Hey, kids, that’s my generation’s music
”
Don’t stop, believin’. Hold on to that feelin’. Streetlight
people ooh, ooh, ooh …
”
That line from one of Journey’s many hits of the 1980s is burned
into my memory because I used to play that record over and over
when I was a young teen.
Hey, kids, that’s my generation’s music
“Don’t stop, believin’. Hold on to that feelin’. Streetlight people ooh, ooh, ooh …”
That line from one of Journey’s many hits of the 1980s is burned into my memory because I used to play that record over and over when I was a young teen.
The song now lives on my iPod along with other tunes from my youth and I figured that would be as far as it would go. It would be a part of the shuffle of songs I hear when I’m doing yard work or working out at the gym. OK, mainly doing yard work.
Then at my son’s school’s eighth-grade graduation dinner in June, the song came on and two of his classmates jumped on stage to lip synch it word-for-word. The crowd went crazy and sang along as well, causing bewilderment among the parents who never thought our kids would like our music.
At my graduation, my classmates certainly didn’t lip synch some ’50s or ’60s tune that our parents listened to. We had our own music, thank you very much. We didn’t need “old people’s” songs when we had our own.
But this is the electronic age, when music from every genre is available on iTunes or other music services. When I was a kid, you had to find the oldies station on the AM-FM radio in order to hear some songs. You could go weeks, months, even years without hearing a certain song without owning it on record or cassette tape.
Now, my sons can take an iTunes card, punch in a code on the computer, and download pretty much any song ever recorded. Or, they can change the satellite radio to the ’80s station, or the ’60s station, or the hard rock station, or the Christian station.
Better yet, they can pop in a video game and play along with classic rock on Guitar Hero or sing along with a hit in one of the many karaoke games available.
I am probably part of the first generation of parents who feels that our kids need to back off a little bit from OUR music. I listened to Journey when I was 14. How dare my kids and their friends know all the words to those songs?
It creeps them out when I know the words to one of their rap songs (I love doing that), so why can’t I be bugged when they do the same to what I thought they’d consider an oldie?
Truthfully, though, it’s kind of cool that today’s youth get exposed to previous decades’ worth of music. They have options beyond rap and American Idol and songs enhanced by voice modulation. MTV, which used to actually play music videos, now just runs reality shows, so that’s not much of an option.
So my kids knowing the words to a Journey hit probably isn’t such a bad thing. Parents of teenagers look for anything that still keeps a bond between them and their ever-maturing children, so if we can all sing along to a song while I’m listening to then ’80s channel on my truck’s satellite radio, I’ll hold onto that feelin’.
