10 song lyrics that marked a generation

While they haven’t all aged very well, they do more to tell the story of a musical movement than any documentary ever could. While most could go into more detail about all of them, anyone who has survived those generations can read these lines of text and tell you about that time or even the feeling they felt when they lived in it.

So when you look at these lines, don’t think of them strictly as a piece of ancient history. It’s about seeing a picture in one aspect, but the more you dig beneath the surface, you can learn about what motivates people, beyond the stigma that attaches to them.

The Silent Generation

‘My Way’ – Frank Sinatra

“I saw everything and did it my way“.

The best lyrics of all time don’t always have to be released when the generation was teenagers. Sometimes it takes longer for people to begin to realize the problems they dealt with when they were younger and how they came out the other side even stronger. And although the Silent Generation is known as the grandparents of the world these days, Sinatra’s sounds do a better job of summing up that mindset than anyone else.

As ‘Ol Blue Eyes’ wasn’t known for mincing words, this story of him looking back on his life and living without many regrets really says a lot more about how many people saw themselves in that context. Most people may have tried their best to do what they could, but as most of them enter their twilight years, it’s about appreciating the good times while they lasted and realizing that the good can outweigh the bad, no matter what. how painful it was. survive.

The Baby Boomers

‘Johnny B Goode’ – Chuck Berry

“Who never learned to read or write so well/but knew how to play the guitar as if it were a bell.”

For kids of the 1950s, you tended to fall on just one side of the fence when it came to rock and roll. Either it was the kind of party music that kept people up until the wee hours of the morning, or it was a stain on the buttocks of music that deserved to be stepped on. No matter how much parents screamed about their issues with the likes of Chuck Berry, no one better summed up what it was like to be a kid with nothing better to do than play guitar on ‘Johnny B Goode’.

Although Berry never tried to be the greatest lyricist of his generation or anything like that, his songs were always tales that anyone could appreciate. While this tough kid may not have been anyone’s first choice for the people’s voice, the sight of a man playing guitar and not wanting to stay in school said a lot more about rock and roll than many people realized. In the early 1960s, all kids felt this way, and this supposed musical trend wasn’t going to lose steam.

‘Like a Rolling Stone’ – Bob Dylan

“How does it feel to be alone, with no direction home?”

But with every generation there comes a time when things seem to be going off the rails. Although Bob Dylan wasn’t the first person to write about serious topics in his songs, he was the first to point the finger at government officials through the power of rock and roll. This was the kind of sound that had the power to change the world, but as Dylan would discover, no man should have that much power.

After being heard by the people, ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ was a cold vision of what happens when revolution succeeds. Now that Dylan has reached the top of the mountain, him asking the audience what it’s like to be alone marks the moment the cultural revolution realized it could never go back to the way things were. Things changed and, after leading the rebellion, Dylan went back on his promise and began to rebel against the movement at his feet.

‘The End’ – The Doors

“Lost in a Roman desert of pain and all the children are crazy.”

For a band that seemed like nothing more than stoned hippies, The Doors were always more than just raw psychedelia. Jim Morrison always considered himself a poet before he was a singer, and when he opened his mouth, audiences would be met with some of the most surreal images the 1960s had ever spit out. In between his proclamations of being ‘The Lizard King’, however, Morrison made the most chilling comment about The Flower Generation midway through ‘The End’.

The entire 11-minute exercise already feels like slam poetry set to music in the second half, but when he starts to ramble in free verse style, Morrison talking about being lost in a Roman desert of pain is among the most profound commentary on the artists. who founded Woodstock. While Morrison could very well have been considered one of those crazy kids, that was beside the point. It was about Baby Boomers realizing how far they had fallen and how their utopian dream could end.

Generation X

‘Fast Car’ – Tracy Chapman

“I had a feeling I could be someone”.

Not everyone born in Generation X came out unscathed. It was fun to watch in amazement as MTV changed everything, but there were so many people as unsure about their place in their lives as their parents were in the late 1960s. Yet among all the photogenic stars, there were still singer-songwriters, and Tracy Chapman got to the essence of what every unlucky kid thinks about ‘Fast Car’.

Although Chapman sings about the problems she faces living with an alcoholic father and working at the grocery store as a cashier to make ends meet, it’s the end of the chorus that cuts deeper when she talks about wanting to be someone. The sound of this line may explode, but as the rest of the song is incredibly slow and dark, there’s no telling whether these dreams will be realized or simply cast aside.

‘Smells like teenage spirit’ – Nirvana

“Here we are now, entertain us”.

At the same time, much of Gen X didn’t just look to their parents for guidance; they were angry. Considering how close they were to bringing about real change, Kurt Cobain saw his parents as a classic example of trying to create a utopia and spectacularly failing. Now, all he wanted was to have fun, and in just one line, Cobain managed to put into words what so many people were feeling.

Even though it was difficult to understand what Nirvana were saying at the best of times, ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ was the kind of one-line poetry that seemed meaningless but meant a lot to everyone who heard it. Combined with the elaborate music video and Cobain being the leader of a gym riot, “Here we are now, entertain us” wasn’t just a suggestion. It was a command.

Millennial Generation

‘Hey You’ – OutKast

“If we say that nothing is forever, then what makes love the exception.”

As the age of irony began to fade, millennials were already confused. Generation X has already covered a lot of ground when it comes to existential angst, but now that Kurt Cobain was gone, many were wondering what they were still doing. And as everything started to shift online, emotional boundaries started to get a little blurred when Andre 3000 released the darkest party jam ever conceived.

OutKast isn’t the kind of hip-hop group one would expect to make philosophical statements, but “Hey Ya” is one of the most profound songs of the 2000s, while “Three Stacks” talks about how modern love is dead and how most Most people don’t even want to hear song lyrics anymore. It definitely has a sinister undercurrent, but maybe these songs need to exist for people to see how far they’ve come.

‘Numb’ – Linkin Park

“Tired of being what you want me to be”.

When the gunge collapsed, it wasn’t like those angry teenagers disappeared overnight. Every stage of life will have teenagers, and if they couldn’t get the likes of Kurt Cobain, they’d have to settle for Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst in the second half of the decade. But after nu-metal came and went, Linkin Park took all those tropes and made the most cathartic set of lyrics for post-millennium kids.

Since all these kids could see was that their parents expected too much of them, “Numb” is the cry of rage that almost anyone can relate to. Each child would certainly have a different experience, but the idea of ​​not wanting to live up to what other people thought of you was all fans could have asked for. Because no matter how hard parents try to teach their children to become excellent, this type of personality only emerges when these children step out of the shadow of their elders.

Generation Z

‘Alright’ – Kendrick Lamar

“But if God caught us, then we’ll be fine.”.

Anyone still hoping for rock stars to become the voices of their generation in the 2010s was truly fighting a losing battle. As much as some fans didn’t want to admit it, rock had become a generational passé on the charts, and people were turning to rappers to hear what was happening on the ground level. While the greatest rappers of all time like Public Enemy and Tupac paved the way for Kendrick Lamar, his protest anthem ended up going beyond anything he could have imagined on “Alright.”

Although the song works brilliantly within the context of To pimp a butterfly, linking this to the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement in the late 2010s gave a voice to people who felt they had the odds against them their entire lives. Lamar doesn’t claim to have the answers by any means, but as long as God is on his side, he knows things will work themselves out in the end. And as Generation Anxiety was just beginning, these words of hope were something we needed now more than ever.

‘This is America’ – Childish Gambino

“This is America, don’t catch yourself making a mistake”.

Although we have reached the not-too-distant past, this does not mean that all problems are solved. In fact, the world can seem like it’s on fire day after day, and no matter how someone tries to put it out, it won’t matter unless someone holds up a mirror to society. Donald Glover may not even be the same person he was when he made ‘This is America’ in 2018, but the minute people heard him they started to realize how desperate things were in the modern era.

In addition to being one of the catchiest songs of the decade, the subtle vignettes in which Glover talks about needing to carry a firearm at all times and not being able to slip were a firm statement about how black men are seen not just through the eyes of society, but more specifically when it is targeted by police officers. In this respect, ‘This is America’ is practically the inverse of ‘Alright’. Lamar was talking about how things can work out if you have enough, but Glover knows the only way to protect yourself is to prepare to resort to violence before it arrives.

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