The Right Generation/Transcript

If you click on any song from the '90s or older on YouTube and scroll down through the comments, it generally won't be long before you see a comment like, "Who's still listening to this in current year?" And often, these will be accompanied by shit like, "I'm only 13, and I love this! It's WAY better than the shit my generation currently listens to." And inevitably, this leads to somebody saying they were born in the wrong generation. How much better would it have been to grow up in the '60s, '70s, '80s, or even the '90s...back when music was good, right? There's a whole sub-reddit that exists to make fun of you. Sometimes, they make fun of me because they've mistaken my making fun of pop music for believing it was ever better, when in fact I'm gonna tell you...it wasn't. There's this very common misconception that stupid pop music is a new concept and a belief that other genres besides pop were way more popular back in the day. So, let's look at some of the most popular songs from different eras.
The 1960s is well known for Woodstock and the psychedelic era. Man, smoking weed and listening to Jimi Hendrix...that must've been the life, huh? Pretty easy to forget, especially when you weren't alive, that the #1 song during the summer of '69 was this. 
*music plays*
The Archies' "Sugar Sugar". Yeah...that song from that one episode of "The Simpsons" was fucking huge. The Fifth Dimension's "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In", you know it as that song they sing at the end of "40-Year Old Virgin", also #1. This and The Archies were in the top 10 for nearly three months each. Yeah, there was a CCR and a Stones song in the top 10 in '69...there was also Tom Jones, Bobby Sherman, a Bee Gees record, and the fucking theme for "Hawaii Five-O".
*music plays*
In the 1970s, rock started to get heavier. In the mid-2000s, Rolling Stone Magazine referred to Led Zeppelin as the biggest band of the '70s. Black Sabbath came into their own. The Who put out "Who's Next" and Quadrophenia", some of the most critically acclaimed albums of all-time. Yeah...none of these artists had top 10 hits in the '70s. You wanna know who did have a top 10 hit in 1973? Tony Orlando and Dawn with "Tie a Yellow Ribbon 'Round the Old Oak Tree." 
*music plays*
Also, Marvin Gaye had a massive hit with "Let's Get it On", which really has to fuck with those of you complaining about how today's music is all about sex...not like in the old days when they were all nice and clean. Here's a song that's all about hot lady-fuckin'. Other big hits of the 1970s? How about ABBA's "Dancing Queen"? Or Earth, Wind, and Fire;s "Shining Star"? Or The Bee Gees' "How Deep is Your Love?" which stayed in the top 10 for 17 weeks? Over four months!
Disco died in the early '80s...just in time for MTV to change the way everyone thought about music. It wasn't enough to be talented musically. You had to have the look, too, so you could star in the music video. Of course, the look in the '80s was big hair and ridiculous clothes & makeup, which worked out great for Cyndi Lauper in 1984, whose "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" crawled its way up to #2...beating out the previous #2 song, Nena's "99 Red Balloons". Deniece Williams had a #1 hit with "Let's Hear it for the Boy", and Madonna saw her first with what would be many #1 hits with "Like a Virgin". Meanwhile, all your favorite rock bands? Sure, AC/DC, Def Leppard, Aerosmith, and Guns 'n Roses had some success on the charts. Hell, G'N'R had two top 10 hits in 1988. Guess who had THREE top 10 hits in 1988? 
*music plays*
That's right! The Internet's favorite joke, Rick Astley, who had two #1s with "Never Gonna Give You Up" and "Together Forever" and just edged in..."It Would Take a Strong, Strong Man" at #10.
Which brings us to the '90s...the millennials' fucking darling! All those kids who were born in 1997 who LOVE to go on about how great Nirvana, Stone Temple Pilots, Pearl Jam, and all those fuckers are. Let's talk about the fucking glorious '90s. The era I realistically grew up in, having been a small child through the '80s. In 1991, Nirvana released Nevermind. Their biggest song of all-time, "Smells Like Teen Spirit", was on that album. It reached #6 on Billboard, but not until early 1992. No, in 1991, ten-year old Buckley came back to school from summer break to everyone going nuts over this song...the biggest song of the year. 
*music plays*
Bryan Adams' "(Everything I Do) I Do it For You". Other massive hits that year? Well how about "Gonna Make You Sweat" by C&C Music Factory? You know it as...
*music plays*. 
Here's a fact to infuriate you '90s kids. You know the week that Nirvana peaked at #6 with "Smells Like Teen Spirit"? Another song peaked that week, too...one spot higher actually at #5. 
*music plays*
MC Hammer's "Too Legit 2 Quit"! The biggest stars of the '90s weren't The Smashing Pumpkins, No Doubt (or as you call it, the band Gwen Stefani was in before she sold out), Soundgarden, Rage Against the Machine, or Radiohead. It was Ace of Base, the Spice Girls, the Backstreet Boys, Mariah Carey, and Boyz II Men who dominated. If you liked grunge or alt-rock, you were the kid in the science hallway with three other friends, and everyone thought you were burnouts. Whether you were or not is irrelevant. You wore band T-shirts, and even if you were the most hygienic kids at school, everyone claimed you smelled like you hadn't showered in a week. You weren't cool. And really no time in history that the cool kids listened to rock, at least not the rock that you listen to. And the rock that WAS cool was like, The Rolling Stones' "Start Me Up" and "Miss You", or U2 or The Beatles before they started doing drugs.
So...if you feel marginalized, feel treated like an outcast for the music that you like, know that you would have felt that way regardless of when you were born. If you feel like a loser now, being transported to another time wouldn't help. Like you'd get in a time machine, go back to the early '80s, walk up to the popular kids in school and go, "Hey guys! Isn't Judas Priest the fucking coolest?", and you'd get to fuck a cheerleader of your choice? Not how it would work! If anything, you were born in the RIGHT generation. Now, you have access to all this shit you think is so great. Decades of music at your fucking fingertips! You don't have to wait for it to come out, and it's free in most cases on YouTube, Spotify's free version, or via piracy. Or you can pay fucking pennies to listen to the music via Spotify or Apple Music. Hmmm...$10 a month for everything you wanna hear in your life or $10 or more for 10 songs on an album? Way more when you consider inflation. Maaan...tough call, right? Someone else has done all the work discovering it for you too. You didn't even need to have a weird friend who knew what was going on outside of disco fever or the girl/boyband crazes or the glut of slow-ballady pop/rock that's always been popular. You don't actually think you would've liked Elton John if you'd been alive in the '70s checking out Deep Purple albums, do ya? So stop romanticizing other time periods like they were SO much better. They weren't. Like every other time in history, there's stuff you would've liked and stuff you would've fucking hated. And you being you, you probably still would've hated what was popular and you wouldn't be popular. Depressing? Sure. But ya know what'll make you feel better? Going and listening to your favorite bands on YouTube, and commenting about how much better you are than all the people who listen to the music that you don't listen to. Something that you couldn't have done as a teenager had you been born in a different generation.