Opinion
Move over Kanye West,
Taylor Swift and the
Millennial
generation are taking
over music
By Morley Winograd and
Michael D. Hais
The 2010 Grammys will
probably show that
Taylor Swift and her
generation are making
over American music as
triumphantly as they did
politics with the
election of President
Obama.
Arcadia, CA — The first
Grammy Awards of the new
decade are just around
the corner. On Jan. 31,
the voting committee may
crown a new queen of pop
music, crossover country
star Taylor Swift, and
with it signal the
musical coming-of-age of
the Millennial
Generation.
Nominated for eight 2010
Grammy Awards, including
record and album of the
year, Ms. Swift has
already beaten out
Michael Jackson
(Generation X) for the
American Music Awards’
top trophy in 2009 and
won three more at
November’s Country Music
Association (CMA) Awards
in Nashville. She’s also
the youngest person to
be named CMA Entertainer
of the Year.
Unlike the shocking
Gen-X behavior of former
headliners like Britney
Spears or rappers Eminem
and 50 Cent, Swift’s
personal life is as
wholesome as her lyrics.
Her songs have
Millennial-like happy
endings. “Fifteen,” for
example, gives advice on
how to handle the
pressures of being a
freshman in high school,
a message she wrote with
her best friend and her
younger brother in mind.
It’s a change of
direction that is
speaking to 95 million
Millennials, many of
whom are already in
their 20s.
Millennials were born
between 1982 and 2003.
In contrast to most baby
boomers and Gen-Xers,
they love their parents,
who are known for
boosting the self-esteem
of their children and
instilling a can-do
attitude in each of
their special,
trophy-winning kids.
Swift personifies the
Millennial Generation in
both her music and her
social-networking
approach to winning
fans.
Tweens and teenage
Millennials absorbed the
rap and hip-hop music
produced by their Gen-X
elders during the 1990s,
just as the GI
Generation during the
1920s initially fell in
love with the jazz music
so intimately linked to
the older Lost
Generation. Similarly,
boomers first found
their rebellious voice
in the 1950s in the
early rock ’n’ roll that
came from the Silent
Generation that preceded
them.
But in each case, as a
new generation came into
adulthood, it put its
own unique stamp on a
musical genre that then
retained its popularity
for two decades as the
musical tastes of both
the older and younger
members of that
generation were united.
Swift’s rise to fame is
an early signal that a
new musical genre is
about to take over
America’s popular music
culture again.
The transition from the
Lost Generation’s small
combo jazz to the GI
Generation’s big band
swing music came with a
major slowdown in tempo.
Glenn Miller and Tommy
Dorsey delivered a
sweeter musical sound
that their adoring
crowds could dance to,
rather than the jarring,
syncopated rhythms of
early jazz greats like
Jelly Roll Morton and
Louis Armstrong.
The Silent Generation
fell in love with the
brand-new up-tempo
backbeat of Elvis
Presley’s and Jerry Lee
Lewis’s rock ’n’ roll,
but baby boomers put
their generational stamp
on the genre a decade
later with the
love-drenched lyrics of
guitar groups like the
Beatles and the Rolling
Stones.
We will know a
Millennial musical genre
has arrived when the
songs at the top of the
charts represent both a
fusion of earlier styles
and something completely
different.
The Academy Award for
best song from a movie
has already moved toward
this Millennial
sensibility. The 2005
winner was the rap song
“It’s Hard Out Here for
a Pimp,” from the movie
“Hustle and Flow.” But
last year’s Oscar
winner, “Jai Ho” from
“Slumdog Millionaire,”
combined Indian rhythms
with upbeat exhortations
celebrating victory
throughout the world.
Instead of bemoaning the
fact that they “done
seen people killed, done
seen people deal, done
seen people live in
poverty with no meals,”
as the group Three 6
Mafia did in that 2005
song, the Bollywood
movie looked at very
similar conditions and
made a hit out of a tune
(originally sung in
Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi,
and even Spanish) whose
English translation
focused on a love affair
that promised to make
everything better.
The end of an musical
era is near when its
proponents pronounce its
eternal life the
loudest. In their 1970s
reprise of a 1950s Danny
and the Juniors classic,
Sha Na Na told “all of
you hippies out there in
the audience,” that
“Rock n’ roll is here to
stay. It will never
die.” In 1979, Neil
Young said the same
thing — just about the
time that rap emerged to
take rock ’n’ roll’s
place on Top 40 radio
play charts.
When Kanye West jumped
on stage to protest
Swift’s victory over
Beyoncé for Best Female
Video at the MTV Video
Music Awards last
September, he was
foreshadowing just how
shocked Gen-Xers will be
when their signature
genre, rap, drops from
the top of the charts as
fast as you can say
“Napster.”
According to the Record
Industry Association of
America’s official tally
of music sales by genre,
rap’s popularity peaked
in 2002, just as the
first Millennials
entered adulthood, and
has now fallen to third
place behind country and
rock in America’s
musical purchases.
Most members of Mr.
West’s generation, now
in their 30s and 40s,
will not react kindly to
the mantle of youth
being placed on the
Millennial Generation,
whose optimism and
group-oriented behavior
represents a sharp break
from the alienated
cynicism and individual
entrepreneurship of
Gen-X. They may even
manage to deny Swift her
crown in this year’s
Recording Academy voting
for Grammy Awards in a
last gesture of
generational hostility.
But having already been
named the new queen of
pop by millions of fans
on social networks
throughout the world,
it’s only a matter of
time before Swift and
her generation make over
America’s music as
triumphantly as they did
its politics with the
election of President
Obama.
When that moment occurs,
it will be the latest
and perhaps most
definitive sign that the
Millennial Era has
arrived.
Morley Winograd and
Michael D. Hais are
fellows of NDN and the
New Policy Institute and
coauthors of “Millennial
Makeover: MySpace,
YouTube, and the Future
of American Politics.”
