Discussion: What’re You Listening To?

The longest-running parlor game for music fans might be arguing about which era of Van Halen is the best. A close second: what song defines your generation? The answers are almost always a tell: Boomers might point to The Beatles, The Stones, or Dylan. Gen X often lands on something like “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Millennials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha…well, the answer gets fuzzier. That’s probably also a tell. (Spoiler: I’m old.) Writing for NPR recently, Hazel Cills flipped the question a little, asking instead: Can an entire generation be defined by one song? To me, a definitive millennial song can’t just be a song that failed to reach listeners beyond my specific generation (those born between the years of 1981 to 1996, to pick one of the possible date ranges demarcating the cohort). It also can’t simply be a hit that was popular with a huge swath of millennials. For a song to be definitively millennial, it also has to speak to the millennial identity. Millennials have been saddled…