Discovering Your Dad's Music

I grew up in the passenger seat of my Dad’s once-white MR2, bemoaning and bickering over the state of the radio. He would always win such battles, Springsteen’s voice perpetually blaring through the speakers. I could never remember the names or tunes of one song or another; I could only remember that the songs were about events I had not, and would not ever experience— people who were long dead, and towns that I couldn’t locate on a map if I tried.

It’s not that we outgrow the themes in modern music—it is hardly possible to outgrow love, heartache, failure, and regret. The continued popularity of Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, among others, is evidence that the voices that exposed injustice in the twentieth century remain identifiable to youth today. It’s difficult to envy Springsteen’s characters for their cars and beers while they face conscription, legal domestic violence, and other political obstacles that are now either obsolete or significantly less prevalent. In “Born in the USA,” Springsteen’s character’s life is governed by social order: “The first kick I took was when I hit the ground / […] they put a rifle in my hand.”

Springsteen’s character served powerlessly in the Vietnam War among countless other men—to those he befriended in the meantime, he says, “I’ve got a picture of him in her arms now.” These lyrics reflect tangible external pressures and represent the lives completely consumed by them. In the modern day, however, they are stripped of their context, their political landscape becoming only a metaphor for the generations that follow.

When we revisit classic rock years later, we are further equipped to translate these tropes into reality. In the Bleachers’ semi-recent album release, Gone Now, Jack Antonoff’s character is not passive to a larger order, but rather faces his own mental illness. The artist stands tall on the album cover, uniform-clad and saluting. He is at the front-lines of this war against his own consciousness, fighting it for others’ sake and at exorbitant cost to himself: “I’m gonna get right for you honey / I’ll take all of my medicine, spend you all my money.” Rather than diminishing the lives and losses of the previous generation, this representation contextualizes it for modern listeners. As Springsteen sings about systemic oppression, he calls listeners from every generation to recognize what has changed—and what hasn’t—in the modern day.

Young adults today can enjoy Springsteen not in spite of, but because they are so removed from the horrible reality that elicited his songs. Your Dad’s music may be too loud and too obscure, but the sentiments behind the words are transitive. You may never have wanted a pink Cadillac, but that 2016 Camaro made your heart skip a beat; you may never have had a rifle shoved onto you, but empathizing with impossible situations ties you not only to the Father that showed you his favourite song, but the generation that worked to ensure you won’t ever have to experience them.

By Samantha Stellato