Very Intimate Music and generation xyz by Bret Jensen

Feeling a little paranoid at the realization, I started asking friends what they had playing on their first time. They answered similarly… “I can’t remember” or “Nothing”. Is it true that people of my ilk just didn’t get it on to music the first time around? I didn’t feel comforted in collecting this data, I felt much worse.

The idea that my generation sucks and will never contribute anything to human history is not a new one to me. Ours might be the most soft, spoiled, unchallenged, and unremarkable generation in recent history. Unlike the children of the 60’s, we have no rules to follow, and thus no rules to break. Never has a group of kids lived more vicariously through a larger set of celebrity trash.

We’re awkwardly oversexed with no authentic emotional context to pair it to. Whether music imitates life, or life imitates music, I do not know… but we have nothing to say because we have nothing underneath.

So it isn’t that my generation doesn’t have themed music… or even plenty of music about sex. We just don’t have any music to have sex TO. It may seem a strange claim. However, think of a sex-themed song in recent history that you’d actually want to be taken to bed with. Usher wants to make love in this club. Romantic.

Kids of my generation just dance awkwardly around the theme of sex. We’re more comfortable giggling about the outrageous and the nasty. A Cosby Sweater or a Houdini? Hear it all the time. Old stuff. Porn is way more comfortable to my generation than sex. Our music is either super angry, super vain, or distantly superficial. We never had a James Taylor, Barry Manilow or Barry White. We just had Fergie’s humps, Fred Durst squeaking, rumors of Marilyn Manson’s alone-time, and Britney telling us to hit her.


Hey. I may be way off. It’s entirely possible that I just have a circle of incredibly white friends from the Midwest as awkward as I am. Please comment below with your outrage. It’s not like I’ve never had music on… but I’m a little (a lot) embarrassed to tell you that I prefer classical music or Fiona Apple.

I’m just feeling a little put out that the culture I grew up in leaves me without an answer to the question of who sang during your first time.