I am the product of my generation, which I am ambivalent about (but again, that’s another article). If I were to choose a relationship instead anthem at this point in my life, sad to say that I probably\would never have chosen Nick Drake or Bonnie Raitt in the first place. It would be more along the lines of “Hey” by the Butthole Surfers, or “His New Look” by Bong Water, or “Liar” by Henry Rollins or “That’s When I Reach for My Revolver” by Moby, but that seems all together too angry. I would guess it’s more along the lines of a song by the beautiful and soulful Aimee Mann. I think the song, “Wise Up” captures this time. “It’s not what you thought when you first began it…” and she ends, as all jaded Gen-Exers do, with the line, “so just give up or maybe the best breakup song of all time and one that is relatively new “Come Pick Me Up” by Ryan Adams.
You see, we’ve seen the Baby Boomers before us become sell-outs and become the Me-Generation, sharking their way up to the top, screwing each other over. Ex-peace-loving hippies, now funding wars, or even worse, turning the other cheek and just not giving a shit because they’ve got soccer practice to think about or the Range Rover is in the shop, and all that free-love just led to a total degradation of women, not a real liberation as so many would have us believe. Not us. So we’re fiercely loyal to each other, but not to any high-flying bullshit ideals. We don’t make promises we can’t keep and we don’t pretend to be super-moral and we don’t give a shit about appearances – in fact, that’s a bit of a problem, because as a general rule, we are a rather unkempt group, sharing clothes for years, and holding on to the Puma and Adidas sneakers of our youth and listening to the plaintive song “Wildfire” because these things are our security blankets. And damn, we need those.
We are an insecure generation, but secure enough in our insecurity to sing about it, write about it, and believe that we have something important to say about it, some insight. We believe that because we are more concerned with substance than style and so perhaps, we have a chance at hitting something real. So when Aimee Mann sings “so just give up…” in that fucking gorgeous voice, and those lyrics that right now, I’m convinced she’s singing to me, that she understands me, I know that she won’t give up. That she means she’ll give up for now. That she feels like giving up. Really feels it. And for a while, she might... But I know that like most in my generation, she may be disillusioned, but that very fact pisses her off, just like it pisses me off, so she won’t give up for too long. That she’ll get back up again.
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