Big Revelations 2: The Youth—By Kelly
XU2 Burst E, watercolor manipulation based on this painting by Kelly Eddington, 2015. From this cartoon.
Big Revelations is a space for us to share our thoughts on subjects that don’t have a direct connection to U2. Okay, they may have a tenuous connection to U2, but we’ll try to dedicate this page to brief musings on some of the other stuff we think about.
Big Revelations 2: The Youth
Kelly Eddington
The following is a message of possible hope for Gen X fans of U2. As I write this, we are approximately 42 to 57 years (alarmingly) old, and I’m 53.
When I was a teenager, songs that qualified as old were from the 1960s. My parents liked that music when they were in high school, and lots of “good times, great oldies” radio stations popped up all over the country, much to the delight of middle-aged boomers everywhere.
Using that kind of time frame, Gen Z (currently 9 to 24 years not-old) undoubtedly views songs like “Beautiful Day” and “Crazy In Love” as oldies, whereas people my age most likely think of them as still-kinda-new. 2000 was just, like, seven or eight years ago, right? Right.
But. Y’all? The music we listened to as kids is ~40 years old. I don’t think we realize how truly old we’ve become!
Today’s teenagers enjoying our music are the equivalent of teen-us enjoying music from World War II, such as Glenn Miller, The Andrews Sisters, Frank Sinatra, and Woody Guthrie, i.e. pre-rock.
Gen Z : U2 :: Gen X : Bing Crosby
This is why most teens have never heard of U2, or if they have, it’s via their parents (or, *gasp*, their grandparents!). And we shouldn’t make them feel bad about that.
But we can put them in a chart. This is sort of how I visualize the rock/post-rock eras. I added a few non-U2 artists here and there to help define the decades, and as you can see, I stopped doing it during the past two decades because I didn’t really want to add Taylor Swift to my chart. In red is what many (but not all!) consider to be U2’s golden age, and it’s right in the middle of this time period.
Back in U2’s Vertigo heyday, one of my teen students, who was very much a representative of his millennial cohort, called Bono “that old guy.” That kid is 36 years old now. I’m sure he was furious when that old guy’s band put their album on his phone when he was 29. The U2 fandom must write off most* of the millennials, I’m sorry to say. They might have been tolerating U2 sort of even though they were old guys. But that phone stunt was a bridge too far, and they’re gonna hold a grudge for the rest of their lives, apparently.
However. Gen Z might rescue U2’s legacy.
I’ve never understood why young people would want to listen to the songs of their own generation exclusively. Aren’t they curious about pop music’s origins, even if they happened some 70 years ago? As an art student, nothing fascinated me more than prehistoric art. I wanted to know the entire story of how we went from drawing cows on caves to submerging plastic crucifixes in pee.
My interest in rock music was no different, and when I was in high school, I listened to Little Richard and The Beatles alongside Prince and U2. I had a significant Motown/Atlantic phase, and I had reason to suspect that I might be cooler than my friends because I knew about Lou Reed and they didn’t.
I’m happy to report that at least a segment of Gen Z seems interested in music history, and it’s easier for them to do a deep-dive because every song ever recorded is essentially free now. And if they don’t care to learn about older music, they at least seem more open to listening to it if it’s good. As I write this, some of the most popular TikTok sounds are from ABBA, Kate Bush, Madonna, and Earth Wind & Fire. (While I was saddened to see a TikTok labeled with “TW: U2” a couple of weeks ago, I suspect a millennial made that one.)
I’ve become fond of binging YouTube’s cavalcade of reaction videos, where a young person listens to a song from an older generation for the first time. These reveal that young people are capable of having an unironic appreciation of U2. Refreshingly, these YT endorsements of our band do not include iPhone caveats. This is probably because Songs Of Innocence didn’t appear on their phones. A lot of these kids were too young to even HAVE phones seven years ago.
Here is another signpost for how old we officially are: the mullet is cool again. It’s had enough time to go from cool to cringe to unspeakable cringe to cool again in our lifetime. And occasionally a Tweet will pop up along the lines of “Y’all been sleeping on U2” and cause my heart to sing.
Look. Elton John and Queen have become popular with The Youth because of their movies. If this U2 Netflix show actually happens, and if the story is even kind of good, and if the guys are even kind of cute, the stage is set for a U2 resurgence.
And that will probably make us feel even older, but at least we’ll have further proof that we’ve always been right about this band.
* Except for you, millennial who is reading this. Much love to you.