Shirley Manson, from Garbage, said in an interview back in 2018, "How bland youth culture has gotten; is it going to be down to the 50-year-olds to do something naughty?" She was about 52 then, and even though I'm younger than her by a bit, this quote still sticks with me. If there's one thing I can say about Gen-X, it's that our youth brought back some of that rebellious energy that predated us by a few decades. It made people older than us uncomfortable, and I loved it. Youth culture has seemed a bit self-absorbed and boring since.
Along comes Olivia Rodrigo, which I often refer to as the 23-year-old Gen-Xer, given her taste in music. She toured with older bands like The Breeders, and newer bands like Wolf Alice, and made her way onto alt rock radio. An entirely new audience is being turned on to something better than the average pop stuff. She might have been another child star Disney brat, but instead has managed to navigate fame and attention in a fairly mature way (in public, at least). She's already three albums in, and learned from Taylor Swift to own her master recordings from the start.
On top of that, Rodrigo is using her voice to callout the bizarre anti-woman behavior and policy that is stripping women of their rights. She just pulled off the Daisy Chain Fields festival last weekend, that managed to raise $20 million for women's charities. She was joined on stage by "our" artists, like Alanis, Sarah McLachlan, and Stevie Nicks (who arguably belongs to the Boomers). Garbage even played the show. Most importantly, I think she's getting an entire generation of young people out of that "blandness" that Shirley talked about years ago. That's excellent.
Oh, Olivia Rodrigo's most recent album is also pretty good. No throw-away songs on it at all.
Art can be so powerful. It makes me hopeful to see someone barely more than half my age using that power for good.
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