Fight this generation

Chappell & The Changing of the Guard

It is, of course, impossible to quantify these things, but over the last year, it does feel like there’s been a changing of the musical guard.

Now, if you came of age during the ‘90s or the 2000s, that might appear uninteresting—after all, it should happen every year or two, right? Except…that it hasn’t. Not for a whiiilllle. In fact, as a handful of millennial superstars maintained their grip for year after year after year, there has been a (fairly persuasive) current of thought suggesting that the era of the old-school mainstream star was over—that in an moment defined by internet-based fandom and attention fragmentation, insular mass-cults were the biggest cultural forces that could be expected to emerge.

While the explosive late-teens popularity of artists like Billie Eilish or Bad Bunny challenged that narrative, it wasn’t until this past year that events seem to have definitively disproved it. That’s right baby. We’re talking Chappell + Sabrina (Roan and Carpenter, for anyone somehow NOT keeping score at home)—the internet icons that have spent the last 12 months vying for chart success, festival billing, Grammy nominations, and hearts’n’minds across America.

If a generation gap opens in the forest, and no one hears it…

Of the two, Roan is probably the more interesting—certainly the one who seems to be having an honest-to-god, semi-organic, mass-cultural moment. And yet, despite the the energy that’s gathered around her, one of the most striking aspects of her explosive ascent has been how…normal the music sounds. Accessible, not just to a huge swathe of YA listeners, but to millennials still in love with Carly Rae, or Gen Xers who remember the Cars tracks that provide the foundation for so much of “Midwest Princess.”

Given this, it’s actually useful to compare our contemporary situation to other moments of generational turnover—Beatles in 63, Madonna + Michael in 1980, or Nirvana in ‘91. Now, the radicality of those transitions has typically been overplayed, with aesthetic differences often mattering more than musical ones. But still, for a long time, alienating The Olds could produce a useful sense of generational solidarity, often helping to supercharge chart success. From this perspective, generation gaps are as much a business strategy as an artistic one (Hats off to You, Mr. McLaren).

The truth of this claim can be supported by looking, conversely, to the moments when a gap DIDN’T happen—most notably, the 4 decades from 1910-1950, when American pop was dominated by the compositions of Tin Pan Alley. In the media ecosystem and consumer economy of that moment, it just didn’t make sense to NOT sell to everyone—teenagers were not yet as distinct a category, major social disruptions had overturned traditional life-cycle developments, and trends moved slower without a single recorded text at the “center” of a copyright. Compositions were frequently recycled, with stars like Frank Sinatra returning to the same songs multiple times over the course of their career. To put it simply—a sense of change has a distinctive, and non-universal, political economy.

Getting Modern Kicks

So—are we again in a moment where sonic/cultural/financial logic pushes against the creation of culture gaps? Certainly, the increasing prevalence of interpolation—fallout from new legal structures around copyright and the increased financialization of songwriting catalogs—which has flooded the airwaves with old-is-new-again tracks, points towards yes. In a moment of algorithmic dispersal, it doesn’t make much sense to turn off ANY potential listener.

Another potential element is the new temporality that has increasingly come to define pop. Pink Pony Club, one of Chappell’s definitive songs (and one that many new fans heard for the first time in 2024), was released in 2020—the length of time, for example, separating “Fight the Power” from “Doggystyle.” The fact that it still sounds fully contemporary reflects a world in which “newness” is defined as much by algorithmic emergence as release date.

To a fascinating degree, this expanded time horizon for success enables trajectories that look surprisingly old-school. If a 4-year-old song can become a smash, it might be possible to slowly grow careers, rather than demand near-instant popularity as the price for investment. Chappell’s own path to the top, which included years of touring to increasingly large audiences, supports this reading.

It's also a reality that the majors seem to be betting on. While a constant churn-over of viral talent means never having to sign a good contract, it also makes it difficult to fill concert seats—a crucial element of the business. With a skyscraper sized tsunami of AI-slop on the horizon, industry leaders like Lucian Grainge have already started working to reconfigure the industry around “quality” plays and engagement. The fact that the industry may, once again, be able to mint new careers feels like an integral part of any such plan.

Culturally though…what it means is less clear. For one, the sheer excitement that has gathered around a performer like Roan suggests that there is a real and continued hunger to share experiences, both IRL + Online. That maybe mass culture, while long reliant on a specific set of media networks, isn’t actually defined by them. Even without the centralized radio networks or television channels that previously undergirded mainstream experience, within contemporary society, we really do seem to want to…sing along to songs with 25,000 other friendly strangers. (The US election…might perhaps be evidence of another, somewhat darker, emanation of that same fundamental desire.)

On the other hand, what—exactly—are we singing?

Yes, both Roan and Carpenter bring a new type of Gen-Z internet optimization to upper echelons of stardom. But their music…ultimately doesn’t do THAT much to move the sonic conversation forward, focusing instead on reworking old tropes with new targets. And maybe that’s OK—“modernity” is, after all, an ideological construct like anything else, and the dream of constant change is tied to some of the darkest drives of the 20^th century.

But on the other hand…I remember how it felt when Timbaland seemed like he was remaking the world. And I can’t help but be a little nostalgic for the kind of ear-expanding spectacle that feels increasingly out of reach within the musical mainstream.

You can listen to that hear (Itunes), hear (Spotify), or hear (Podbean).

Department of Actual Music:

Saxon: Bryan Ferry is an underrated weirdo and Roxy Music unfortunately falls under that category of British bands too smart and subtlety bizarre for most American listeners.

Sam: Impeccable flow topped with a gleefully crude hook. I will never get tired of listening to someone rap this well.

LUV,

Saxon & Sam