What’s the defining Millennial song?

Summary

NPR Music: What's the Defining Millennial Song?

All Songs Considered – May 26, 2026
Host: Robin Hilton
Guests: Sheldon Pierce, Hazel Sills

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Overview

In this episode, Robin Hilton, Sheldon Pierce, and Hazel Sills embark on a playful yet serious quest: to crown the most defining song of the millennial generation. They explore how music both reflected and shaped the emotional, cultural, and socioeconomic zeitgeist of millennials—those born roughly from 1981 to 1996. Through lively debate, personal anecdotes, and a top 10 ranking, the panel dissects what makes a song “millennial,” unpacks major trends (emo, recession pop, EDM, ringtone rap), and highlights both iconic and cringe-worthy anthems. The journey traverses sincerity and escapism, the pre- and post-9/11 divide, monoculture moments, and the rise of digital virality.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

What Makes a Song Definitively "Millennial"?

• A “defining” song must be of the era and, ideally, “cannot be claimed by any other generation.” (Sheldon, 02:17)
• Several picks are dismissed as “transcending” millennial-ness (e.g., The Killers’ “Mr. Brightside”) because subsequent generations have fully adopted them.
• Millennial music is united by a sense of deep sincerity, escapism, and carefree yet careworn optimism—a coping mechanism for instability, war, and financial insecurity.

The Ranking Process: Top 10 Millennial Songs

10. MGMT – “Time to Pretend”

[03:46–09:41]

• Chosen for its bittersweet, synthpop examination of fleeting youth, societal disillusionment, and “the mixture of despair and hope.”
• “I think of the song as kind of like the embodiment of the shrugging emoticon. It's like, oh man, we've inherited a terrible world. We've just got to make do with it.” — Sheldon Pierce, 08:07
• References the shift from tech optimism (dot-com boom) to post-9/11 malaise.

9. Nicki Minaj – “Superbass”

[09:47–14:13]

• Pop-rap mega-hit representing the tail end of the millennial era—“Obama years, flamboyance, excess.”
• Symbolizes “striving” in millennial culture and is cited for its viral internet legacy (e.g., Sophia Grace & Rosie on Ellen).

8. Fall Out Boy – “Sugar, We're Going Down”

[14:15–18:25]

• Chosen for “MySpace emo” and “mall-core” aesthetics—emblematic of Hot Topic’s heyday and an embrace of over-the-top earnestness.
• “It's emblematic of a transition into lighter expression of, like, angst.” — Sheldon Pierce, 16:39
• Sparked debate on the cultural importance of alternative teen spaces like Hot Topic.

7. Far East Movement – “Like a G6”

[19:46–25:08]

• A “peak one-hit wonder” and classic “recession pop”: escapism and fleeting luxury fantasies as response to the Great Recession.
• “This song is like buying the Gucci branded wallet. It's supposed to transport you.” — Hazel Sills, 23:43

6. Usher feat. Lil Jon & Ludacris – “Yeah!”

[26:32–32:02]

• Represented the club as “fantasy realm” and a major pop crossover for R&B and hip-hop.
• “So much music in this time period was about the club and the possibilities of the club.” — Hazel Sills, 28:18
• “This is krunk crossover at its finest...” — Sheldon Pierce, 29:43

5. Colbie Caillat – “Bubbly”

[35:57–40:40]

• Denotes an era of “cringe pop” and sanded-down, twee sincerity.
• “I think of this song as like one of the peak cringe pop songs of that era...” — Sheldon Pierce, 37:24

4. Soulja Boy – “Crank That (Soulja Boy)”

[41:10–45:47]

• Fundamental for its dance craze, early YouTube virality, and “OG influencer” energy.
• “Soulja Boy was the first time I watched YouTube…Just the way in which the digital experience seemed to coincide with listening to his music is peak millennial experience.” — Sheldon Pierce, 43:53

3. D4L – “Laffy Taffy”

[47:02–51:57]

• Quintessential “ringtone rap,” reflecting the iTunes/download era and digital monoculture.
• “A song that made headlines because it sold more than half a million downloads of the single, specifically sold based on ringtone performance.” — Sheldon Pierce, 48:30

2. Icona Pop feat. Charli XCX – “I Love It”

[52:06–56:52]

• The “gavel falling down” on the era: carefree, bratty self-awareness, with festival/EDM bombast.
• “I got this feeling / On a summer day when you were gone / I crashed my car into the bridge…I don’t care.” [Song Lyrics, 53:16]
• “It possesses so many inherently millennial qualities…solidarity and escapism and kind of carefree, careless energy.” — Hazel Sills, 53:22

1. M.I.A. – “Paper Planes”

[60:38–65:44]

• Chosen as the ultimate blend of global awareness, genre-melting, and danceable darkness—a “stop and look” cultural moment.
• “They often call the millennial generation like the first globalized generation…this song is representative of borders crashing…pulls together so many different kinds of cultural ideas.” — Sheldon Pierce, 64:18
• “There’s gunshots in the background…The world is ending, but we kind of want bottle service while the world is ending because we’re never gonna own a home and we’re certainly never gonna retire.” — Hazel Sills, 65:12

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Memorable Quotes

• “This is science. This is anthropology.” — Hazel Sills, 40:17
• “There’s nothing more millennial than a ringtone.” — Sheldon Pierce, 44:46
• “There's this kernel of real millennial experience and...mixture of despair and hope.” — Hazel Sills (on “Time to Pretend”), 05:50
• “Every time I hear this, I’m just, like, transported to…circling through your iPod to get to MGMT’s Time to Pretend.” — Sheldon Pierce, 08:07
• “The world is ending, but we kind of want bottle service while the world is ending…” — Hazel Sills, 65:12

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:41 — Framing the central question: what is the defining millennial song?
• 03:43 — Defining the millennial generation (1981–1996) and starting the ranking.
• 25:05 — Discussing how millennials reacted to financial precarity through escapist, luxury-tinged pop.
• 33:32 — On the “Xennial” cusp and differences within the millennial cohort.
• 37:49 — “Cringe pop” as a millennial phenomenon.
• 50:36 — The importance and decline of monoculture moments.
• 53:22 — EDM, festival culture, and the “gavel falling” on millennial pop.
• 60:38 — Finalists, plus reflection and debate on the ultimate pick.

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Additional Highlights & Observations

• Shifting Soundtracks: Discussion often pivots on historical moments—pre/post-9/11, the financial crisis, the Obama years, and changes in technology (from iPods to YouTube).
• Cultural Niche & Exclusivity: Songs are evaluated on their “millennial-core” ratio—how much they “escaped containment” into other generations/cultures.
• The Role of Cringe: A self-aware sense of “cringe” is identified as crucially millennial—whether in earnest pop or in meme-ified, internet-born dance songs.
• Genre Reflection: Emo, pop-rap, recession pop, and "ringtone rap" get special attention as sonically distinct epochs within the millennial window.
• Digital & Social Media: Virality (YouTube, ringtones, meme-ability) becomes a major criterion for inclusion.

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Final Top 10: The Podcast Panel's Definitive Millennial Songs

| Rank | Song | Artist | Year | |------|-----------------------------------|-----------------------|--------| | 1 | Paper Planes | M.I.A. | 2007 | | 2 | I Love It | Icona Pop feat. Charli XCX | 2012 | | 3 | Laffy Taffy | D4L | 2005 | | 4 | Crank That (Soulja Boy) | Soulja Boy | 2007 | | 5 | Bubbly | Colbie Caillat | 2007 | | 6 | Yeah! | Usher ft. Lil Jon/Ludacris | 2004 | | 7 | Like a G6 | Far East Movement ft. The Cataracs & Dev | 2010 | | 8 | Sugar, We're Going Down | Fall Out Boy | 2005 | | 9 | Superbass | Nicki Minaj | 2010 | | 10 | Time to Pretend | MGMT | 2007 |

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This episode is a vibrant, nostalgic, and highly self-aware exploration of a generation’s soundtrack—filled with humor, cultural insight, and a strong sense of what it truly means to be “so millennial.”

Transcript

[Podcast Host/Announcer]

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[Robin Hilton]

this episode of All Songs Considered comes to you from NPR Music and the NPR Music Podcast, where you will find new drops of this show, new episodes of All Songs Considered every Tuesday. And of course, we've got Alt Latino every Wednesday and closeout every week with new music Friday. NPR Music is also home to Sheldon Pierce.

[Sheldon Pierce]

Hello, Robin.

[Robin Hilton]

And Hazel Sills.

[Hazel Sills]

Hey.

[Robin Hilton]

So you all have a very tall order for this episode. We are going to attempt to crown a single song for an entire generation. Millennials, specifically. Did you understand that that's what you were signing up for when you agreed to do the show?

[Sheldon Pierce]

I did.

[Robin Hilton]

The look on your face tells me. Are we?

[Sheldon Pierce]

I am proud to on the millennial

[Hazel Sills]

panel, deciding the song, I'm imagining Sheldon, like, pushing his glasses.

[Sheldon Pierce]

This is really serious, this very important undertaking. The definitive millennial song. We will crown it here.

[Robin Hilton]

Well, this is the kind of question that I love to nerd out on, and this probably comes as no surprise to anybody listening, but I am not a millennial. I don't really have a horse in this race. But I, I do love to consider questions like this, and this is one that came up recently on a Blue sky thread. A writer from Nashville, Tyler Huckabee, posted this question on Blue sky. What is the defining millennial song? What song captures the millennial experience or sounds like the millennial generation? Is that the best way to sum it up?

[Sheldon Pierce]

Yeah, I think of it as being representative of the time and its zeitgeist, like the experience of being a mille, but sort of a cultural artifact that has not escaped that era and is, like, distinctly dated by the aesthetics of the time in some way.

[Robin Hilton]

Would you say it's a song that can't be claimed by any other?

[Sheldon Pierce]

That's the way that I've been thinking about it. I saw a lot of people talking about Mr. Brightside by the Killers, that that is a song that comes up often. And to me, I'm like, that is a song made in a millennial era that has sort of transcended millennial ness. Like, it is now like a stadium, a football stadium song. Like, they play it every home game at Michigan football games. And those kids who know every word to that song are not millennials. So it can't be a millennial song in the same Way, if it has moved out of the window, it doesn't even have to necessarily be made by millennials, but was clearly made for millennials as a part of the youth culture and would stick out like a sore thumb for any generation coming after that would be like, oh, what? What is this?

[Robin Hilton]

Yeah, well, we'll get into all the different questions that come up with this whole idea, but you all brought some songs, and we're just gonna kind of go back and forth here and share your contenders, and I want to try to rank these on the fly. So, like, we'll do a top 10 here, and we'll inch our way toward the most defining millennial song, at least as of this taping, because it could probably change if we did the show tomorrow. Oh. And we should clarify that for anyone who doesn't know that the millennial generation. 1981, you're born. 1981 to 1996. That window.

[Sheldon Pierce]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Robin Hilton]

Who wants to start?

[Hazel Sills]

So I think, for me, a crucial part of millennial music, just my kind of personal interpretation of it, is that I think a lot of millennial music is united by this sense of deep sincerity, this feeling of carefree freedom, and this kind of almost careless attitude, in a sense, this kind of like, live fast, die young ethos. And one song that definitely comes to mind for me when I think about that, you know, central aspect of millennial music to me is the song Time to Pretend by mgm.

[Song Lyrics]

Make some music, make some money, Find some models for wives. I'd love to parachute some heroin and fuck with the stars. You and the island and the cocaine and the elegant cars.

[Robin Hilton]

I was gonna save this for later, but I was thinking, okay, if I approach this as a journalist and I, you know, and I take lots of things into consideration, what song would I pick? And I came up with a couple. One is a pre 911 song, and one is a post 911 song. And this was my pick for the post 911 song. You have it in. I guess we'll call this in at number 10. I might have picked it as number one.

[Hazel Sills]

Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, millennials had a very tough upbringing. Like, yeah, we grew up in the shadow of 911 and, you know, lived through a war, and the country was in, you know, the financial crisis. And, you know, I think that millennials get saddled with a lot of stereotypes, but a lot of harsh realities as well. I mean, you know, the world is a hard place to live in for millennials. We don't have the stability and financial security of the generations that came before us. And I feel like, you know, time to Pretend is it's a fun synth pop song. It almost feels like it could have been a song that came out in the 80s. But I do think there is this kernel of real millennial experience and this mixture of despair and hope sort of in it. And I think that line, yeah, it's overwhelming, but what else can we do? Like, we gotta get office jobs. It just feels like very. And I don't know, a lot of this song is also about, to me, like, mourning childhood. Like, I miss.

[Robin Hilton]

I miss my mom. I miss my dad. I miss my childhood mom.

[Hazel Sills]

And it just. It feels very millennial to me to get all those ideas into a song that, you know, you also could be, like, dancing to on a rooftop somewhere with, like, a beer in your hand.

[Robin Hilton]

Another critical thing I think about this song is that it starts off as, we are rock stars, right? We are winning. But they completely crash by the end of the song. And that's why I pick it as, like, a post 911 song. And I don't know, I mean, you guys lived through it. You have a bit.

[Hazel Sills]

I'm still living through it. Can we clarify?

[Robin Hilton]

We're still living through it, but you know what I mean, it's like. Because leading up to 9 11, you had the dot com boom, and we're all gonna be billionaires by the time. Time we're 19 years old. All I got to do is write a business plan on a straw wrapper and slide it across the table to somebody.

[Sheldon Pierce]

Yeah.

[Robin Hilton]

And they'll make me rich. And then there's the. Then there's 9 11, the dot com crash, everything. The whole bottom falls out. And then you get this song. So this came out in 2007?

[Sheldon Pierce]

Yeah. I do think of the song as kind of like the embodiment of the shrugging emoticon. It's like, oh, man, we've inherited a terrible world. We've just got to make do with it. Like, you say that it. It devolves, but I think there's a bit of a tease right at the top of what you're getting into with the. I'm feeling rough, I'm feeling raw. I'm in the prime of my life. Like, there's a very clear juxtaposition between, like, the state of things and, like, having to push through the anxiety of living through them. But, I mean, even thinking beyond just, like, the literal content of the song, every time I hear this, I'm just, like, transported to a time of like the clicking, iPhone, wheel, ipod wheel sound like circling through your ipod to get to MGMT's time to pretend is like a distinctly millennial, like, memory. Yeah, it just feels like a part of that era transitioning from the time that you're talking about Robin, the post 9 11, like, in the thick of the Iraq war, but also like, Obama is looming, the change. Posters are being put up as we see. Like, that is like the. The influx, like the inflection point that we are at with this song. And I think you can feel the tension of it. There's, like, there is a reservation, but there's also a bit of optimism in the way that the song sounds. And I think that tension is what is at play at that point in the millennial experience.

[Robin Hilton]

All right, let's get to something else. That was number 10, MGMT. Time to pretend. Sheldon, what would you put at number nine, then?

[Sheldon Pierce]

Yeah, I'm going to take it a little bit of a different direction. Thinking about the transition into the Obama years. Thinking about flamboyance, thinking about excess a little bit and thinking about the incoming pop, rap, domination. And I'm going to pick Nicki Minaj, Superbass.

[Hazel Sills]

Oh, thank God.

[Additional Song Lyrics]

This one is for the boys with the booming system Top down AC with the cooling system when he come up in the club he be blazing up Got stacks on deck like he's saving up and he ill he real, he might got a deal he pop bottles and he got the right kind of bill he coke, he dope, he might sell coke he always in the air but he never fly couch he a mother boom drip drip seller or the strip trip only make a drip drip kiss him on a lip lip that's the kind of dude I was looking fou and yes, you'll get slapped if you're looking ho I said excuse me. You're a hell of a guy. I mean ma ma mai maya like pelicans fly I mean, you so shy and I'm loving your tie. You're like, than the guy with the thing on his eye. Oh, yes, I did. Yes, I did. Somebody please tell them who the f. I is. I am Nicki Minaj. I met them dudes up back, coops up and Chuck.

[Robin Hilton]

So this came out in 2010, and 2010 is starting to feel kind of late to me. But I guess you're still like. I guess you're probably even the youngest. Millennials are, like, middle school, then.

[Sheldon Pierce]

Yeah, I graduated high school in 2010.

[Robin Hilton]

Okay. All right.

[Sheldon Pierce]

So I think of this as like, you're you're definitely on the tail end of the millennial experience with this, but it still does feel like distinctly Obama era to me.

[Hazel Sills]

Yeah.

[Sheldon Pierce]

There. I mean, Taylor Swift wrapped this whole thing at a rainy station. I think of her being like, the millennials. Millennial. It was raps sort of convergence point on pop radio as a pop artifact specifically. It wasn't like, rap crossover. And, like, Nicki Minaj went on Ellen, and she performed this song with Sophia, Grace, and Rosie, who had, like, a viral song doing, like, a chipmunk version of this. And I'm like, if that's not Millennialcore, I don't know what is.

[Hazel Sills]

Wait, sorry. Can you just explain for the listener who. Sophia Grossen.

[Sheldon Pierce]

It was like a toddler celebrity duo. I can't even.

[Robin Hilton]

This is new to me.

[Sheldon Pierce]

You've never heard.

[Hazel Sills]

Okay, this is like, the editor in me is like, sheldon, take a step back.

[Sheldon Pierce]

They're like an English duo of early Internet personalities. This is an era when anything viral, like true virality, was a totally different kind of phenomenon. And it would get you on Ellen if you were really blowing up. And they had done a sort of chipmunked or, like, tuned up version of the song that had gone really viral on YouTube. And so they went on Ellen to perform the song with Nicki Minaj. And that is, like a distinctly millennial thing to happen. Like, that is not something that's going to ever happen again. We live on a different version of the Internet now. But I also think just about this song as, like, pulling together a lot of different kinds of things that I think of as being inherent to that time period. Like, there is, like, a sort of striving to the millennial experience, a desire to be in a better place than you are right now, tomorrow.

[Robin Hilton]

Yeah. I think, again, approaching this as a journalist, like, well, what were some of the things that I would look at in order to kind of hone in on a song? I do think you have to define the qualities of the generation. And I don't mean. I don't mean all the stereotypes that we've heard over the years about millennials.

[Hazel Sills]

I think that idea of striving is so. Is true. I think striving, to some people, can read as entitled, but I think that so much of millennial music, I think, is working in opposition to a lot of musical trends that I think existed in the 90s, like grunge and slacker rock and laid back neo soul. There's nothing laid back about millennial music. It is in your face to have a good Time Put your hands up in the air? Forget your troubles and if they creep into your mind, you can cry on the dance floor. Cause that's acceptable. And.

[Sheldon Pierce]

Yeah, I mean, and to your point, like, there is nothing more Technicolor than Nicki Minaj in this moment.

[Song Lyrics]

Yeah.

[Robin Hilton]

Well, let's get to another pick.

[Hazel Sills]

I was thinking about songs that were omnipresent, just, like, inescapable in my, you know, middle school, you know, high school, grade school years. And I. I want to play a song that, you know, I don't think was ever a favorite song of mine or I was necessarily listening to a lot of the genre that it was born out of, but I think that it represents a lot of the millennial values that we have been talking about. And I really have not listened to it in maybe 20 years until doing this episode, which is the song Sugar We're Going down by Fall Out Boy.

[Sheldon Pierce]

Oh, I was gonna pick that.

[Hazel Sills]

Oh, so millennials,

[Song Lyrics]

Have I more all that you bargained for yet I been dying to tell you Anything you ought to hear? Cause that's just who I am this week. Lie in the grass next to the mausoleum I'm just not. Sing your bed bows but you're just a lord in a song Not Sing your bed bows but you're just a lord in a song Drop her heart, break your name we're always saving and saving.

[Hazel Sills]

Wait, what was your. What was it ranked at for you?

[Sheldon Pierce]

I had it much higher at number two. I mean, to me, I think of what Tom Bryan, the critic at Stereo Gum, but writing for Village Voice at the time called MySpace, Emo is like the millennial sound and aesthetic representing sort of like the Hot Topic Warped Tour era that is so transitional away from the darker sounds of grunge and toward a more seen and, like, mall core, like a corporatized version.

[Robin Hilton]

Did you say mall core?

[Sheldon Pierce]

Yeah, yeah. You never heard that phrase?

[Robin Hilton]

No, I haven't, but it's perfect.

[Sheldon Pierce]

Yeah, yeah. Just, like, emblematic of a transition into lighter expression of, like, angst.

[Hazel Sills]

I kind of think of, you know, Fall Out Boy and, you know, groups like Panic at the Disco. I mean, we mentioned the killers earlier. Mr. Brightside is obviously, I think, the more sanded down version of this. They weren't really an emo band, but Mr. Brightside has kind of, like, emo leaning tendencies, especially in its, like, lyrics.

[Sheldon Pierce]

Yeah.

[Hazel Sills]

But, yeah, this I was totally thinking about. Okay, I'm walking into Hot Topic, which I loved. I was a real Hot Topic girl. I don't think that should be a surprise to anyone. Although I didn't listen to a lot of emo, so I really know what happened.

[Robin Hilton]

Is that a clothing store?

[Sheldon Pierce]

It's.

[Robin Hilton]

I don't know. I'm sorry.

[Hazel Sills]

It's like. No, no, no, no. These are really good questions.

[Sheldon Pierce]

The people need to know.

[Hazel Sills]

Hot Topic, which I do still believe exists, and at one point was like, one of the largest retailers of physical music in the country.

[Robin Hilton]

Oh, okay. Big chain music.

[Hazel Sills]

Yeah, it's. It. No, no, it's not a music store. It is like an alternative subculture.

[Sheldon Pierce]

Clothing has all kinds of stuff in there.

[Hazel Sills]

And I would say that Urban Outfitters,

[Robin Hilton]

how they have clothes and music and stuff.

[Hazel Sills]

Yeah. But imagine for goth kids.

[Sheldon Pierce]

Imagine for it's really dark in there. All the walls are black and they have shirts, like, hanging on the walls. Like, there's a whole section of, like, band shirts that you can look up and say, oh, there's. There's bring me the horizon. Like, that's kind of the vibe in there.

[Hazel Sills]

Yeah, but I think, you know, Sugar were going down in a way. It's like it still embodies all this over the top earnestness that we've been talking about. It doesn't really matter to me what genre you're working in.

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[Robin Hilton]

That came out in 2005 Sheldon, what do you want to do at number seven?

[Sheldon Pierce]

Yeah, I don't think you can talk about millennial music without talking about recession pop, which is the sort of sub genre that emerged in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Sort of like let's hit the dance floor and forget our troubles type energy because we'll never own homes. So let's. Let's party instead.

[Robin Hilton]

I cycled through like or retire.

[Sheldon Pierce]

Yeah, I cycled through a few different core examples of this. There's like LMFAO's party rock anthem. There's Pitbull and Neo's Give Me Everything we Talked About, Gaga Just Dance Feels like It's Here and like Tayo Cruz's Dynamite.

[Hazel Sills]

Yes.

[Sheldon Pierce]

But I chose maybe the worst of them. The Far East Movement featuring cataracts and dev. Like a G6.

[Hazel Sills]

I love this song. I'm sorry.

[Song Lyrics]

Like a blizzard when we drink we do it right Getting slithered sitting and scissor in my right in my right like 36 now I'm feeling so fly like a G6 like a G6 like a G 6 now now I'm feeling so fly like A G6 like a G6 like A G6 now I'm feeling go fly like a G6 give me

[Robin Hilton]

that Momo give me that Christmas style Ladies love my style at my table Getting wild get them bottles popping we get that dripping that drop out now give me two more bottles Cuz you know it don't stay okay, Sheldon, tell us about Far East Movement. Yeah, the band behind this song.

[Sheldon Pierce]

You want to talk about a group that just like really did not escape millennial containment, that is the Far East Movement. This is like peak one hit wonder status very much of the era. But this song sort of rose up in 2010 in the wake of all the other songs that I previously mentioned. Mixing a sort of like electro hop, highly digitized sound that is sort of like specific to the end of the. The itunes era, the digital downloads era, but also feels particularly representative of what we are talking about when we talk about recession pop. This idea of ownership is beyond my grasp, but here is an opportunity to just enjoy myself. And to me, that is what the generation was feeling in this moment. I was literally graduating high school in 2010, and there was a general anxiety about what was coming next. And to sort of assuage that, you're like, well, I might as well have a good time while I can.

[Hazel Sills]

And I'm doing that to this day.

[Sheldon Pierce]

Maybe we never quite escaped that.

[Hazel Sills]

Actually, I'm still partying like a G6 in 2026. No. You know what this music is reminding me of and hearing you talk, Sheldon, is it reminds me of also a phenomenon in this era was super logo centric clothing. Like designer logos were huge. And it was because sometimes the stuff that has a logo on it is the cheapest version of that designer clothing you can buy. Like if you can't buy a Gucci outfit, you can buy a Gucci wallet at the mall and you can have this small level experience of luxury just in this, you know, logo. And I feel like these songs are kind of like buying the Gucci branded wallet. It's like it's supposed to transport you.

[Robin Hilton]

It's interesting that that's the reaction because I think for Gen Xers, the reaction because we, you know, I graduated during a recession. I could not even find a part time job, like at a grocery store, anything. When I went to college, there was nothing. But our reaction was anger. It was ragey music in all kinds of genres. The music just raged.

[Hazel Sills]

I will say that I do think growing up in this era, depictions of excess and luxury were all around. Like at this point, MTV was not a music channel anymore. It was basically showing the lives of the rich and the famous and my super sweet 16 and you couldn't open up a tabloid magazine without seeing celebrities everywhere. And it was this kind of, you know, crazy commodity focused culture which also plays into the thing I was saying about like logos being very big. And so you're constantly being inundated with these things that you don't have and people trying to sell you on this reality that you'll never have. And I think that is also. It's like this music didn't exist in a vacuum. It existed in the sociopolitical context that we're talking about, but also kind of pop culture at large and the narratives and the aesthetics that pop culture valued at that time.

[Robin Hilton]

That's why I say I think you have to break it into pre 911 and post 9 11, because if the clock stops ticking in August or whatever of 2001, you have a very different portrait of America and what kids are coming up in. Because at that point they were coming of age when again people were getting ready. It was the.com boom. It seemed like anything was possible. If you had a great idea, you could make it happen and be very, very successful. And the age of disillusionment and recession, pop hadn't started yet. And it's a totally different picture.

[Sheldon Pierce]

Well, yeah, it is interesting that you say that because I Remember, Gia Tolentino wrote a piece in the New Yorker almost a decade ago called Where Millennials Come From. And there was a very different sensibility about what people thought of millennials in 2000 versus how they felt about them by 2010. The sense initially was that they were positive and industrious and that they were

[Robin Hilton]

going to save the world.

[Sheldon Pierce]

They're going to make the world anew. That was the energy. The me generation stuff didn't happen until after the fact. And I think you feel the music reacting to that in sort of, like, the digified way that it sounds, the way that it will inevitably embrace EDM festival culture. All of that is sort of like surging to the surface with a song like this.

[Robin Hilton]

So let's get to number six. Hazel.

[Hazel Sills]

I'm gonna play a song that I feel like could be debatable. I was like, I don't know. Is this too big to be a millennial song? But I just think that this song is a millennial song. And I'm going to play yeah. By Usher featuring Lil Jon and Ludacris.

[Soulja Boy (in song)]

Peace up.

[Song Lyrics]

Yeah, yeah. Let's up in the club with my homies Trying to get a little vi. Keep her down on the low key? Cause you know how it feels. I started shirting. She was checking it for me from the game? She was singing in my ear? You would think that she knew me decided to cheat. Conversation got heavy. She had me feeling like she's ready to blow. Watch out. Oh, she's saying, come get me. So I got up and followed her to the floor? She said, baby, let's go, yeah.

[Hazel Sills]

I'm in a high school gymnasium.

[Sheldon Pierce]

Yeah.

[Hazel Sills]

There's no lights at all.

[Song Lyrics]

Zero light source.

[Hazel Sills]

I can't see a thing.

[Robin Hilton]

Yeah.

[Hazel Sills]

No one's wearing deodorant. We're all. However, we'll see.

[Sheldon Pierce]

It's musty as hell in there.

[Hazel Sills]

There's actual body spray.

[Sheldon Pierce]

Oh, my goodness. Axe. That's really taking me back.

[Robin Hilton]

So I went through all the comments, the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of comments on the original Blue sky thread that got this whole conversation going. And this one came up a bunch.

[Sheldon Pierce]

Yeah.

[Hazel Sills]

Yeah. You know, I just. It's hard for me to know the life of this song because it's like, I really feel like I experienced this song in the millennial window that we were talking about. But I think Usher has such a bigger career, you know, and life outside of that window. But when I was thinking about millennial music, so much music in this time period was about the club and the possibilities of the club. And so much music that was rising up the charts was helmed by producers like Timbaland and the Neptunes and Stargate. You kind of see this music that would work as well on the dance floor, but also having a big pop presence and basically being pop music. And I think that this song, too. I'm curious what you think, Sheldon, but I feel like before this moment, Usher was still sort of seen as an R and B kind of genre figure. And I feel like this was like a crossover moment, not just for R and B, but also rap on the charts. And I also just very selfishly was like, I gotta get a Lil Jon song somewhere. I was like, when I put my head to the pillow at night and I'm like, dreaming about millennial music, he's there. You're like, yeah, yeah.

[Sheldon Pierce]

I mean, Hazel, I completely agree. I mean, 2004 is like the year that rap and RB sort of, like, migrated toward the pop charts. I think. Yeah, is at the center of it. I was sort of going back and forth about whether or not this song is, like, distinctly millennial because of Usher's status. A lot of people in the generations that have followed are Usher fans. And if you're an Usher fan, you are exposed to. Yeah, like, that is. That is the biggest song in his discography. But I do think it feels millennial in sort of very distinct ways that you have already sort of touched on the idea of the club as almost this fantasy realm where it's a world apart from the real world, where anything can actually happen and you don't have to engage with the world outside. But, I mean, think about the little jaundice of it all. Like, krunk is distinctly millennial, and this is like a. This is a krunk moment at its core. This is krunk crossover at its finest. And so it does feel like an important touchstone for middle school dances, for high school dances. Just a time period in which rap and R and B are having their true crossover moment and sort of like establishing a zeitgeist that will become distinctly millennial, and Usher's at the center of that.

[Robin Hilton]

If you had to pick a genre for an entire generation, in this case millennials, would it be hip hop and R? Like hip hop, R and B?

[Sheldon Pierce]

I still think it's emo. I think emo is the defining millennial sound and aesthetic, just because it feels self contained to the generation in a way that rap is not. I think rap migrated outside of the millennial generation and the peak rap years in Terms of, like, pop success and mainstream cultural ubiquity have been. Were, like, 2010 to, like, 2018.

[Robin Hilton]

That's a good distinction, because as a Gen Xer, and I'm sure there are plenty of Gen Xers who love emo. But, like, that's the tipping point for me. Like, no, I was never really into, you know, like, once you get to, like, Fall Out Boy, here I was thinking, like, yeah, that's a good sort of line to draw there, because I was not listening to Fallout Boy at all.

[Hazel Sills]

Right. You weren't?

[Robin Hilton]

No, not at all. I mean, by sarcastic, and that's like, all right, so would you like. Hazel, you picked a cut from, like, 2005.

[Hazel Sills]

Yeah.

[Robin Hilton]

And. Yeah, right around there. 2003, 4, 5, is when I feel like I was now shifting to, like, all right, there's no more coming of age for me or any of that. I've gone through all the music in that, that I'm going to experience in that way.

[Sheldon Pierce]

Hence why you've never been in a Hot Topic.

[Hazel Sills]

I'm like, we gotta take Rob into a Hot Topic.

[Robin Hilton]

They're not gonna let me in. They're gonna like, hold up. I'm sorry, you're not allowed in here.

[Sheldon Pierce]

You're gonna check your ID at the door.

[Robin Hilton]

Because there were again, going through the list of the most mentioned songs. So I made a spreadsheet and I dated it and checked the years and everything. I'd say the period that captured the most songs was very late 90s to very early 2000s. Right in there. So you're getting your middle school kids, you're getting your high school kids in there, maybe early college. And so, yeah, you know, like, some people were saying songs by the Shins, for example. I was like, no, I don't think so.

[Song Lyrics]

That wasn't.

[Robin Hilton]

Yeah, like that. That's still like, two alternative or. That's. What. What is the. I saw people calling them Xennials. Like, they're kind of on the cusp. It's like they could kind of go either way. But if you want to talk about stuff that is entirely contained, you know, like, you know, has not no cross contamination. No other generation would claim it. I think that's a good line to.

[Sheldon Pierce]

Yeah, I think the. The. So we. We talked about this a little bit in brief. Like, what is the, like, actual millennial period? How long does it extend? I mean, you're dealing with a very wide span. Like, it feels like two generations within one. When you think about millennials, thinking about people born in 1981, are not the same as people born in 1995.

[Robin Hilton]

Right.

[Sheldon Pierce]

It does feel like, I feel like once you get to the late 90s, early 2000, that's where you have to be a little bit more selective about which kind of millennial you're talking about. There is a TRL experience, nu metal, teen pop. When you think about, like, Backstreet Boys, those are things that were happening at the turn of the millennium that do feel distinctly of both kinds of millennials. I think you go too far either direction. Maybe you start to lose some people. But to me, I always think about the period in the mid 2000s on through the Obama years to, I would say the end of 2012, when you start to get to what people called like stomp, clap, hey, music that still feels distinctly millennial. I think that is the full range of the millennial experience. As we're thinking about it, the turning points are the dot com bubble, early social media and the information age, 911 in the Iraq war, Obama, the Great Recession. Those are the points on which the me generation sort of aesthetic are built by outsiders. And so I think you have to fit the music into sort of one of those categories.

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[Robin Hilton]

Well, we've come to the top five. And Sheldon, we're back to you. What would you put at number five on this list?

[Sheldon Pierce]

Yeah, I'm gonna swing far back to earnestness. This is a song I haven't listened to in many years, but during the time it was sort of insidious in its ubiquity. I'm going to play Colby Calais Bubb.

[Song Lyrics]

Will you count me in? I've been awake for a while now. You got me feeling like a child now. Cause every time I see your bubbly face I get the tingles in a silly place Starts in my toes.

[Robin Hilton]

Oh, okay. Yeah, I know this.

[Song Lyrics]

Wherever it goes I always know that you make me smile. Please stay for a while now just take your time Wherever you go.

[Hazel Sills]

I feel like I should be, like sipping a really frothy, milky drink in Like a Starbucks somewhere.

[Robin Hilton]

This is another reason why I know you're right for the job and why you're picking the right stuff, because you're picking stuff that. I mean, I certainly know anything about it.

[Hazel Sills]

You're like, what is this?

[Robin Hilton]

And Usher and Nikki, but it's like, it's stuff I don't know. But then know when we got to the hooky chord, I was like, okay, yeah, this, I know this.

[Sheldon Pierce]

But I think when people think about millennials, especially retroactively, even within the community, a word that comes up often is cringe. And I think of this song as like one of the peak cringe pop songs of that era. It feels a little icky to listen to outside of the confines of the generation. And that's what makes it distracted. Distinctly millennial to me.

[Robin Hilton]

I'm like this specifically outside the confines of the millennial generation.

[Sheldon Pierce]

Yeah, this is. This is you.

[Robin Hilton]

Meaning you can accept it in that context.

[Sheldon Pierce]

You had to be. You truly had to be there to understand why people were listening to this song.

[Hazel Sills]

This, I mean, this feels like. I don't know, this kind of feels like, you know, what if I made a Nora Jones song without any of the soul? And I don't know, this to me, really taps into a strain of extremely millennial coded music that I did not like at the time. I was living through it thinking of like, you know, Drops of Jupiter and like Jason Mraz's catalog. And this kind of like, maybe, maybe Train is a little. Not included in this.

[Robin Hilton]

But I just saw Drops of Jupiter come up, the Train song come up a lot in the spreadsheet that I was keeping with all of that.

[Hazel Sills]

Yeah, I just, I feel like there were a lot of artists making very, like, maybe Beautiful by James Blunt is in here. Like, very kind of crunchy, folky, but very sanded down pop music that it's like coffee house music. It's like open mic coffee house music.

[Robin Hilton]

But doesn't this fit in with the whole sincerity and.

[Hazel Sills]

No, it totally does. Yes. I'm just talking about why I don't like it.

[Sheldon Pierce]

No, but to Hazel's point, I think even the actual aspects that you're talking about feel like distinctly millennial to me. Hazel as like very sort of designed to be innocuous in a way that will reach anyone.

[Hazel Sills]

I think it's like, it is another side of the coin that we've been talking about, which is like, you know, wanting to escape, wanting to feel good when you listen to music like Robin. You mentioned in the 90s, like, the reaction to the forces in the world was to rage. And I think, you know, the themes that we're talking about in this episode are, like, you know, the mode is to escape or to run towards the things that make us feel good. And I think sometimes that's popping bottles in the club. But I think in the case of a song like this, it's wrinkling your toes and, like, feeling.

[Song Lyrics]

I don't even know.

[Sheldon Pierce]

Yeah, this is true. Like, take the edge off music.

[Robin Hilton]

Charging a latte.

[Sheldon Pierce]

It is distinctly. Like, there is a cutesy nature to it. Tweety, tweet.

[Additional Song Lyrics]

Yeah.

[Sheldon Pierce]

And people like to talk about millennials saying doggo and puppers and that kind of stuff. And this is, like, the sonic embodiment of that to me.

[Robin Hilton]

I'm learning so much. This is maybe my favorite episode I've

[Hazel Sills]

ever been a part of. But really, this is anthropology. This is science.

[Robin Hilton]

What were the phrases you just used?

[Sheldon Pierce]

Sheldon's doggo.

[Robin Hilton]

Doggo, yeah.

[Sheldon Pierce]

Puppers.

[Robin Hilton]

Puppers and doggo.

[Sheldon Pierce]

Yeah. There's like, a cutesy sort of like amazeballs.

[Robin Hilton]

Yeah, I've heard amazeballs. Yeah.

[Sheldon Pierce]

Yeah. Like, that kind of, like, millennial lingo that is, like, goofball. A little corny.

[Robin Hilton]

All right, so let's just recap real quickly. We've got MGMT. Time to pretend at number 10, Nicki Minaj super bass. At number nine, Fall Out Boys. Sugar. We're going down at number eight. At number seven, Far East Movement. Like a G6. At number six, Usher. Yeah. And then we just had Colby. I don't.

[Sheldon Pierce]

Colby. Calais.

[Robin Hilton]

Calle.

[Sheldon Pierce]

Colby.

[Robin Hilton]

Calais. The song Bubbly in at number five. Hazel, you get to pick number four.

[Hazel Sills]

Okay, I'm swerving us into a totally different direction again. I don't know if it embodies all of the themes that we've been talking about that I do think are very, you know, present and connected to millennial music. But I think that this artist is such a millennial artist and represents so much of what millennials represent in general. And his music was, like, completely inescapable to me. In the window that we're talking about, and I want to play the song Crank that by Soulja Boyce.

[Soulja Boy (in song)]

Soulja Boy.

[Robin Hilton]

Tough.

[Soulja Boy (in song)]

Hey, I got this new dance for y' all called a Soulja Boy. Took out a punch, then cranked back three times from left to right.

[Hazel Sills]

Are you.

[Song Lyrics]

Are you doing this.

[Soulja Boy (in song)]

Now? Why me crank that soul now? Why, soldier boy? I've been it. Why me cranking? Why me roll? Why me crank that Soulja Boy? That Superman now why me? You crack that song now why me? You crack that song now why? I crack that song now I crack that song now why?

[Robin Hilton]

Let's go.

[Sheldon Pierce]

Soulja Boy representation.

[Hazel Sills]

Sheldon. I have not listened to Soulja Boy in so long before this week, and it's brought me so much joy. So this was Soulja Boy's, you know, debut song. It was number one in the Billboard charts. Like I said, if you were a teenager when those first two Soulja Boy albums dropped, like, you could not escape him. And Soulja Boy is a quintessential millennial. I mean, he was a teenager when this song came out, and a lot of people who are much smarter than me have written about this, but Soulja Boy was like, basically the OG influencer. Like, he laid the groundwork for so much of what contemporary music stardom is and independent of genre, you know, this song had a dance craze, very pre TikTok. He was a YouTube star. The way that he promoted his music on social media, on Limewire and MySpace. And this song just. It wasn't necessarily like a song, you know, for the club, but I just associate this song with such collective enthusiasm and, like, everyone running to the dance floor at your school dance. I think Sheldon's response to this song, I hope, is like a testament to how powerful this song was for so many millennials. And, yeah, I just think it's like, we can't talk about millennial music without talking about Soulja Boy and his impact.

[Sheldon Pierce]

Soulja Boy was the first time I watched YouTube. That's okay. I never watched a YouTube video until Soulja Boy, which is, like, telling of how early. How much of an early adopter he was on the social Internet. Just the way in which the digital experience seemed to coincide with listening to his music is peak millennial experience like that. And I mean, this song also feels so distinctly of a snap music era that only exists at the time. Like, we've talked about how rap was able to continue its expansion across other genres. Crank. That is representative of a sound that never broke containment. Like, this is a sound.

[Hazel Sills]

Yeah, that's the other thing too. It's like he. I feel like he exists in the bubble that we have been talking about.

[Sheldon Pierce]

Exactly. Like, there is something distinctly late aughts about the Soulja voice sound. I mean, people used to talk about ringtone rapid, and that is precisely what this is. And ringtone. There's nothing more millennial than a ringtone.

[Hazel Sills]

Yeah. The other song I was thinking about was Kiss Me through the Phone, which also feels very Millennial Coded. Cause it's like, yes, it has that ringtone rap sound, but it also is a song about how so much romantic communication for millennials is through your phone.

[Sheldon Pierce]

Yeah.

[Hazel Sills]

But. Yeah. I'm curious, Robin. Were you. Do you know who Soulja Boy is or have you seen.

[Robin Hilton]

Oh, I mean, I certainly know Soulja Boy, but I wasn't listening to Soul, and I was not aware of this song. I mean, when you play it now, I'm like, oh, yeah, I vaguely remember this song, but it certainly wasn't a part of, like, the music universe that was just naturally finding its way to me and becoming a part of my DNA.

[Sheldon Pierce]

Right.

[Hazel Sills]

And I don't think. I don't think, like, I don't know if Zoomers know who he is. Like, I don't know. I don't think TikTok has discovered him. So for me, it's like, yeah, he's just really in this millennial vacuum.

[Robin Hilton]

So when you say it was the first YouTube video, do you mean, like, of any YouTube video or.

[Sheldon Pierce]

I've never seen a YouTube video.

[Robin Hilton]

Really? Interesting. Wow. I very vividly remember the first video I watched. I was driving in my car with my wife. We were on our way to work. We were trying to remember the theme song to who's the Boss? The TV show, and we couldn't remember it. And I said, you know what? There's this new video site where people are just putting up videos called YouTube. I bet you anything somebody's posted the opening credit sequence to who's the Boss? And I looked at it, and there it was. Then we were listening to it in the car. It was amazing. What a time to be alive.

[Sheldon Pierce]

Yeah. No, but somebody showed me. Somebody was like, hey, you got to see this. And I was like, what is this?

[Robin Hilton]

Do you remember, Hazel, the first video you watched on YouTube?

[Hazel Sills]

I don't. I'm like, was it that, okay, go video Treadmill?

[Song Lyrics]

Like, I really don't remember.

[Robin Hilton]

Oh, the Treadmill video would have been.

[Hazel Sills]

I actually don't. I don't know. I don't remember.

[Robin Hilton]

So we've come to the top three, and, Sheldon, you get to pick what you would put as number three. Did you have Soldier Boy on your list?

[Sheldon Pierce]

I did not. But funnily, there is some overlap between Soulja Boy and my selection. I didn't select Soulja Boy because I selected this instead. It is also, I think, the ringtone rap song of the same era sort of represents the same kind of novelty song that makes it big in the mainstream space. This is D4L. Laffy Taffy.

[Hazel Sills]

Another song I haven't listened to in, like, freaking 20 years or whatever.

[Soulja Boy (in song)]

I'm looking for Mrs. Bubblegum. I'm Mr. Chico. Sting I wanna dun.

[Song Lyrics]

Oh.

[Soulja Boy (in song)]

Cause you so thick, Girls call me Jolly Rancher?

[Song Lyrics]

Oh.

[Soulja Boy (in song)]

Cause I stay so hard you can suck me for a long time. Oh, my God, girl, this ain't a dance floor. This a candy store. And I really geeked up and I got more troll. I bought, I roll, it's soft I know it's the summertime but your Laffy Taffy got me probed.

[Robin Hilton]

I bought Laffy Taffy oh, back in the 70s.

[Sheldon Pierce]

Oh, yeah.

[Robin Hilton]

But I don't know the.

[Hazel Sills]

This.

[Sheldon Pierce]

This song. You've never heard this song?

[Robin Hilton]

Never heard this song.

[Hazel Sills]

I thought you meant, like, on itunes for.

[Robin Hilton]

No, no, no. I was like, actual Laffy Taffy. Laffy Taffy was the thing.

[Sheldon Pierce]

So, I mean, what Hazel points to is the exact reason why I chose this song and probably why you've never heard of it. Despite it going number one on the Billboard Hot 100. It is so distinctly a song of the digital realm. Like, it made headlines because it sold more than half a million downloads of the single, specifically sold based on ringtone performance. People were buying ringtones. Those were being counted as single sales, and those sales actually helped push the success of the album. So it's like, that is a distinctly millennial kind of listening experience that only existed for about, like, five or six years, really. The ability to pay for a ringtone and have that count as a sale. And also just the idea of people buying singles on itunes, like pre streaming Internet, the idea of having to download a song into your library and then upload that song onto your ipod. All of that is millennial core in a way that feels specifically of the time and never reached the following generations because of the advances in technology. Yeah.

[Robin Hilton]

I mean, what a great distinction. I would not have thought of the ringtone generation and ringtone songs like. But, yeah, I very much remember that being a thing as that was starting to happen and me thinking, yeah, I'm not doing that. Yeah.

[Sheldon Pierce]

I mean, it's funny because, like Gold Digger by Kanye west, which is a song that I would think of as having broken containment, it was also bolstered by digital success. They were considering it one of the first digital songs. It set the record for digital downloads in 2005. Laffy Taffy nearly doubled its sales in setting the next record. So it's just like this is specifically of a moment, like a zeitgeist y moment that cannot be replicated again.

[Robin Hilton]

Well, one of the things that keeps coming up in all of your picks is I keep thinking, in order to have a defining song, you still have to have monoculture moments, right? And would you say millennials were the last generation to really have monoculture moments? Like, I feel like those kind of started to fade and then were done by, like, 2010.

[Sheldon Pierce]

I think there's still some. But, yeah, I think it's more of a blurry soup than it once was. I think we used to have definitive central, everybody gather around the campfire type of moments, and at that time, that don't exist as much. I like to say I still think, like, Taylor Swift is the monoculture. I still think the NFL is the monoculture. There are still things that feel, like, central to the American experience and still things that differentiate zoomers from the Gen Alpha. But in terms of being able to point to key milestones across, you could go through the millennial experience at any age group and be like, oh, this is a thing that millennials experience? And they'll be like, oh, yeah, I remember that. And I think you talk to a millennial about ringtones. They'll be like, oh, whoa, this was my first one, was this. And I think of D4L as being representative of that.

[Robin Hilton]

So we're down to the last two spots, and, Hazel, why don't you pick the number two song? And then we're probably gonna have to hash it out for the number one song. What do you got for number two?

[Hazel Sills]

Okay, for number two, I am gonna play a song that I feel like is a little at the end of the spectrum that we've been talking about, but I want to play the song. I love it. By Iconopop.

[Sheldon Pierce]

Yes.

[Hazel Sills]

Oh, my God. It's like an assault on the ears.

[Robin Hilton]

It's awesome.

[Song Lyrics]

Were gone. I crashed my car into the bridge I watch I let it burn I threw your into a bag and pushed it down the stairs I crashed my car into the bridge I don't care I love it I don't care I got this feeling On a summer day when you were gone I crashed my car into the fridge.

[Robin Hilton]

This is a tough one, because on the one hand, it feels a little late to me. Like, this was 2012.

[Hazel Sills]

Yeah. I mean, in a lot of ways, maybe it's like I hear it as, like, the gavel falling down on the time period that we've been talking about. I just. It. It possesses so many inherently millennial qualities to me. I mean, it has that kind of, you know, that sense of solidarity and escapism and kind of carefree, careless energy that we've been talking about. It was co written by a very iconic millennial artist, Charli xcx. This was like kind of her first breakthrough writing the song for Icona Pop. I also think that I hear very strong influence of something that we haven't talked about yet, which I do think is a key part of a lot of millennial music, which is like the rise of EDM and the influence of festival culture. I think, you know, we've been talking about the club a lot, but I think the club is going to give away to festival grounds and how people like to experience music. And I think you hear a wave of music in the early 2000 and tens or late 2000s that sounds as if it is written for festival crowds to like, scream back at you. And I mean, this was in a girls episode. Like, I just. There's something very kind of rah rah cringe about its expression of I don't care vibe. And yeah, you know, it did escape containment. Music editor Jacob Ganz was telling me that this song, I guess, is popular on the bar mitzvah circuit for the youths, which doesn't surprise me. But I don't know, I just feel like when I think about all the things we've been talking about about, you know, millennial sentiment in music, it just leads me to this song.

[Sheldon Pierce]

It's interesting to me that you think this is too late, Robyn. I think this is the last year. I think of 2012 as the last year. I think of this song being in conversation with the exact kind of things that Hazel is talking about, thinking about, like Rihanna and Calvin Harris. We found love thinking about fun. We are young. The rise of electronic music, the EDM fest bubble, like, approaching its burst and sort of the crash that comes. Like, I think of the EDM bubble crashing as the end, like the definitive end of the millennial run and the beginning of a new era. And this song, to me, it feels representative of a transitional moment between generations.

[Hazel Sills]

Yeah.

[Sheldon Pierce]

And it's very distinctly millennial, but it's also, you can feel the end approaching. Like, you can feel the office jobs are coming.

[Robin Hilton]

I was gonna say, I guess I gotta get a job.

[Hazel Sills]

It's also, it's very. The other thing I wanted to say about this song is like, it feels very self aware of the legacy that it's a part of. Like that line, you're from the 70s, but I'm a 90s bitch. Feels like, I mean, that's one of the most millennial things you could utter in a song. And there is this kind of like, you know, if a lot of the music we've been talking about is like, you know, I want to escape and I want to just dance because everything will be okay. I do think there's something a little bratty about this song. And that's probably, you know, Charlie's writing where it's like, yeah, I'm my age. I know what I'm doing. I know what's best for me. I don't care what you have to say. And that just also lands very millennial to me.

[Sheldon Pierce]

Yeah.

[Robin Hilton]

So we've come to the number one spot and we're obviously leaving a ton of songs on the table here. Let me just rattle off some from the comments that got mentioned most. The Sunscreen song, the Baz Luhrmann.

[Hazel Sills]

What?

[Sheldon Pierce]

Yeah. I've never even heard.

[Hazel Sills]

What is that song?

[Robin Hilton]

I don't know. What song is Sunscreen song. Everyone's free to wear sunscreen.

[Sheldon Pierce]

I've legitimately.

[Hazel Sills]

Oh, is it kind of like a chant?

[Robin Hilton]

It's here. Ladies and gentlemen of the class of 99, wear sunscreen.

[Hazel Sills]

No, I don't know this song. Which.

[Sheldon Pierce]

I don't know this song.

[Robin Hilton]

Sunscreen would be it. The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. It doesn't matter. The longer I play this, I'm like, there's no recognition. Well, that's amazing to me.

[Sheldon Pierce]

Yeah.

[Robin Hilton]

Because this was a song that I song mentioned a lot. And I kept thinking, ah, it feels more Gen X to me, or at least crossover. But it came out in 97. That's interesting because I think 97, you're getting high school kids, but you're getting the tail end of also Gen Xers who are graduating as well. I think around this time.

[Hazel Sills]

Yeah, this is my younger millennial bias showing.

[Robin Hilton]

How about Backstreet Boys? I want it that way.

[Hazel Sills]

I mean, I feel like it's too big.

[Sheldon Pierce]

Yeah. I was gonna say there's something about it that doesn't feel innately millennial. Maybe it's the Max Martin Ness of it all.

[Robin Hilton]

One commenter said, every single millennial, no matter what their race, culture, religion, or musical preferences, knows every word to this song. That's their. That's their.

[Hazel Sills]

I mean, it's really popular, but I think it's the kind of like the Mr. Bright side thing where it's like. I could say the same about that song. But I don't know if I would say it's like a distinction. Distinctly millennial song.

[Robin Hilton]

Outkast, Ms. Jackson.

[Sheldon Pierce]

Yeah. If I were to do an outcast song, I would do hey Ya as the millennial.

[Song Lyrics]

Hey.

[Robin Hilton]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I agree. Jet. Are you gonna be my girl?

[Hazel Sills]

Yeah. Anything in an itunes commercial, right?

[Sheldon Pierce]

Yeah, yeah.

[Hazel Sills]

It was like, 1, 2, 3, 4. Shut up and let me go by the ting ting.

[Robin Hilton]

Yes. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Destiny's Child, say my name.

[Sheldon Pierce]

I don't think about that as millennial.

[Hazel Sills]

No, no.

[Robin Hilton]

Yeah. That's 99.

[Sheldon Pierce]

Yeah.

[Robin Hilton]

Kelly Clarkson, since you've been gone. Yeah, I mean, Kelly. I mean, I think Kelly, definitely. Yeah.

[Hazel Sills]

I mean, Kelly's huge. But that song. And also just the American Idol of it all. Yeah.

[Robin Hilton]

Those are the ones that I highlighted as in the green section, which is, to me, like, this is the sweet spot from late 90s, early 2000s. Do you know the song Fireflies by Al City?

[Hazel Sills]

Yes, unfortunately.

[Sheldon Pierce]

Yeah.

[Hazel Sills]

Okay.

[Robin Hilton]

I'd never heard of it. And that was one of the most mentioned songs that came out in 09.

[Hazel Sills]

Yeah, that's like, what if the postal Service. But for Target, to borrow my earlier.

[Song Lyrics]

I don't know.

[Sheldon Pierce]

Yeah, I do think that's in line with, like, Colby Kelle stuff.

[Robin Hilton]

We can just make a playlist of these, and I'll put as many of these as we can in the play. Well, we can put as many as we want in the playlist. There's literally no limit. We'll put all of these in the playlist. So you both came in with five picks, and, Hazel, your fifth pick was the Iconopop song. So that would have been your number one pick. We put it at number two. So that means, Sheldon, you get to pick the number one. And maybe you two can debate here whether or not you think it should be Iconopop or what you've got as number one.

[Sheldon Pierce]

Yeah. So obviously, Hazel and I had both had sugar. We're going down on lists. But my extra pick is, to me, representative of. They often call the millennial generation like the first globalized generation, because the Internet broke down so many borders in so many different ways. And to me, this song is representative of borders crashing in almost every sense. It's mia's paper planes,

[Hazel Sills]

the way this album ruled. My ipod when it came to.

[Additional Song Lyrics]

If you catch me at the border I go Visas in my name if you come around hey, I make a more day I get one day Sometimes I think sitting on trains Every stop I get I'm clocking that game Everyone's a winner. We making our fame.

[Robin Hilton]

What do you think, Hazel?

[Hazel Sills]

I. I'll allow it. I think that it's less. I think that I was going more for, like, cringe, because I think that I love it.

[Sheldon Pierce]

Are you saying this is too good?

[Hazel Sills]

No, but I think Sheldon's argument, the breaking down of barriers. I think Mia, like Soulja Boy, was also very Internet savvy. And I think that this song has that same kind of, like, run to the dance floor call and response aspect to it. But, yeah, there is something to me where I'm like, I don't know. Is it, like, it seems wrong to cry? Something that, like, I would be proud of?

[Song Lyrics]

Yeah, I don't know.

[Sheldon Pierce]

I would say, like, it's.

[Robin Hilton]

It is so millennial.

[Sheldon Pierce]

It is kind of funny for I. I did base my list largely on cringe, thinking of that as the millennial experience. And then to have this song be the last song is a bit of.

[Robin Hilton]

I do wonder also whether or not this song can really be contained within the millennial.

[Sheldon Pierce]

That's the other thing it does. It has a timeless energy. It like.

[Robin Hilton]

Well, it's also like. I mean, Bob Boylan, when he and I were doing this show, like, we played this. A boomer played this on. On this show back when it came out. I do remember when it came out thinking, wow, music has just gotten so cool. Like, just thinking that we were really entering a great new era with music.

[Sheldon Pierce]

Yeah, I. I think the millennial of this one comes not from its being contained to this specific era, but it more feeling representative of the Zeitgeist. It feels like so much of the culture is being pulled through a point here with this song. Like, thinking about genre fluidity, thinking about it literally making its way to the Grammy stage and her performing alongside Jay Z and Lil Wayne and Kanye west and T.I. and that as a sort of. Of, like, stop and look kind of cultural moment. Thinking about its politicized nature and the way in which it interrogates capitalism and the American immigration system, and then thinking about the way that it just seems to pull together. I mean, she's a British immigrant cross pollinizing a lot of different kinds of cultural ideas in this song. And that feels distinctly like a millennial experience to me.

[Hazel Sills]

Yeah, it kind of reminds me in a weird way of, like, what us talking about Time to Pretend, where I think Time to Pretend is a song that, you know, you can dance to it and you can party to it, but if you listen closer and you really think about the context in which it was created. It's actually expressing something quite complicated and specific about the generation it's speaking to. And I think that, that Paper Planes is doing something similar but even more complex. And yeah, I mean, it's like maybe I, it feels like the best version, I guess, of a lot of what we've been talking about. Like, you know, we've talked about, you know, mindless pop music, escapist pop music, pop music that you could escape to, but also has a sense of like, nihilism to it. And I think think that Paper Planes is like there is a real darkness to it, but it also is a banger. And I think that's what millennials want at the end of the day. Like, the world is ending, but we kind of want bottle service while the world is ending because we're never gonna own a home and we're certainly never gonna retire. And you know what? That's fine. You know, let's just, yeah. Like, just dance. And there's gunshots in the background. So, yeah, now that I'm like, really thinking about it, I'm like, you know what? Yeah, why not Paper Planes?

[Robin Hilton]

So we'll go out on this and we'll put together a playlist of all of our picks. And if you'd like to write us a quick note, a dear Idiot's letter about how we got this all wrong, you can reach us@allsongs. Allsongsnpr.org Sheldon Pierce, Hazel Sills, thanks so much as always.

[Sheldon Pierce]

Always a great time.

[Hazel Sills]

Thank you.

[Robin Hilton]

And you're listening to All Songs Considered from npr.

[Podcast Host/Announcer]

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