned that millennials just aren’t cool because they live, eat, and breathe mainstream pop culture. She recalls being at a bar and someone requesting Taylor Swift on the jukebox and at a grocery store and someone singing Adam Levine.
“In all fairness, it’s not entirely their fault,” the author wrote. “They really just don’t know any better. Their lack of knowledge of anything other than that which is spoon fed them is the byproduct of a global media oligopoly.”
The post continued that there should be a radical explosion of music that changes the politics of the time the way 60s music encouraged the Civil Rights movement and drug culture, punk rock in the 70s challenged the establishment which continued into the 80s, the 90s had grunge to channel social isolation and disenfranchisement.
With all due respect to this writer, there’s a lot of cool millennials — it’s just that he’s so old, she doesn’t know about them.
Yes, millennials love pop sensations like One Direction, Taylor Swift, and Adele. Yes, it’s cheesy and corny and overly produced, but that is not the entire experience of a generation.
We have a counter culture against the waves of corporately sponsored music and artists, which is why you probably haven’t heard of them.
Forget folk and alternative rock bands that pretend to be something like Arcade Fire, Mumford & Sons, and Grizzly Bear. Has this writer ever heard of Har Mar Superstar? What about Ben Rector? The War on Drugs? Drew Holcomb & The Neighbors?
Probably not, they don’t get a lot of play outside some college radio stations and few people have bought their records, but still their important because they talk about the confusion and instability that many millennials feel.
It’s not important that they’re not household names that hit the top of the charts, most music that sets trends aren’t. The best selling records of the 1960s weren’t counter-cultural, except in 1968 with the Jimi Hendrix Experience; the hottest music of the 70s was Billy Joel, Elton John, and Neil Young; the 80s was about Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, and Bruce Springsteen.
Even Nirvana who was huge in the 90s, couldn’t outsell Mariah Carey, Janet Jackson, or Billy Rae Cyrus in any given year.
So yes, there are cool millennials who are making music that questions the world our corporate overlords set for us. The author is just probably too old to enjoy it.
