The generation gap between Gen X and millennials is not wide enough. In the interest of full disclosure, and to provide some context for my opening sentence, I don’t want millennials on the sidewalk in front of my house, much less on my lawn. This means, of course, no gap is going to be wide enough to assuage my growing need to be cranky.
To be fair, I’m not the only person who feels this way. In fact, I have friends who are technically millennials but who openly bristle whenever I point that out. One of the many reasons that those of us who are Gen X (or who wish that they were Gen X) feel this way is because of the mostly terrible music foisted on society by millennials.
That’s not to say that we Gen Xers didn’t have our own share of bad music. But our bad music was and remains awesome. To prove that, I’ve listed the top ten bad Gen X songs that are better than almost anything made during the millennials’ reign of terror.
(Note: I’m defining Gen X as music released from about the time Gen Xers first entered high school, around 1980, to the year the last of Gen X was graduating high school, around 1998 – while those dates are somewhat debatable, most people will generally agree, I think.)
10. “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm”
Gen X bands don’t even need words in their song’s chorus. The succinct “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm” from the awesomely named Crash Test Dummies is an earworm in a way that millennials’ auto tuning can never compete with.
9. “Informer”
Long before Justin Bieber, we in Gen X had our own white Canadian guilty of excessive cultural appropriation. So guilty, in fact, that most of us didn’t know that Snow was white until we watched the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StlMdNcvCJo
Next Page: Gonna make millennials sweat!
8. “Gonna Make You Sweat”
C+C Music Factory didn’t politely ask us to dance; they ordered us to dance. And Gen X obeyed. The delicate little buttercups of the latest generation would demand a trigger warning if “Gonna Make You Sweat” had been recorded under their sensitive watch.
7. “Everything About You”
Millennial SJWs wouldn’t be able to plaster enough Coexist stickers on their hybrid cars to make up for the level of hostility in “Everything About You.” Ugly Kid Joe doesn’t accept anything about “you” and worse (or better), the band is gleeful about their intolerance.
Next Page: Too sexy for this younger generation.
6. “I’m Too Sexy”
I feel badly that the closest millennials can get to Right Said Fred’s campy masterpiece is LMFAO’s “Sexy and I Know It.”
5. “The Final Countdown”
For Gen X, irony was a word that only ever showed up on English quizzes. That allowed us to embrace bombast and earnestness. And few songs in the history of music approach the glorious bombast and earnestness of “The Final Countdown.” The band Europe was cool because they didn’t pretend to be cool. The closest millennials have gotten to such a wonderful lack of self-awareness has been Coldplay, and Chris Martin is totally self-aware.
Next Page: Millennials, you’ve been Rickrolled!
4. “Never Gonna Give You Up”
The best internet prank and meme that millennials have been able to manufacture is completely dependent on the goofy awesomeness of Rick Astley. To put it another way, Gen X tricked millennials into rickrolling themselves.
3. “We Built This City”
Grace Slick and Jefferson Airplane are Baby Boomer icons. Grace Slick and Jefferson Starship, however, produced one of the most loathed Gen X songs of all time. Or rather, if people are being honest, “We Built This City” is a song that people love to pretend to loathe. By way of contrast, everyone truly despises everything produced by Madonna post-“Ray of Light.”
Next Page: Checkmate, millennials.
2. “Ice Ice Baby”
No matter how many one-hit wonders they churn out, no matter how many cringe-worthy celebrities they coronate, millennials will never top the irresistible and confused mess named Vanilla Ice. His magnum opus, “Ice Ice Baby,” is still causing people to check out his hooks while his DJ revolves it.
Need further proof? In the song, Vanilla Ice raps about cooking a pound of bacon. That’s right, bacon. Checkmate, millennials.
1. “My Heart Will Go On”
The swan song of Gen X, “My Heart Will Go On,” is the quintessential bad song. It’s so bad, it’s circled back around to good. Millennials are way too self-conscious to ever produce something so bad that it’s good.
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