Introducing the Generational Music Theory (2024)

Los Angeles. 1991. In a beige room with a conference table and two-way glass, a media consultant is asking 16 Hispanic teenagers about music. His client — a radio station that launched with huge success in the 80s — was now losing listeners. The teens told him the dance-pop music at the core of the station’s sound wasn’t really the in thing anymore.

“So what kind of music do you like,” asked the research company’s moderator?

“A new kind of rap you can dance to called Hip Hop.”

On the other side of the glass, a prominent consultant to Urban Contemporary radio stations billowed, “What the hell is Hip Hop?”

Power 106 — along with co-owned Hot 97 in New York — would go on to become the dominant purveyors of Hip Hop for decades.

That consultant? Not so much.

Meanwhile at a mall in suburban Philadelphia, a teenager working at a record store opens up a new single that had just been released and put it on the store’s CD player. “It literally stopped us in our tracks.” Nirvana’s “Nevermind” album derailed Michael Jackson’s latest album and ultimately ended the hair metal era of Rock.

Why do the musical tastes of millions suddenly change overnight? Why do highly paid professionals who hone the music business into a well-oiled, highly researched money machine never see it coming?

I’m a music and media researcher by trade. I have a professional bias towards not believing things just happen. I examined other times when musical tastes made a sharp turn that experts didn’t see coming;

• The British invasion and Beatlemania in 1964
• EDM-infused Power Pop in the early 2010s
• New Wave reviving Top 40 radio in the early 1980s
• The birth of Rock ’n’ Roll in 1955

Do these points in time correlate to anything that could explain the sudden shifts? Is there a cycle to when, how, and — most importantly — why our tastes in popular music suddenly change?

I believe I found the answer in a book that generally has nothing to do with music.

THE BOOK THAT EXPLAINS EVERYTHING

Today, discussing generations and their attributes is ubiquitous: The “entitled millennial”, “OK, Boomer,” and the “cynical Xer” are tropes everyone knows.

No one did more to elevate the William Strauss and Neil Howe in their book Generations: The History of America’s Future, 1584 to 2069. The book postulates that just as there are four seasons in a year, there are four different types of generations and four different phases of history that predictably repeat over the course of 80 to 90 years, about the same as the typical long human lifespan.

If that’s not enough cred for you, they coined the term, “Millennial.”

A key theme of “Generations” is The Crisis of 2020, which outlines how after a period of neglecting big problems and increasing society divisiveness, a global challenge of existential proportions suddenly emerges. Whether we succumb to the crisis or fight it successfully, the Crisis of 2020 would ultimately change America forever.

Strauss and Howe wrote about The Crisis of 2020 way back in 1991, the same year Hip Hop and Grunge overtook youth culture.

How could they predict with such accuracy that 2020 would be a disastrous year in a book written three decades ago? Because 2020 aligns with similar periods of existential crisis in American history such as World War II and the American Revolution.

If it could foretell our global pandemic, wouldn’t you love to know what “Generations” could teach us about where popular music is heading?

A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF THE GENERATIONAL CYCLE

A generation is an age cohort that experiences similar events at the same stages of life and whose collective attitudes stem from those shared experiences, lasting around 20 years. The four types of generations are:

• The Hero Generation. Raised when parents have a newfound interest in protecting and valuing children, this generation values teamwork and community over individual needs. Their sacrifice saves society during a crisis. As leaders, they go on to build big things for the community, but their cultural contributions are bland.
• The Artist Generation: Raised when parents highly value and overly safeguard their kids, this generation values harmony and inclusion. They work to refine existing institutions to make society’s gains open to all and bring sensitivity back into the community. They’re sensitive, but slow end ineffective at acting.
• The Profit Generation: Raised when parents are giving their kids more freedom, this generation favors individual expression and accomplishment over teamwork and views institutions as oppressive and conformist. Idealistic, they save us from outdated mores and revolutionize society’s values. Their cultural contributions are epic, but build few grand projects for the community.
• The Nomad Generation: Raised when parents least value and most neglect children, this generation values individual achievement over inclusion. They work to make broken institutions irrelevant through entrepreneurial solutions rejecting idealistic values for whatever works.

In concert with the four generations, there are four periods of history that repeat during the cycle:

• High: After a crisis, community is strong and people trust institutions, but individualism is still shunned. We build great infrastructure, but our culture is bland. Children are valued, but given more freedom. Think the “Leave It To Beaver” 50s.
• Awakening: Young idealists reject conformity for individual expression and push for new values through cultural revolution. Big projects end, but our culture changes rapidly. Children are undervalued neglected. Think the Woodstock 60s and the divorce 70s.
• Unraveling: With new culture and values firmly in place, individual expression and entrepreneurship reaches its peak, while trust in the community’s old institutions erodes. Big problems are deferred. Children are valued again and increasingly protected. Think the dot.com 90s and the housing bubble 00s.
• Crisis: After decades of deferring problems, a crisis erupts that threatens our very existence. Teamwork grows and the community’s needs while individualism seems dangerous. Broken institutions are fixed or replaced entirely. Children are highly valued and smothered. Think the Great Depression and World War II. Or today.

HOW I UNCOVERED THE GENERATIONAL MUSIC CYCLE

The idea that music is cyclical isn’t new. For decades, legendary radio programmer Guy Zapoleon has championed The Music Cycle, observing that Contemporary Hit Radio (CHR) moves through three predictable phases during a decade: Birth/Pop, Extremes, and Doldrums.

But why does music move through these specific phases? More fundamentally, if we know change is coming, why do we keep missing it?

To find out, I took what I know of popular music’s biggest pivot points and aligned those moments with how old each living generation was when it happened:

• How old were Gen Xers and Boomers when Hip Hop and Grunge exploded in 1991?
• How old were Millennials and Xers when EDM DJs became rock stars in 2010?
• How old were Boomers and The Silent Generation when Beatlemania stuck America in 1964?

I observed that there would be a similar shift in popular music when either:

1. the oldest members of a younger generation turn 21, or
2. when the youngest members of an older generation turn 31.

I discovered that these particular ages are significant because there are two critical factors that prompt sudden changes in popular music tastes:

1. Which generation is the primary consumer of popular music? The generation that buys or streams the majority of music determines what styles and themes are popular
2. Which generation is the primary creator of popular music? The generation that writes and performs the music determines which values and attitudes are reflected in the music they create.

Combined, these factors spawn two different music cycles, each of which lasts about a decade and each of which contains the Birth/Pop, Extremes, and Doldrums phases Guy Zapoleon has long observed.

THE GENERATIONAL MUSIC CYCLE

Evolution: During this stage, an older generation continues to create the music, but the next younger generation becomes the primary consumer of new music. It is the younger generation’s tastes that shape which songs are hits. While not fundamentally changing what style of music is popular, it does bring new excitement to pop music and shapes new music styles that will emerge in the future. The Evolution stage typically begins when the oldest members of a younger generation turn 21.

Examples of Evolution phase:

• 1964 — The British Invasion: The Beatles storm America to throngs of Boomers who are now the tastemakers, while artists from the previous Silent Generation continue to create the music. Today, this era defines what people think of as “Oldies”.
• 1982 — New Wave: Duran Duran, Men At Work and A Flock of Seagulls videos play on MTV to Gen Xers, while Boomer artists from Michael Jackson to Madonna cater to Gen X tastes. When people think of “80s” music, they think of this era.
• 2003 — Happy Hip Hop: A new breed of feel-good Hip Hop from artists such as Outkast, Black Eyed Peas, 50 Cent and Jay Z emerges, shedding the gritty gang life images of 90s Gen X Hip Hop. Millennial listeners were ready to have fun again. Keep an eye out for nostalgia around this era to emerge.

Revolution: During this next stage, the younger generation that has been shaping music tastes during the past decade finally become the artists creating contemporary music. Whenever a brand-new style of music seemingly suddenly emerges and becomes the dominant force in popular music, it is almost always at the beginning of the Revolution, when a new generation pushes the older generation out of the recording studio. The Revolution stage typically begins when the last members of that older generation turn 31 and no longer represent the bulk of popular artists.

Examples of Revolution Phase:

• 1955 — Rock ’n’ Roll: Bill Haley & The Comet’s “Rock Around The Clock” becomes #1 and, seemingly overnight, James Dean era teenagers dump Patti Page and Perry Como for Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry. The Silent Generation has replaced the Greatest Generation as the makers of their own music.
• Early 1970s — Classic Rock: While “Rock” had already emerged with The Doors, Cream and Jefferson Airplane (after all, Boomers aren’t ones to wait around for their time to come), the early 70s saw what was left of the other 60s styles vanish as Boomer artists Fleetwood Mac, Pink Floyd, The Doobie Brothers and The Eagles define the decade. This era was for Boomers by Boomers.
• 1991 — Grunge and Hip Hop: With “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” Rock suddenly transitioned from hedonistic hair bands to dark realism, as those Generation X latch key kids take over creating music from the Boomers and change Rock to reflect their reality. Jeremy spoke in class that day indeed.
• Early 2010s — EDM: The DJ replaced the rock star as the center of popular youth music culture, as Millennial-aged artists such as David Guetta, Diplo, Major Lazer, and Swedish House Mafia drive tastes. Their EDM styles also become infused by millennial pop artists such as Bruno Mars and Justin Bieber and Hip Hop artists such as Drake. Generation X’s influence is over.

THE “BIRTH” OF AN EVOLUTION AND A REVOLUTION HAPPENS WHEN GENERATIONS AGREE ON THE HITS

Typically, people remember the first four to five years of an Evolution — the period when the older generation creates music for a younger generation — as as the “fun” years. From mid-60s “Oldies” to “80s”, they’re the years you hear at wedding receptions and sports events when it’s time to have a good time.

At the time, older adults might make fun of the new music trends, but they think they’re frivolous, not dangerous. The kids know better.

In contrast, the first few years of a Revolution — when that younger generation takes control of creating their own music — often represent the halcyon days of a genre. The days when the music was pure; Classic Rock from the early- and mid-1970s. Grunge and Hip Hop from the early and mid-90s when it was gritty and real. Rock ’n’ Roll before “the day the music died” when a plane crash killed its stars in 1959.

At the time, older adults will downright fear these new music trends, even publicly decry that they’re evil. The kids don’t care.

While these phases might mark when older adults exit the world of contemporary music and retreat to the nostalgia of their youth, they mark periods when music is exciting for the teens and young adults.

Notably, everyone in that 12- to 29-year age range that drives contemporary music preferences is in the same generation during these periods.

So why don’t these golden years last?

EXTREMES AND DOLDRUMS” OCCUR AT GENERATIONAL TENSION POINTS

In 1979, tens of thousands gather at a baseball double-header sponsored by FM 98 the Loop (WLUP) in Chicago. The promotion? The chance to come destroy Disco records.

They almost destroyed Comiskey Park in the process.

Those disco demolitioners were overwhelmingly 15- to 18-year-old teens representing the first wave of Generation X, rebelling against the dance fad popular with the youngest Boomers who were in their early 20s.

Meanwhile in New York, The Talking Heads, Blondie and the Ramones were playing CBGB, hinting at the new wave sounds that would take over Top 40 a few years later.

Welcome to the extremes.

Both an Evolutionary phase and a Revolutionary phase will ultimately devolve into the extremes and doldrums before the next phase begins.

Why? Generational transition tension.

During both Birth phases, there is agreement among the generations about what’s popular. However, as a new generation emerges first among consumers and then later among artists, conflict emerges between the aging establishment who are content with more of the same and the younger generation who want something new.

After a revolution, the extremes phase is most likely to launch fads that appeal to the older generation, but generally don’t have the staying power of the halcyon days of the genre that preceded it. Beyond Disco:

• The early 1960s were rife with musical fads, from the faux folk and hootenanny of The New Christie Minstrels to death discs of teenage tragedy such as “Last Kiss.”
• The late 1990s saw a slew of quirky pop alternative from one-hit wonders from Cherry Poppin’ Daddies and the Squirrel Nut Zippers to Fastball and The Cardigans. How bizarre.

In contrast, the phase that happens after an evolution and just before a new Revolution often bring the last gasp for icons of a soon to be irrelevant generation.

• Consider 1988–1990, when Chicago, Don Henley, George Harrison, The Beach Boys and a slew of other Boomer icons had their last major hits.
• Likewise, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Green Day had their last mainstream hits before 2010, while overnight, Nickelback went from a stalwart hit maker to a punchline.
• And while the early 1970s likely remind you of Led Zeppelin, it was also when pre-rock crooners Perry Como and Andy Williams had their last Top 10 hits that didn’t involve Christmas.

WHERE IS MUSIC HEADED?

For the last two decades, Millennials’ tastes have driven the direction of pop music. They rejected the gritty reality Generation X expressed in Alternative Rock and Hip Hop for songs about friends out to have fun — launching their Evolution phase that moved Hip Hop from the streets to the club. Then in 2010, they replaced the guitarist with the EDM mix DJ as the hero of popular music in their Revolution phase.

But the reign of the millennials is almost over.

Waiting in the wings within the halls of America’s high schools are the kids that will soon begin impacting popular music.

Sometimes called “Generation Z”, “iGen”, or “post-millennial”, the Homeland Generation (The term “Generations” co-author Neil Howe coined for them) is the generation after the Millennials, with a birth year starting around 2005.

Kids who can faintly recall a time before President Obama or the 2008 financial meltdown are the last of the Millennials. Kids who can’t are the first Homelanders.

(Note that while Millennials embraced the term Howe invented for them, most Homelanders embrace the title “Generation Z” and have never even heard the “Homelander” label. Since so many marketers inaccurately label the last decade of Millennials as “Generation Z”, however, we’ll stick with Homelanders to avoid confusion.)

THEY’RE NOT MILLENNIALS

While every person is unquestionably unique, the over-arching tone of the millennial generation is confidence and optimism. They grew up with the prosperity of the 1990s and 2000s. They are primarily the children of Boomer parents, whose helicopter parenting style made them feel special and important. They’re team oriented. They’re excited by progress.

They were the babies when “Baby On Board” stickers were a thing.

In contrast, Homelanders are growing up amid financial uncertainly, political divisiveness, rampant school shootings, climate fears, and now a deadly pandemic. That environment is making them cautious and insecure.

Their Generation X parents, all too aware of life’s dangers, are as over-protective of their Homelander kids as their parents were under-protective of them in the latch key kid 1970s. They’re not merely helicopter parents volunteering in classrooms to stay on top of their kids; they’re stealth fighter parents, waiting in the background until they need to attack by taking a PowerPoint to the school board.

In public life, Homelander kids are rule-oriented and pragmatic, now as a matter of survival. Privately, they’re quietly seeking their own identity as they connect with their friends on Discord.

They’re sensitive. They recognize that mental health issues are real, and society needs to help each other.

They value kindness and don’t want anyone to feel left out. They’re already more woke regarding sexual orientation and gender identity than any previous generation.

They’re looking inward in a way Millennials look outward.

They’re the Minecraft generation.

With 2005’s babies finishing high school in 2022, we’re on the cusp of experiencing how their worldview will soon alter popular music. Three popular artists might give us a glimpse of where we’re headed.

#1: BILLIE EILISH

Eilish isn’t a Homelander. Born in 2001, she’s among the last wave of Millennials. However, her life has details familiar to Homelanders, from the parental protection of home-schooling to the introspective self-exploration of her work.

More importantly, Eilish is the first new artist that Homelander teens have helped make a star.

• Her music is intimate — her microphone technique, especially when her fans use their earbuds, makes her feel as if she’s right next to your ear, leaving middle age dads of her teenage fans asking, “Why is she whispering?”
• Her music is sensitive — she’s willing to share her own struggles with depression and anxiety in songs like “Xanny” in a way that eschews the sexualized glamour typical of female pop stars.
• Her music is inclusive — musically, she defies genres by mixing many different elements. Lyrically, “Wish You Were Gay” treats sexual orientation diversity as a given, not a novelty.

These traits may well be definitive of the songs that become hits as Homelanders increasingly determine popular tastes — because these traits define the generation.

No wonder her music sounds strange to listeners over 25.

#2: OLVIA RODRIGO

Another glimpse of how Homelanders will change the charts comes from an early 2021 #1 hit by a 17-year-old previously known for her work on Disney’s High School Musical: The Musical: The Series.

Born in 2003, Olivia Rodrigo is the last of the Millennials, but the kids that made Drivers License a hit are primarily Homelanders.

That quiet inward reflection drips from “Drivers License”. Musically, it’s minimalist. As an SNL skit said, “sounds like it’s just some teen girl singing in a room to a piano.” It’s a stripped-down style some now call bedroom pop.

Lyrically, “Drivers License” is intimate, telling the age old story of broken love with multifaceted personal detail and emotional vulnerability.

A decade ago, this song would involve Friday night clubbing with friends to forget the breakup, but in the years to come, the Homelander generation won’t have its own Party Rock Anthem.

“good 4 u”, the edgy follow up to “Driver’s License”, mentions her ex going to the therapist she found him and compares him to a “damn sociopath” for how quickly he detaches from their relationship.

Gloria Gaynor and Alanis Morissette long ago gave us breakup rage songs, but theirs didn’t discuss mental health care.

#3: LIL NAS X

When his first hit burst onto the chart, Billboard didn’t even know which chart to put him on. With its cowboy theme, Billboard initially assumed “Old Town Road” was a county song, where it began climbing their Hot Country Songs chart. Observing that Country radio wasn’t playing it, however, Billboard infamously dropped it form their Country charts in a kerfuffle that ultimately lead to a remix with Billy Ray Cyrus.

An emerging Hip Hop artist collaborating with the purveyor of a decades old Country novelty is the kind of silo-busting that only an inclusive generation would consider.

While Old Town Road was still heading towards chart history as the song spending the most weeks at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, Lil Nas X publicly discussed being gay, something still unthinkable in Hip Hop during that decade. He would go on to reference his sexual orientation in “Industry Baby.”

These three artists suggest that music is becoming more intimate, more sensitive, and more inclusive. Has that shift ever happened before?

HAVE WE SEEN THIS PATTERN BEFORE?

According to Strauss and Howe, The Homelanders fit the same generational archetype as the Silent Generation, who came between the G.I. (Greatest) Generation and the Boomers. They were too young to fight in World War II, but too old for the Sixties. As kids in the 30s and 40s, their job was to stay out of the way.

In school, they followed the rules.

In the 50s, they were the men in the grey flannel suits.

By the 70s, however, they invented the midlife crisis, trading in their Oldsmobiles for Porsches and creating a divorce epidemic that turned their Gen X children into latch key kids.

But first, they made popular music more intimate and then they made it more inclusive.

In the mid-40s, the Silent Generation evolved popular music tastes away from the Big Bands of Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey to the more intimate sounds of small jazz combos and crooning vocalists. The G.I. Generation was still making the music, but unlike the ballroom-filling dance sounds they loved, the Silent Generation preferred a more personal style of music that took full advantage of microphone technology to feel like the singer was singing just to you.

Their Bobby Soxer teenagers made Frank Sinatra a star.

By the early 1950s, their music sounded awfully sappy. Novelty songs were rife. Meanwhile in Memphis, a country bumpkin was playing “race” records for cutting edge teens on the Red Hot ’n’ Blue show on WHBQ. Soon came a late night radio show on WJW Cleveland that later spread to WINS New York, exposing kids beyond the South to this music.

Suddenly in the summer of ’55, this music went mainstream when a Rhythm & Blues styled song by a white artist hit #1 thanks to the movie The Blackboard Jungle: Bill Haley & The Comet’s Rock Around The Clock marked the beginning of the Rock ’n’ Roll era. The Silent Generation was now creating their own music by mixing mainstream pop with R&B and Country.

Their inclusive mix of musical styles made Elvis Presley an icon.

HOW MUSICAL HISTORY WILL REPEAT ITSELF

First, Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo, and Lil’ Nas X almost certainly won’t be the next Sinatra or Elvis. Predicting the future precisely is a losing gamble. World events, technological advancements, economics, and even legal battles have shaped what styles of music become popular.

Broadly speaking, here’s what Generational Music Theory suggests awaits us:

1) Millennial Doldrums: These early years of the 2020s are among the worst doldrums ever, particularly based on plummeting audiences Top 40 radio stations and increasing share of streaming plays going to older music instead of new releases. For the time being, the sound of most hits won’t change much. Expect grumblings that music was better in the 2010s, while new releases from the biggest artists of the 10s seem increasingly dull. (Who? ME!)? Meanwhile, start looking for the “weird kids” to be into some strange sounding songs, likely on media platforms older adults seldom use — as we’re already seeing with Tik Tok. They’ll point you to what’s about to change.

2) Homelander Evolution: Around the mid ’20s, music will develop a more intimate tone. It could be musically more intimate, as in the close-mic’ed “whispering” style of Billie Eilish that annoys her fans’ Gen X dads. It could be lyrically more intimate, reflected in personal openness and emotional vulnerability heard on Olivia Rodrigo’s “driver’s license”. Regardless of how music evolves, the DJ-driven party feeling of the ’10s biggest hits will be a passé memory. A new Evolutionary cycle, as we outlined in our previous post, has begun.

3) Homelander/Millennial Extremes: By the 2030s, this intimate style that seemed refreshing in 2028 will be stale, as people will once again complain that new music sucks these days. There might be a rash of novelty songs, as well as the last splash for aging millennial stars. Imagine a 40-year-old Justin Bieber or a 47-year-old Drake with a song that sounds strangely mature compared to their hits today. Meanwhile, out of view of the mainstream, culturally cutting-edge teens will be embracing a radically different style of music, one that may include elements from people or cultures historically excluded from American pop music.

4) The Homelander Revolution: Around 2035, that once underground music will suddenly burst onto the mainstream with a brand-new style that would sound as weird today as Nirvana would have sounded in 1976. Middle-aged millennial parents will hate it. Today’s infants will find it liberating. It’s now the Homelanders’ turn to start a music revolution, with influences currently unimaginable in today’s pop music.

IT COMES FROM THE UNSEEN KIDS

Even though tomorrow’s music is unimaginable today, you can get hints if you know where to look. Real shifts in popular music never begin with popular people. They start among the marginalized within youth culture. In the late 1940s, it was black kids who first found Rock ’n’ Roll. In the 1980s, the Goth kids had The Smiths before we all had Nirvana.

Today, it may be LGBTQ+ teens. It may be kids who speak Spanish, Korean, or Mandarin at home. It might be gamers.

If, like me, your livelihood depends on understanding contemporary music trends, make sure these kids have a seat at your table.