Optimistic millennials like their music anger-free, thank you
When Beyoncé released her album “Lemonade” this year, it took America by surprise, and not because it dropped unexpectedly on a Saturday evening or because it fueled speculation that the singer’s marriage was in trouble.
It stood out because it was unapologetically angry.
Though popular music has historically served as a barometer of youth culture’s discontent and almost every meaningful evolution in pop, rock and hip-hop has come from a place of disillusionment or outrage, pop music is now one of the few areas in American culture where anger is in short supply.
Electronic dance music, celebratory club music that’s often lyric-free, has been the biggest draw at music festivals for the last few years. The top rapper
in the country, Drake, is a docile Canadian writing melancholic verse. And if you’re R&B’s the Weeknd (also Canadian), introspection means recounting all the ways in which you feel worthless for partying too hard the night before.
While pop has managed to celebrate as the rest of the world burns, TV and film have increasingly channeled the ire of a shrinking middle class (“Breaking Bad,” any Trump or Sanders rally), institutional racism (“Selma,” “Fruitvale Station”) and numbness caused by bad news overload (“Mr. Robot”).
Earth-tone music
“Every single era has had escapist music: In the 1950s, there was the pop that came after Little Richard,” says Billie Joe Armstrong, singer-songwriter of Green Day, arguably the last major rock band to turn fury into a top 10 album with 2004’s “American Idiot.”
“After the turbulent ’60s, you got ’70s schlock — quiet and boring (music), lots of earth tones — then punk came around. Music goes through these cycles, but this happens to be the longest cycle I remember without someone breaking through on a meaningful level.”
There are some small signs that music is waking from its stupor.
Beyoncé’s rage, rapper Kendrick Lamar’s artful commentary on inequality and notable releases by artists such as Kanye West and Rihanna have expressed outrage and dismay in ways that challenge the passivity of their peers.
The Black Lives Matter wmovement has propelled stars like Snoop and Drake to express anger at protests and on social media. Jay Z and singer Miguel recently released their own tracks about unarmed black men being killed by police.
But it’s all a proverbial drop in the bucket, given that anger is now a common currency in American discourse.
There is plenty of music with a healthy sense of moral outrage, but it isn’t trending on iTunes or Spotify. It’s underneath a billion other choices competing for your attention, bumping up against popular tastes, waiting for the shift that will upend music’s current stalemate.
Traditionally, pop music has been the most nimble medium when it comes to reflecting the national mood, simply because making an album is quicker and less expensive than producing a film or TV show. But as streaming services continue to deplete record industry revenue, major labels are less inclined to take risks on music that might alienate its young base.
“The reason we think of popular music as being more revolutionary in previous decades is because now, pop is aimed at a younger audience than it was,” says the Boston Conservatory at Berklee’s Joe Bennett, a forensic musicologist who analyzes popular music. “There was always (bubblegum pop) for younger fans, but there was lots of other stuff too, like rock, that tended to appeal to an older audience. That’s an audience who may have burgeoning political sensibilities and antiwar sentiments.”
Anger plays differently
The target music consumer of today is a millennial born between 1983 and 2003. Millennials are the largest generation in U.S. history. They’re also an optimistic group that appears to have nothing in common with the angsty Gen-Xers who came before them.
“The visible manifestation of anger, just getting mad at someone, plays out differently in different age brackets,” says Neil Howe, author of “Millennials Rising” and a sociologist who specializes in generational changes. “Millennials find that angry punditry on Fox or MSNBC is an old person’s thing. They are more trusting of the system, they’re more optimistic about the future, and they believe strongly in community. That’s why they like EDM — you enjoy it in a group, and that’s totally in sync generationally. It’s also totally happy and escapist. Millennials aren’t interested in introspecting and devising new social movements through music. Music is just fun to them and not much more.”
The passionate songs that have gained traction with millennials, such as Taylor Swift’s “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” come from a more tempered place than say, Alanis Morissette’s 1995 “You Oughta Know” or the Who’s 1971 “Baba O’Riley.”
“Angry songs are now nearly all enraged breakup songs,” Bennett says. “Why did you dump me? Which speaks much more to individualism than societal indignation as rage.”
Since every new generation strives to set itself apart from the one that came before, there is an argument that the relative silence is millennials’ reaction to the anger engulfing our nation.
“Ignoring it, that’s their statement,” says Armstrong, whose kids are now 18 and 21. “That’s their anger. You’re making me angry, so I’m turning my back on you. They’re done dealing with it all. They’re like, ‘I’m going to binge-watch zombies eating each other.’ ”
Top-grossing musical genres also have evolved recently in kinder and gentler ways — confrontational styles such as punk, gangsta rap, metal and grunge have given way to teen sensations and partyfriendly hip-hop.
“It’s not usually the case that songwriters write to the market, but the market does decide what it wants to buy,” Bennett says. “In that regard, pop music fans are going to gravitate toward what they feel and what they’re thinking about at that time. Pop is merely reflecting the moods of their time rather than steering it, and that mood will change.”
Adds Armstrong, “It’s come to the point where artists are backed into a corner where there’s really no other place for them to go. You look at what’s happening with the news, and everything that’s going on in the world, and it’s kind of like ‘The Walking Dead,’ it’s coming right at you. You better write something about it.”