Monday, 24 November 2008

• Currently Funhouse By Pink see related

  Ushering Generation X

  I know who Usher is and this is mainly because I had a girlfriend in college who wouldn’t shut up about him.  Although I had known of Usher since 1994, it was around 1997 when he was climbing the Billboard R&B charts with his single You Make Me Wanna, and I vividly remember being introduced to this song by my girlfriend who very astutely pointed out a misprint in the liner notes of his CD.  As I was driving us home from school one evening You Make Me Wanna came on the radio and she said, “Listen to this part… right here.  He says ‘think about a ring and all the things that come along…,’ but in the notes with the CD it just says, ‘think about her and all the things that come along…’  Isn’t that weird?  I love this song.”  I pretended to listen like I cared, but that only made me miss my turn.

  As time went on it turned out that I ended up liking Usher (and not the girlfriend).  I suppose I’ve been an Usher fan throughout the years, and when I’m a fan of someone, I generally like to see one of their shows.  However, I have never been to an Usher concert, and even though he is on tour right now, I still have no desire to see him in concert.  This is because I’m certain that 95% of his audience is screaming sexually-charged women who want to sleep with him (and not me).  I don’t know what it is about Usher that makes women faint every time he touches them.  Common sense would dictate that this is somewhat of an overreaction toward someone who looks like a Bushman from The Gods Must Be Crazy.

  Usher hasn’t been popular in over four years.  His declining record sales should imply that he is longer relevant, but his concert sales would suggest otherwise.  By that same token, the New Kids on the Block haven’t released in album in almost 20 years, yet the astronomical success of their new tour indicates that they are still inexplicably relevant.  And while both of these shows appeal to differing musical audiences, the thing that they have in common is that the majority of the people who go to these shows were born between the years of 1965 and 1979.  What the hell is going on here?

  As someone born in the 1970s, I kind of know what these people are like.  Generation X-ers love the fact that they’re Generation X-ers, and this probably has to do with the fact that the majority of them grew up in the 1980s.  The 80s was arguably the most bizarre decade in the history of civilization in terms of pop culture and fashion.  But, the uniqueness of the 1980s seems to have created a peculiar camaraderie among Generation X-ers that they don’t want to let go of.  This seems to be the sole reason as to why VH-1 exists.  This is why movies like Transformers and Miami Vice are made, and this is why David Hasselhoff is still mentioned by name in 2008.  Generation X-ers are responsible for great things like G.I. Joe and the Voltron and they’re proud of it, and they’re also responsible for deplorable things like Rick Astly and are not ashamed of it.  Generation X made it cool to be awesomely bad.  As a generation, they are the spawn of the baby boomers, many of whom spent most of the 1960s as pot-smoking hippies.  They did not grow up in the age of innocence.  They were raised by Darth Vader, dated Molly Ringwald, and spent detention with Emilio Estevez.  As a generation, they have no standards.  Generation X-ers love their past and can’t let go of it.  This is why they go in droves to see New Kids on the Block and Usher.  People from Generation X are like people who grew up in Cerritos, California:  They like where they came from and they won’t shut up about it.

  I’ll just shut up about it now.

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