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Why do old musicians always think the kids have lost their way? Why do old musicians always think the kids have lost their way?
(less than a minute earlier)
Bad news, 12-year-olds! Roger Daltrey has been doing some talking about your generation, and you are not going to be happy about … Who’s Roger Daltrey? Well, he’s a singer. Mid-60s through the late 70s, mainly. Heart-throb, trashed hotel rooms, parents hated him, tight pants, fluffy hair? Yes, kind of like Justin Bieber.Bad news, 12-year-olds! Roger Daltrey has been doing some talking about your generation, and you are not going to be happy about … Who’s Roger Daltrey? Well, he’s a singer. Mid-60s through the late 70s, mainly. Heart-throb, trashed hotel rooms, parents hated him, tight pants, fluffy hair? Yes, kind of like Justin Bieber.
Roger Daltrey’s none too pleased with the Roger Daltreys of 2014, who, he feels he must point out, are not like Roger Daltrey at all, and are more like Roger PALTRY, if you know what Roger Daltrey means. (He means “get off my lawn”.) In an interview with the Mail on Sunday this weekend, Daltrey was downright morose about the present state of the music industry, and where it might be headed in the hands of the Kids These Days: “Here we are with the world in the state it is in, and we’ve got One Direction. Where are the artists writing with any real sense of angst and purpose? There are no movements at the moment: we had mod and then there was punk, but it’s so hard to start a movement now. Unless it’s Isis.”Roger Daltrey’s none too pleased with the Roger Daltreys of 2014, who, he feels he must point out, are not like Roger Daltrey at all, and are more like Roger PALTRY, if you know what Roger Daltrey means. (He means “get off my lawn”.) In an interview with the Mail on Sunday this weekend, Daltrey was downright morose about the present state of the music industry, and where it might be headed in the hands of the Kids These Days: “Here we are with the world in the state it is in, and we’ve got One Direction. Where are the artists writing with any real sense of angst and purpose? There are no movements at the moment: we had mod and then there was punk, but it’s so hard to start a movement now. Unless it’s Isis.”
Setting aside oh-my-God-what-are-you-talking-about; and setting aside the fact that Daltrey has managed to imbue those four sentences with enough surplus angst to fuel the next 20 years of peerlessly “purposeful” rock music; and setting very, very far aside the gratuitous and utterly bizarro invocation of Isis (?!!!?!?!); and further setting aside the fact that when people want to sniff at the inherent banality of modern media they almost inevitably fixate on cultural phenomena with predominantly female fan-bases such as One Direction, as though femininity and frivolity are inherently entwined, which is, one could argue, one of the gentlest yet most insidious expressions of covert misogyny currently tainting critical discourse; setting all of that aside, I would like to address Daltrey’s completely staggering observation that there have been “no movements” in the music of Earth since punk.Setting aside oh-my-God-what-are-you-talking-about; and setting aside the fact that Daltrey has managed to imbue those four sentences with enough surplus angst to fuel the next 20 years of peerlessly “purposeful” rock music; and setting very, very far aside the gratuitous and utterly bizarro invocation of Isis (?!!!?!?!); and further setting aside the fact that when people want to sniff at the inherent banality of modern media they almost inevitably fixate on cultural phenomena with predominantly female fan-bases such as One Direction, as though femininity and frivolity are inherently entwined, which is, one could argue, one of the gentlest yet most insidious expressions of covert misogyny currently tainting critical discourse; setting all of that aside, I would like to address Daltrey’s completely staggering observation that there have been “no movements” in the music of Earth since punk.
Here, off the top of my head, are just a few of the things that have happened between 1974 and today: New Wave, Grunge, Michael Jackson’s entire solo career, Radiohead, Pulp, Bjork, Beyoncé, Whitney Houston, Amy Winehouse, St Vincent, Prince, for God’s sake! Prince! The breathtaking galaxy of artists, many of them explicitly political, beyond the narrow scope of “western” music. Most importantly, I’d posit, if we’re talking about movements with paradigm-shifting social value, there’s also ALL OF HIP-HOP.Here, off the top of my head, are just a few of the things that have happened between 1974 and today: New Wave, Grunge, Michael Jackson’s entire solo career, Radiohead, Pulp, Bjork, Beyoncé, Whitney Houston, Amy Winehouse, St Vincent, Prince, for God’s sake! Prince! The breathtaking galaxy of artists, many of them explicitly political, beyond the narrow scope of “western” music. Most importantly, I’d posit, if we’re talking about movements with paradigm-shifting social value, there’s also ALL OF HIP-HOP.
Your failure to pay attention, Roger Daltrey, does not cause the rest of the world to wink out of existence.Your failure to pay attention, Roger Daltrey, does not cause the rest of the world to wink out of existence.
And it doesn’t matter whether you personally enjoy listening to any of that rather arbitrary set of artists I just listed – it is profoundly myopic and insulting to suggest that, out of 7 billion people, no one on the planet has made anything important in 40 years (coincidentally, since you were last at your most active). There has always been easily digestible pop music and there will always be easily digestible pop music. And it’s far more interesting – not to mention less embarrassing – to examine pop’s cultural significance than it is to dismiss out of hand a genre that has literally millions of bright young minds in thrall.And it doesn’t matter whether you personally enjoy listening to any of that rather arbitrary set of artists I just listed – it is profoundly myopic and insulting to suggest that, out of 7 billion people, no one on the planet has made anything important in 40 years (coincidentally, since you were last at your most active). There has always been easily digestible pop music and there will always be easily digestible pop music. And it’s far more interesting – not to mention less embarrassing – to examine pop’s cultural significance than it is to dismiss out of hand a genre that has literally millions of bright young minds in thrall.
I’m sympathetic here – Daltrey is hardly the first to mistake his own opinion for truth, his own failing elasticity for cultural decline. It happens all the time: “I don’t understand this, therefore it must be artistically bankrupt.” Most often, though, you hear it from your grumpy dad or some dorky Conservative politician – people whose taste level never garnered much credibility to begin with. It’s a bit surprising that Daltrey, a man who’s no doubt displeased more than a handful of grumpy dads himself, would fall into that facile trap.I’m sympathetic here – Daltrey is hardly the first to mistake his own opinion for truth, his own failing elasticity for cultural decline. It happens all the time: “I don’t understand this, therefore it must be artistically bankrupt.” Most often, though, you hear it from your grumpy dad or some dorky Conservative politician – people whose taste level never garnered much credibility to begin with. It’s a bit surprising that Daltrey, a man who’s no doubt displeased more than a handful of grumpy dads himself, would fall into that facile trap.
But maybe we all do, eventually. Maybe we all lose our grip on the distinction between the bad and the new.But maybe we all do, eventually. Maybe we all lose our grip on the distinction between the bad and the new.
To avoid that end, if possible, I’d like to briefly address my future self: First of all, self, that lipstick looks amazing on you. Congratulations on ageing with such natural elegance and dignity, much like Dame Helen Mirren. And second of all, no matter how ardently you may feel the following things in your heart, please never, ever say them in public, particularly in an interview with a national newspaper:To avoid that end, if possible, I’d like to briefly address my future self: First of all, self, that lipstick looks amazing on you. Congratulations on ageing with such natural elegance and dignity, much like Dame Helen Mirren. And second of all, no matter how ardently you may feel the following things in your heart, please never, ever say them in public, particularly in an interview with a national newspaper:
1. “There’s just no good music these days.” (See above.)1. “There’s just no good music these days.” (See above.)
2. “I really think it’s sad that my grandchildren won’t know what a book smells like, you know?”2. “I really think it’s sad that my grandchildren won’t know what a book smells like, you know?”
3. “Where are all the activists? These modern kids just want to be on their Tweeters and their Tindles. In my day, we marched!”3. “Where are all the activists? These modern kids just want to be on their Tweeters and their Tindles. In my day, we marched!”
4. “People don’t even talk to each other any more.”4. “People don’t even talk to each other any more.”
5. “Oh, I don’t watch TV – I prefer real art.” 5. “Oh, I don’t watch TV – I prefer real art.” 
Please print this out on a card and laminate it, dear self, if they still have laminating machines in the future (or, you know, ask Motherboard to download it to your thinky-chip).Please print this out on a card and laminate it, dear self, if they still have laminating machines in the future (or, you know, ask Motherboard to download it to your thinky-chip).
Things didn’t used to be better. And in the future they won’t have been better now. You know it’s true. You know it. Progress is inherently progressive, no matter how glacially it might seem to move, which is why – as I’ve written before – if your opinion resembles history, you’re probably on the wrong side of history. Try to keep up.Things didn’t used to be better. And in the future they won’t have been better now. You know it’s true. You know it. Progress is inherently progressive, no matter how glacially it might seem to move, which is why – as I’ve written before – if your opinion resembles history, you’re probably on the wrong side of history. Try to keep up.