Straight Gen X White Males Must Repent For Their Sins.

For you have wrought musical hell onto the world.

We all know that when cultural and political critics get things wrong, they’re rarely held accountable. Iraq War? 2008 Financial Crisis? Hillary has a 98% chance of winning? COVID? They just change the conversation until it’s no longer a hot topic. Once it’s no longer controversial, they MIGHT admit they were wrong, when it no longer matters. But they rarely say sorry or face consequences.  

Well, it’s time for a reckoning. About music. And specifically, the mortal musical sins that straight white men who are currently aged 40-55 committed. These Fugazi fans must repent.

There are some former hipsters who are really frustrated about “poptism”, chief among them Freddie DeBoer. If you haven’t heard of poptism, it’s a backlash to the angsty rock snobbery that prevailed during the 90s, and an embrace of fun pop music as an antidote. Poptimists worship at the alter of Taylor Swift and whoever else is a pop star these days. You can read about it here: A Few Indisputable Points About Poptimism and Then I Give Up

Now, I’m no Swiftie and could not even identify a single one of her songs other than Shake It Off. I don’t get her appeal at all. Seemingly she has somehow sold indescribably bland music to her audience based on a narrative about her being a lonely underdog, which I guess is supposed to offset her being a long-legged beautiful blonde. Now, that’s sort of impressive from a branding perspective, because skinny blondes are almost universally reviled by everyone but straight white guys, and Swift’s audience is composed of everyone BUT straight white guys. But her music is boring and sexless. Nevertheless, if Taylor Swift worship causes suffering for former hipsters, then I will consider her an angel cloaked in the mighty power of righteousness.

I should also note that DeBoer is not actually Gen X, he’s an elder Millennial a couple years younger than me, but I’m sweeping him in with my denunciation. And I’ll also give him credit for not walking away from the topic, and at least admitting to the snobbish musical excesses of the 90s.

But this is not enough for me.  A full accounting for the misery and brutal oppression of joy and vitality that the grunge/punk/alternative/hipster sadists imposed on the rest of us innocents is warranted. I demand reparations. Do you white X-ennial dudes even understand the crimes against humanity you committed back then?? You should all be whipping yourselves and wearing hair shirts, begging for absolution.

Their Mortal Sins

Despite our pretensions, there is not much about humanity that separates us, in a qualitative sense, from other animals. Previous theories that we were the only language or tool-using species have been debunked. Yes, we are far better at those things, but not unique.

And human groups have a lot to fight about. A lot to hate each other for, and constant conflict. There are not many behaviors that span cultures in a way that brings unqualified joy.

There are only two things that make humans both transcend our fellow animals, and that are also profoundly joyful and communal: comedy and music. This is why in my hierarchy of positive values, humor and music are always jockeying for first place. I’ll write on comedy later, but for now: music.

Do you understand what these sinners did in the 80s and 90s? They took music, the one thing we have in life other than humor that is a universally joyful experience, across all cultures and throughout history. It is social, it makes you dance, it creates joy, it’s perfectly sublime. They took this gift to humanity and decided that NO, they wouldn’t stand for it.

You see, what happened is that between the 60s and the 80s, the full power of music was unleashed when producers started pumping music from the full diversity of talent across the air-waves. White kids started dancing to Motown in the 60s, and by 1980, we had Soul Train transmitted onto every television. And music and dancing are inextricably intertwined with mating displays.

But these sinners, they simply could not bear the thought of letting loose, expressing themselves, and getting laughed at, or worse, rejected by women or shamed by their fellow men. They were far too embarrassed to dance, and the hysterical adoration of women for those with musical prowess made it all the worse. They saw the disco era studs, the athletic and exuberant dudes who were unafraid to engage with women, the peacocking 80s glam rockers, and all the non-white guys with way better skills on the dance floor, and oh how they burned with shame and resentment.

When the Bee Gee’s Saturday Night Fever soundtrack came out as one of the top-selling albums of all time, and they compared themselves to this, their black-hearted hatred grew to epic proportions: 

The very thought of a group of pretty young things watching and laughing caused them a jihad-like fury, bent at destruction.

And if they would suffer, then everyone would suffer. So, with their roiling, furious sexual insecurities, the sinners’ collective unconscious latched onto an evil plan.

They would tear down and denigrate all music with any joy, any percussion involving the slightest danceability, any overt sexual prowess or expressions of confidence or vitality.

Songs about love and happiness? Absolutely not.   

Showmanship or ass-shaking joy? It needed to die.  

Artists with harmony? Hell no!

Sumptuously gorgeous, angelic voices like George Michael or Freddie Mercury? Obviously not.

No, they would take their evil revenge, and it would be dark times for the ladies.

Their False Idols

Instead, they would dedicate themselves to proselytizing about the most depressing, lame, whiny music that ever existed: grunge and alt rock. Music that was impossible to dance to. Music that offended the ears of anyone not dedicated to cultivating a persona of being so sophisticated and cynical that only they could comprehend why boring, nothing music was actually GOOD.

They would call shoving and crashing into each other with the grace of a stroke-victim dancing. They would scorn and sneer at anyone dedicated to earnestly developing a strong singing voice, or any professional dancing or showmanship skills. They would dominate the world with the most miserable music of all time.

Their music would only be maudlin and melancholy, or – if there was going to be any energy behind it at all – then it would be hostile and cacophonous. The only emotions that would be acceptable to musically convey would be loneliness, alienation, hostility, or the general sense of being furious about being a loser. Anger would be allowed, but only if it was of the butthurt and resentful variety. Righteous, rebellious anger would off-limits.  

And music conveying confidence, exultation, spirit, aplomb, or communal good will was forbidden.

Their preferred artists wouldn’t be strutting studs or great dancers or have professional vocal training. They wouldn’t wear costumes meant to dazzle. In fact, they wouldn’t even look like they’d washed or changed their clothes for a week.

They would resemble and sound like beggars. They would drone and whine, unless they were screaming or literally impersonating demonic monsters. They would sing songs about being depressed, furious, or contemptuous. If they had skill with instruments, that was incidental, since the important part was that they used those instruments to produce the sounds of misery.

And they would spread this ideology far and wide, writing endless cover articles extolling the virtues off their new beggar gods. They would make memorizing the new scripture of obscure musicology from untalented garage bands into a virtue. Among regular people, they would transmit the most cranked-up levels of contempt and cruel mockery.

Oh, you liked jock jams? You loved a full-throated operatic rock anthem? You were a teenage girl who thought dancing was fun? You enjoyed disco hits and lip synching with your friends? How revoltingly embarrassing! What scum! How could anyone bear to be in the same room with such mortifying and artless dilettantes?

Couldn’t you understand that spending hundreds of hours searching out the worst sounding albums and learning obscure musical trivia to lord over the people who enjoyed revelry and merriment, was the highest-status and most impressive skill one could have?? Didn’t you know it was disgusting and embarrassing for a girl to have a crush on a talented entertainer with seductive lyrics, exuberance, and professional level showmanship, who crooned about lust and romance? When instead she should be devoting herself to the worship of a butthurt skinny-fat white guy with the appearance of a homeless person, whining endlessly on his guitar in minor chords about his deep well of melancholy and rejection of commercial endeavors? You must further devote yourself to study.

Absolution

And their sick plan worked.

These sexually insecure, miserable sinners broke the backs of all the rest of us. We spent our teen years being forced to pretend to like the worst grunge music, and suppressing all the parts of us who loved jubilance and rejoicing. We had to hide our Madonna albums and fill our cd cases with awful music to try to pacify the miserable, joy-hating monks.

They dominated the high culture and critical world in the 90s, and they sadistically punished and humiliated everyone who didn’t have a soul as black and resentful as their own. They sought to crush every ounce of exuberance in favor of puritanical melancholy, and they succeeded for almost a decade. They crushed everyone’s spirit with their miserable jackboots.

They must atone for the mass suffering they caused. They have not apologized.

So, if you’ve now turned into an aging 40 year old white dude, and the miserable musical tastes of your youth are no longer respected, and you find yourself being swarmed by an online horde of 14-year old K-Pop fans for proselytizing your dying musical religion, it’s precisely what you deserve. 

If I was in charge, I’d sentence you all to be locked into a prison where you were forced, all day every day, to practice dance routines to Salt-N-Pepa and Bobby Brown songs. Until you repent, you will be required to conduct lip-syncing and air guitar contests to Def Leppard.

And Taylor Swift will not end her ceaseless reign of terror until you are cleansed of your sins.    

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Update: Some are asking if I’m joking. And obviously my 30-year vendetta against the teenage boys who ruined my musical tween-hood is tongue in cheek, but the emotions and tensions I have described here are real. It was an evil man named Steve Dahl, a fat troll who’d been fired from his job, who started spreading the gospel of black-heartedness on the radio waves. In 1979, tens of thousands of his midwestern white teenaged followers descended upon a White Sox game and created a full-blown riot of resentful fury, and literally detonated and burned disco records. That was the start of the gathering of their dark powers, and grunge was the culmination. I learned about this in a documentary about the Bee Gees I watched last year, and it confirmed all my suspicions about the source of this cult. This historical event should not be forgotten: