35
votes
GenX, what is a music video that you feel best represents us?
Link information
This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.
- Title
- Soundgarden - Blow Up The Outside World
- Authors
- SoundgardenVEVO
- Duration
- 5:03
- Published
- Dec 14 2009
I'm straddling the border between Gen-X and Millennial... and for me there are a bunch of music videos (and songs) that I think encapsulate the spirit of that straddler generation. Beck - Loser, Radiohead - Creep, Eve 6 - Inside Out, Garbage - Only Happy When It Rains, Nirvana - Lithium, Third Eye Blind - Semi-Charmed Life, and The Offspring - The Kids Aren't Alright. I could go on but I'm sure you get the idea. Grungy, angsty, angry, drugged out, and depressed. Fun times! :P
Millennial, but I’m right there with you :D
I owned that Eve 6 album on CD and listened to it so much. I don't watch a lot of music videos, but I can definitely say that just reading this list is tugging on my nostalgia strings.
Aaaand there is my new playlist. Although, I'd add Bad Habit from Offspring.
More songs in another comment of mine to add to the playlist for you. Probably only relevant if you're also a Canadian though. But check out the Big Shiny Tunes albums I linked to as well, they have a ton more awesome 90s tunes from both Canada and the US.
Oh I'll be checking those out. I'm French Canadian, so I'll likely relate.
Where my Metallica? It was almost impossible not to get exposed to Metallica back then. Everyone everywhere had them on bootleg tapes.
Some of those are great and others still irk me... but I still like them. Took me a while to like Ixnay, and even longer for Americana and Splinter... that was my favorite band mid-end of the 90s. Growing up in CA, TEB was ehh, actually got tickets for a Miller Genuine Blind Date at the Fillmore in SF... on the busride in, we heard there would be two bands.
Our thoughts were the bands were too crappy to hold their own. It was TEB and Afghan Whigs (honestly, I need to check them out again... my original Napster investigation left me wanting). Also watched Night at the Roxbury on the way in, and the bassist for TEB looked like ... EMILIO!
Offtopic, but I probably should have mentioned this earlier. @Asinine, if you want to ask a question like this in the future, it's probably better to make a text topic for it, and then just include your own example/answer in the text body. Song link titles on ~music typically get edited to conform to pretty strict standards,
<Band name> - <Song name> (<important details>, <year>), to keep everything here organized and easily searchable. But text topics are given a lot more freedom in their titling and scope.Thank you. I'm new here, so I appreciate the guidance.
YVW. :)
I'm on the old end of the Gen X spectrum. MTV changed everything in the early 80's, so I'd have to say "Video Killed the Radio Star".
On that same theme, how about The Dire Straits - Money for Nothing
I was 4 when this came out. It was my 1st favorite song. My 24 year old daughter has my father's vinyl of this album.
Empire Records was where I first heard that song. The whole soundtrack was banging though.
Thank you, I looked up the track list and refound Sugar High by Coyote Shivers. I have always loved that song.
Tears for Fears, Everybody Wants to Rule the World.
I couldn't come up with a single music video, but I did narrow it down to 3, which was a herculean effort, no really it was, truly.
Early 80s 99 Luftballons An attractive young lady with big hair and an anti war message, this epitomizes the early 80s to me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fpu5a0Bl8eY
Mid 80s Tom Petty's Don't Come Around Here No More A classic rock band looking back to the psychedelic 60s, but in a poppy way. Gen X has always been in the middle, of all sorts of things, musically there are lots of classic rock Gen Xers, lots of Madonna fans, REM, it just depends on who your friends were.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0JvF9vpqx8&t=107s
Later 80s Guns N Roses came in and blew the doors off, setting the stage for grunge which was just around the corner.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1tj2zJ2Wvg
That is what I came up with but I think it all depends upon where you grew up and who your friends were because there were so many different zeitgeists, fads, and little niches.
So I didn't comment on the videos from the time because, as you pointed out , that's too hard.
However, in my mind this Tom Petty song represents what it feels like to be a genx. Being that first generation to know all "the promises" of the previous generation were just not a reality anymore.
Your picks feel very representative of the era !
Tom Petty ,Saving Grace
https://youtu.be/vPYFWnzjIy0
Thanks Jewelergeorgia, especially for the song, I hadn't heard that Petty tune. I kinda like that shuffle thing going on.
I think maybe there is a big jump from early Gen X and late, a lot of the videos and songs that are being posted in this thread seem more like millennial era to me, but maybe that just means I am old :).
I'll return the favor
Tom Petty, Insider(featuring Stevie Nicks)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7bjXWzms5I
I noticed the same thing ha. Culture and society change faster with information and the information age really sped up in the eighties. I have close friends still in their 40's and we notice the difference sometimes.
After I wrote my response to you, it occured to me that Midnight Oil's Burning Beds feels very gen x.
It was political and a first about climate change and I felt it powerfully.
It seemed like it was our generations job to make everyone in the room roll their eyes when party pooping their great time with facts like...climate change. While later on, the boomers (hippie types not yuppie types) championed some of this, they were later bought out.
My sister is eight years older than me and as far as values go we are water and oil. She has always felt like a boomer to me and a total yuppie .
Thanks for the song, I absolutely love Tom Petty and am amazed at how prolific he was, that I can still stumble over music he did that I had never heard.
His lyrics connect people in the kindest of ways, I think that's why I still fucking miss him .
Fun fact: He absolutely did not ever want to duo with women. If I remember the book right, it was personal. Stevie Knicks pestered him for a very long time and I don't know what changed his mind but when they did, it worked well.
Aye, cheers and here's some Midnight Oil (AWOL Nationn did a great cover if this in 2022)
https://youtu.be/ejorQVy3m8E
I had to come back and add that this song is more about restitution and not climate change haha. I'll have to put the correct chip on my shoulder ha.
That was just mean, the lead singer from Midnight Oil has always creeped me out. He is 6'6", can you imagine that guy dancing up to you in his weird herky jerky fashion at a bonfire party? Man it would be time to run. While I do agree that the song is very Gen X and love it, the video is on the do not watch list.
Do you remember Lone Justice, Maria McKee's band in the 80s? They weren't big but they had a minor hit with Ways to be Wicked, which was written by Tom Petty. I thought about it because you said he didn't want to sing with a woman. He gave the song to McKee because he was afraid it would sound too effeminate for him to sing it himself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u51H7gTAfLM
Bonus song by Maria McKee solo, nothing to do with Petty but it is one my fave songs of all time
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qGodpYv4dM
I hadn't thought about it but you are right I think, or mostly anyway, information speed changes things quickly. Lots of info, the idea of the summer of love turning out to be only a pipedream in the weed riddled heads of hippies, and then those same boomers declaring greed is good, turned the world on its head and made us cynics who had nothing and noone to believe in.
Is there a good biography of Petty? I would be interested in one that got in depth rather than being a money grab if you know of one.
Paul Zillow, Conversations with Tom Petty, Omnibus Press , ISBN 0-8256-3471-7.
The forward is written by Tom Petty so I feel safe he approved of the effort lol.
I love this documentary of him and kind of by him because he's really just a guy, he is funny as hell and goofs off and drives his very 1980s looking car.
https://youtu.be/x_QOk5R_m5A
Recently I've been listening to some interviews between Jeff Lynne and Tom Petty, he seems to be the only producer TP trusted entirely. Sometimes Jeff would have to tell Tom to take more of the space or else it would be a Jeff Lynne song lol.
Jeff Lynne still blows mind there is not one ELO song I dislike.
I remembered Maria McKee as soon as I heard her sing! What a voice! And what a stunning beauty!
The song she did with Petty's lyrics had a Bonnie Raitt feel to it, made me think maybe she is influenced by her.
Gotta say though , she has a voice that called for the power in Am I the Only One.
What's she up to now?
Sorry for the pop scare lol, that man sounds like a beast ahha, 6'6?! Sheesh and nah.
Thanks for the rec on the book, I just downloaded it and it is on the TBR pile now. That little documentary was funny. I always have the idea that the people who wrote those great songs must be deep, introspective thinkers, but no, turns out most of the time that they are normal people who were born with a gift, one that lets them put what everyone feels into words and music. This doesn't make them smarter or deeper, they are the same doofuses that we are. Petty, Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench are good reminders of that, normal guys who aren't particularly learned or deep, but who were born with an ability to create songs and have honed their craft.
McKee made a string of really good albums and then quit for a while, got married and then somewhere in there decided she was(in her words) a dyke and now lives platonically with her film maker husband and dates women. Her last album was in 2020. The last album was not to my taste, it was, again to use her words, theatrical. She doesn't tour, hates it. So I think she makes little movies with her platonic husband and noodles around writing songs, which she may or may not record. That is all I know.
I am off to listen to Rebels by Petty. The first lyrics always knock me out because I have heard so many buddies say nearly the same thing to their wives/girlfriends.
I completely agree with your appraisal of who these guys are. Doofus' just like us all.
I watched a documentary on the man who wrote American Pie and I felt pretty underwhelmed. I have gone through life trying to tease out all the analogies and hidden meaning. He just put some stuff together and it's real simple Ricky Bobby, it's just what it says. =D
Still a great song though.
I'm glad to hear McKee is able to live in a way she wants, that's the real dream. Creative exploration uninterrupted by obligations to keep the payroll going. Not everyone is cut out for touring.
I love music ,new music old music, fast and slow, mean and funny, but I have never ever enjoyed musicals or theater music lol . More power to her!
I'mma go have a listen to that song bc now I'm wondering what these guys are saying to their partners...
Honey, don't walk out
I'm too drunk to follow
Yes, I have had some questionable friends, but they were entertaining.
I read a Bruce Springsteen biography, turns out that The Boss is a neurotic little dude who is nothing like the car/tough guy persona that was portrayed.
Dylan, sheesh, if you are a fan don't read any of his biographies. Jokerman is apt for him, can't keep a story straight and doesn't really care if you know it either.
Never meet your heroes, or read their biographies.
Racing in the street and Masters of War make up for everything though.
Yeah, power to Maria! I didn't mean to knock her if that is what is sounded like, she is living the dream, choosing how she lives and what she does with her time.
What are some newer songs/bands that you love?
Whew, well that's always going on. I'll send you a link from here at tildes that turned me on to some stunning music a couple of weeks ago.
This site is just like going to a record store in the 80s/90s where the people who worked there knew their shit.
Most recently last Saturday,on Instagram.....but it was a tik tom video (lort help us all for we are scattered to the wimds mm hmm) I found this stunning jewel. They are so much that I wouldn't dare try to introduce you or stuff them into a genre.....but....I would totally expect to see them at DragonCon if that helps?
https://youtube.com/shorts/SQuEmKqW2W4?feature=share
And now your turn, do me a tildes and share what you've been listening to?
Woot
Oops, forgot this : https://tildes.net/~music/16fy/what_have_you_been_listening_to_this_week
Ah man, I wish I could agree with you and that I could find music on here. I went through that thread and a couple of others, but nothing fits me. I don't like metal so all of that is out, which is half of each thread. I always think that I have fairly low standards when it comes to music, just a couple of things are required, a singer who means what they sing, no whispery bullshit or ironic vocals, just sing the words that you wrote like you mean them without help from a program, and write music that is passionate, but turns out that is harder than your lover's heart when you forget to come home. I find that I am tired and worn out by irony and coolness, 3 chords and the Truth is what I want and can't find.
All of that was to say that I haven't been listening to anything new because I can't find anything new that I want to listen to. Here are some songs that have been played this past week, in no particular order:
Fiona Apple - Heavy Balloon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8whTAkkBv6U&list=PL6TUbDIwJZb4tdNRqB7IhykFWyzydBLah&index=4
John R Miller - Old Dance Floor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6Sah0WBvSg&list=PL6TUbDIwJZb4Ld1acTZ4o0d1C7Fv5juVH&index=11
Ren - Violet's Tale
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4R9Vk5_CbU&list=PL6TUbDIwJZb7N9FLKqNmalods4Pc1-jX3&index=19
Kasey Chambers - Changed the Locks (Lucinda Williams cover)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAXw0zvjaQU&list=PL6TUbDIwJZb4Ld1acTZ4o0d1C7Fv5juVH&index=6
I'm With Her - Overland
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSEm83eULZA&list=PL6TUbDIwJZb4Ld1acTZ4o0d1C7Fv5juVH&index=22
Roger Clyne - Americano
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aj3m9RxODL4&list=PLX66jEixZe1zMTOkMJWifL6YJrdYoYj-e
Turnpike Troubadours - The Mercury
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCclpGkNac8
Lucinda Williams - Righteously
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4jliHBepyk
I'll stop there, that was probably way more than you wanted. Have a great weekend and enjoy the Independence Day festivities.
Ah. Say no more. I thought you asked what I was listening to recently, and so I told you hahah.
What you really wanted was :
u/cernuno
Asked
File: newer, newish music that I've listened to recently, but only from the Curmudgeon File.
As follows:
Music For Curmudgeons
Sean Rowe Desiree
Curmudgeon smiling is funny
https://youtu.be/XL2XZ2Xoxz8
Gogol bordello
New ish
https://youtu.be/u9v1-1Op9bQ
Glen Hansard
https://spotify.link/HjUe9nY14Ab
John Grant
Gmf
https://youtu.be/ekFWPsXXcg0
Big Thief
Red moon
https://youtu.be/VMD2OGlgAEg
Charley Crockett
https://youtu.be/d4PkdBTgE1c mi
Ryan Bingham
https://youtu.be/eoFwQnHFeYM
These are less than 15 years old, you may actually know some of it.
Love Lucinda Williams! I heard an interview with her recently and liked hearing her viewpoint from the vantage of older age.
Turnpike Troubadours are another band I like too. I still have yet to listen to some of the other songs.
Thanks for the independence Day wishes, SCOTUS keeps fucking all that up this time of year so not feeling celebratory. I am however, taking leisure and chill.
Of course, just bc I'm pissed doesn't mean I don't wish you a great independence day!
Cheers
You seem to like singers who sound like they have a mouth full of marbles. Not all bad, but just sayin'.
Nothing there that checked all the boxes for me but I do appreciate the time and effort you took. Your curmudgeon is not curmudgeonly enough, not even really curmudgeonly at all. Now if the John Grant song you linked had been Chicken Bones then that would have belonged in the file for sure.
Time for bed. The fireworks tonight got me all amped up but now I think I have finally burned that, and the sugar high from my once a year funnel cake binge, out of my system. Hope you are enjoying your leisure and chill, if not the holiday.
Honestly, the only one of those I've seen before is Nena's. I'm not a huge Tom Petty fan, but I adore Alice in Wonderland...
Gonna say GNR is just about the band, and there were some clips that more reminded me of Fight Club's flash of clips. Though, not a bad song, but now I wanna watch some Steel Panther haha.
No, the GNR video tells an 80s, Gex X story. Young hayseed(you can tell he is a country boy because he actually has a long piece of straw in his mouth when he gets off of the bus) Axl takes a bus from the heartland to try to make it big in L A. Instead of bright lights and beauty, what he expected from the city, he finds the jungle, full of drugs, hookers, and crazy, flashing lights. This is a story I heard growing up, don't go to the city or you'll get eaten alive. Hmm, thinking again, maybe you had to be Gen X in middle of nowhere Midwest to have the wonderful experience of being told, ad nauseum, by people who had never been in a town bigger than 5000 people, that the city was scary and you would get killed there. Axl Rose was from the Midwest as well so he no doubt grew up with the same silliness, urban stories to tell in the dark.
Wow, surprised you hadn't seen the Tom Petty video, it was inescapable for a year or so.
I don't think I can narrow it down to just one. The videos I associate with GenX are from the 90s. Many of the videos had kind of a disjointed, nihilistic feel to them... weird cuts between the band playing and strange, surreal footage, often filmed with a harsh lighting that added to the sense of disconnectedness. The themes were often cynical and obsessed with loneliness, insincerity, or powerlessness.
Soundgarden - Black Hole Sun
Blind Melon - No Rain
Pearl Jam - Jeremy
Beastie Boys - Intergalactic
Veruca Salt - Seether
Blues Traveler - The Hook
Sneaker Pimps - 6 Underground
Deee-Lite - Groove Is In the Heart
If you're Canadian ... One More Astronaut by I Mother Earth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PkmMezMiMo
Hello fellow Canadian. Don't forget Matthew Good Band - Apparitions, Our Lady Peace - Superman's Dead, Moist - Push, Sloan - The Good In Everyone, The Tea Party - The Bazaar (that band name aged like milk, eh?), Limblifter -Tinfoil, Age of Electric - Remote Control. So many amazing Canadian 90s Alternative bands...
Shoutout to Much Music Big Shiny Tunes! I played the shit out of those compilation CDs when I was growing up.
Whoa, these took me back, especially “Push” - had a visceral rockout reaction to that song! I’ll add The Ghandarvas - First Day of Spring to your list. Quintessential weird-artsy ‘90s.
"Push" reminded me of Garbage - Push It which got a lot of airtime on Vancouver radio stations.
Good song, but the video isn't there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_1QAC_6Zuc
Hmm. I'll go with Green Day - Basket Case. Probably not one Gen-X out there who can't put on that album right now and go time traveling. The birth of pop-punk was a glorious thing. I'm still addicted to it.
Edit: They've still got it too.
I'm on the young end of Gen X. My style personally runs more to grunge and alternative, but I don't want to just think about that, so here's a list of other things that were super popular to start.
Van Halen - You Really Got Me - I think 1978 or so? - wasn't much of a music video by today's standards - or even the standards of the later years of Gen X - but for people who think of Van Halen in concert, they probably thing of David Lee Roth
lights the menorahpeacocking around the stage with his shirt open and the treasure trail shown off, gyrating with big poofy hair. It was a big look, and I knew people who were obsessed with it. A bit before my time, but I think missing a Van Halen hair rock song on a Gen X list would be remiss.Salt-N-Pepa - Push It - pick up on this, it was everywhere, and it looks a bit goofy now, but you can still see the influence they had. Great song, great video, and I'd forgotten about Falsenio Hall telling us all to dance, so that took me way back.
Madonna - Vogue was a striking video, and brought "voguing" to everyone's attention, and people are still voguing today. Madonna is very much not my jam, but this was a huge video.
R.E.M. - It's The End of the World As We Know It and I feel fine. I feel like this video feels really Gen X ish.
MC Hammer - U can't Touch This again looks a bit goofy now, but hammer pants and hammer dancing lasted forever, so its hard to overstate how ubiquitous this was for a while.
Milli Vanilla - Girl You Know It's True is another that is hard to overstate how ubiquitous it was. The song was played everywhere, and then the whole controversy came to light and it just as quickly completely went away.
Rednex - Cotton Eye Joe is still overplayed, but I can't deny that it was wildly popular.
C&C Music Factory - Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now) probably doesn't need an introduction.
And then some that I love that may have been less generation defining, but they certainly were bigger for me personally and for my close friends:
Beastie Boys - Sabotage is straight up one of my favourite videos. I'm not a die hard Beastie Boys fan, but this is a great song and a great concept, executed hilariously.
Weezer - Buddy Holly seemed like a technological marvel for a while when it came out, and the blue album is one of my favourite albums of all time. Plus who doesn't love the Fonz?
Everlong - Foo Fighters is a great song and fun trippy video, and I don't trust anyone who doesn't love Dave Grohl.
Pearl Jam - Alive is a classic "just look at the band play in concert" video, which is almost refreshing, but it's black and white so its artsy!
What about Nirvana's You Know You're Right? Great song, and had all the surrounding drama of the time with only a bootleg, then a leaked studio recording, a lawsuit, heavy radio play....
For me it was the explosion of MTV. The 'Sledgehammer' and 'Money For Nothing' videos were mindblowingly amazing at the time.
The other part of it was being young in the 70s, a teenager in the 80s and early twenties in the 90s - I had the best of everything over multiple decades. It was really from the 50s (influence from grandmother and mother) and the 60s/70s (influence from mother) all the way through to today. Videos eventually appeared for almost every track known.
God, I feel so old!
Remember your first reaction to Whip It by Devo? I'll never forget my complete consternation lol
Cracker - Teen Angst https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42V8CqWw0xM
Tool - Sober
TV on the Radio on David Lettermen - Wolf Like Me
Forgive me for not linking, it's late, I'm on mobile. Here's a quick and dirty of some personal musical moments:
Blister in the Sun, Violent Femmes -fun punk, which our gang of friends was/were. Independent and unique, quintessential Gen X.
Don't Answer Me, Alan Parsons Project. Great, amusing, original video with callbacks to noir. I believe this song captures a sadness that many of us knew.
Owner of a Lonely Heart, Yes. It wasn't just pop. The video shows the man in the suit eventually flinging himself off a highrise office building. We knew it: we were barreling toward that pinched emptiness of a 9-5 that might make us lose our minds to paranoid hallucinations. It was frightening. But could there be liberation, maybe?
Video and music were interlinked. In my mind, they became more powerful together.
Finally, I might say Smells Like Teen Spirit is the anthem of our generation. We didn't care much for the establishment, and we were already jaded. We stood for depth and meaning. This song spoke to superficiality while jamming the fuck out. It was a perfect moment made more serious by Kurt Cobain's eventual death. It is not, by far, one of my favorite songs, but I believe it fits the OPs question.
Thank you for posting it. I enjoyed the train of thought.
I miss that subreddit a little, so I'm asking here.
This is mine. I'm on the tail end of genx, but... it's the futile feeling I suspect we all had. Honestly, I loved the song to start, but when I first saw the video, my mind was blown. Turn everything upside down, we're all a part of the machine though we want to break away, and it tells us how to live.
That being said, a close follow-up was Bloodhound Gang's "Fire Water Burn" (wtf rap? and has to be the donkey edit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Adgx9wt63NY)... but that's me. I abhored a lot of 70s and 80s stuff, but in retrospect I appreciate things a lot more.
What do you think?
Edit: I actually got thinking about this due to Teresa Taylor's death, watched some Butthole Surfer videos...
The Cranberries - Zombie will always resonate for me
Actually, you hit a nerve I forgot about. I adore this song even today, and I had nothing to do with the Troubles, but as an adult it so exemplifies what's wrong with the world, and why innocent people still suffer for stupid reasons.
1979 - Smashing Pumpkins
https://youtu.be/4aeETEoNfOg
Holy shit, I don't think I've ever seen that! So very applicable, especially since I think it looks like central/southern CA where I grew up (unlike Dazed and Confused, and I have lived in TX as well).
Haha, not a fan of BNL in general... but this isn't the music video.
Peter Gabriel has already been mentioned. But on the fun side, we got Thriller and Fat, also Take on Me. And while not technically a video, we should mention Purple Rain.
Although I never owned the album, and never heard another one of their songs, I feel that California by Wax embodies everything you could want in GenX video.
Wax - California