Posted by Parents and kids have been squabbling over musical choices for centuries, ever since parents from a “Mozart house” found Haydn tunes on their kids’ Spotify accounts.
One of the perks of being a kid is annoying the crap out of your uptight parents. Hair, piercings, late nights. Music that makes them bleed from the ears and question your future choices. The real clashes began when music devolved into “noise” from the parents’ perspective.
Elvis drowned out Pat Boone, Ray Charles and the Beatles stepped on your parents’ blue suede shoes and Public Enemy backed up over The Gap Band and The B-52s. But it’s different today. Grandparents and parents are Deadheads, they jumped into CBGB moshpits with the Ramones or rapped along with Kool Moe Dee, Grandmaster Flash and the Beastie Boys. We passed along our wildly eclectic musical tastes. For those of us who felt the pull of R&B and pioneering rappers — some good, some bad, some that altered our world view and resonate more than ever in these troubled times, as well as one-hit-wonder guilty pleasures — we might not be all the way down with today’s tunes.
I really like Kendrick Lamar, Migos and J.Cole, among other rappers today. I listen regularly and intently for a couple of reasons: I love new music, I try to kid myself that I am relevant, and it’s always on when the boys are in the car — and I try to learn if that lyric I thought I heard was really as I heard it (more on that another day). I understand the Nicki Minaj and Cardi B. criticisms. Can’t stand Drake, which pisses off our sons. Most importantly, I listen to today’s hip-hop, much of which mind-numbingly derivative, poorly crafted and cynical, because if I dig it, my acceptance might drive the boys into other genres.
Still, it’s almost summer. The windows are down, the volume’s up. It’s time to share music, to find musical detente. To borrow from a global tipping point that Dads of a certain age will recognize, “Mr. Mars, tear down that wall.”
If you’ve got even one funky bone in your body, you can’t stop yourself from digging Bruno Mars. The beats are infectious, the lyrics fun and the songs stick with you longer than a late-night steak dinner. Even better, our kids can’t blame us for getting on the Bruno bandwagon — no matter how much it might embarrass them when we’ve got the windows down and proving that we’ve got the lyrics memorized.
Mars represents a glimmer of hope — a talented musician who plays multiple instruments, a powerful live performer not bound by the constrictions of auto-tuned lip-synching. And, as often occurs with the Law of Unintended Consequences, his music is a right-now party, with heavy nods to the influences of artists who paved the way for him, which makes him a modern-day star that isn’t the manifestation of the “parents just don’t understand” ethos that makes jazz, soul, rockabilly, hip-hop, rock, grunge, punk and any other style the generationally polarizing genre that makes it safe for kids to love.
He embodies the visceral connection that music delivers. You can over-intellectualize it, as so many music snobs do, or you can just say, “I can’t stop my feet when it comes on.” Either way, it opens the door to a discussion of Prince, whom they might recognize, and the discussion can go on from there. In the meantime, just have some fun with Bruno…
Every generation of parents has found some grudging acceptance, or at least a modicum of tolerance, with their children’s musical choices. May Mars be with you.
