The truth behind a generational anthem and how mainstream media profits from disparaging youth

In the context of music’s cultural influence, the explosive power of Beck’s 1994 hit song “Loser” is difficult to overstate.

The dramatic popularity of “Loser” was something like – but not nearly as monumental – the earth-shaking, global phenomenon of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” dropped just two years earlier.

Interestingly, many people, including some longtime Beck fans, still have a false understanding of the song’s meaning thanks to an origin story that was completely manufactured and sold by the corporate media.

And yet no matter the circumstances, “Loser” was wholly adopted as an anti-hero ‘slacker’ anthem by the mass media.

They claimed the song reflected a larger discontent and disillusionment of the youth culture of the time.

However, because of the song’s huge popularity, and no doubt its intriguing title, it all added up to powerful fodder, and increased ad revenues, for the corporate media’s cynical and contrived war on youth.

The success of “Loser” made Beck, somewhat like Kurt Cobain, a perfect symbol for the angst and rebellion felt by millions of young people, and as such, became a perfect opportunity for Hollywood corporate moguls to feed their profit-making machine – selling newspapers and magazines with fake news, and most importantly, feeding the larger, inter-dependent ecosystem of record sales, licensing deals, teen movies, sold-out concerts, extensive tours and shameless merchandising by any and all means necessary – while supplies last.

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It didn’t matter if the mass media completely and utterly mischaracterized and defamed an entire generation (and America) of youth in the process; there was big money to be made.

The slacker-‘Generation X’ sensation really got started with Nirvana’s rocket-shot to fame and the impact of “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

The media loved the novelty of the song and it’s anti-establishment message and thus began the mass media’s obsession with the whole ‘Gen X’ loser/slacker narrative.

With the untimely death of their biggest money-maker rock star symbol ever – Kurt Cobain – corporate media/music/TV conglomerates needed a fresh new body to fill the vacant role.

The persona of Beck, paired with his ‘slacker anthem’ hit song, was their answer. The perfect new symbol of ‘Generation X.’

The question now is – who gets the last laugh?

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Beck strikes back against a false media narratives

While there is no doubt that musicians like Beck benefited from media coverage, it didn’t mean he couldn’t rail against its abuses and shortcomings – especially when it was deliberately misrepresenting his music, his character and his generation.

Someone like Beck certainly wasn’t about to cut his dick off, put it in a jar and hand it over with a wink and a smile to appease the media.

He realized that as a talented young rock star of his time, the media were going to use him to drive sales anyway they could.

Much like Cobain, and also for good reasons, Beck was openly hostile towards the mass media and their many purposefully tawdry assumptions along with their well-documented tactics of manufacturing scandals for profit regardless of the truth or who gets hurt in the process.

“Slacker my ass. I mean, I never had any slack. I was working a $4-an-hour job trying to stay alive.” – Beck in Rolling Stone 1994

Beck’s rebellious spirit, and a deep commitment to be true to himself, meant he wasn’t about to let the mass media machine appoint him in absentia as their shiny new toy just because of a hit song and the passing of Cobain.

In fact, in an April 1994 Rolling Stone interview – at the apex of his fast, new fame – the then 24-year-old Beck lashed out at the media’s collaring and tagging him as a spokesman of a ‘Gen X’ generation that never existed except in the playbooks of the mass media conglomerates.

“Slacker my ass. I mean, I never had any slack. I was working a $4-an-hour job trying to stay alive,” Beck professed.

During another interview a few months later with Spin magazine, he added: “[‘Loser’ is] not some anguished transcendental ‘cry of a generation.’ It’s just sitting in someone’s living room eating pizza and Doritos.”

Beck explained that while working with rap beats in the studio, and dissatisfied with his rapping skills, he blurted out, “I’m a loser, baby, so why don’t you kill me.”

That’s the 411 of the song’s origin right from the artist’s own mouth in real-time 1994.

It didn’t matter. The calculating mass media operatives – from record labels and news outlets to merchandisers and advertisers – had already made their decision; the paint was dry.

Like it or not, Beck was now their new ‘Gen X’ poster-boy punching bag.

Conflict and stereotyping: Corporate media’s crack

For the media to do a complete reversal and reveal the otherwise mundane truth about a culturally significant song after they mixed and distributed the potion would mean lost profits and an indirect admission that they purposefully misrepresent the truth to manufacture stories and narratives with ‘sex appeal.’

And so, back then (and since to this day) the mass media intentionally ignored the truth to propagate a filthy lie and desecrate an entire generation in the name of more dirty money. That’s what it all comes down to.

This full-throttle campaign (in the open for everyone to see – even before the Internet was widely available) included dozens of major magazines, hundreds of newspapers, radio programs, the major alphabet news broadcast conglomerates, Hollywood movie studios and so on. All of it based on fake news.

Certainly, the so-called ‘Generation X’ youth of the time didn’t really believe Beck was literally calling himself, and especially not them, ‘losers’.

But the corporate media’s operatives were not going to give up their golden labels. Those were their precious.

The media’s public ass-kicking of the so-called ‘Gen Xers’ ticked all the boxes that corporate media and advertisers love – drama, stereotyping, conflict, engagement, resentment, and increased sales. Afterall, it worked with exploiting Kurt Cobain and his fans.

For years prior to the ‘Gen X/slacker’ roll-out, many young people had already been giving the mass media and corporate monopolies that darkened the landscape of America for the worst (Jerry Springer-type shows; celebrity obsession; murder-romance sagas, etc.). And then they go about highlighting these ills of society and blaming society itself; never, ever themselves.

That fact in and of itself meant that more and more young people were thinking for themselves – something the mind-control economy fears intensely.

Monopolistic corporations purposefully targeted denegrating youth of the time because they were increasingly and openly criticizing corporations and the media.

As more young people, many influenced by the anti-establishment messages of the popular grunge revolution, opposed an overtly consumer-crazed society, the machine’s hammer had to become bigger and more active.

The corporate media’s mind-control cabal needed to paint these outspoken youth – who thought for themselves – as the biggest losers America has ever known.

The plan was that this relentless campaign against ‘slackers’ would force many other young people to look down on their ‘alternative’ peers as the ultimate losers while simultaneously causing them not to do or think anything like them. In time, the truth-seeking, non-materialistic young folks would be isolated and mocked.

The underlying message was clear: “Hey kids, you don’t want to be a loser like those slacker grunge kids smoking pot in a van down by the river.

“What you really need to do is work more low-pay, soul-crushing jobs where you’re treated like a nobody so that you can go shopping more, apply for more high-interest credit cards, go on more expensive trips you can’t afford and buy, buy, buy more stuff, stuff, stuff.”

“Those are the keys to happiness and the American Dream! You don’t want to become a loser, right?”

The corporate media and advertising execs that manufacture these dark and obscenely-manipulative revenue schemes are straight-up sociopaths.

“Generation X, in particular, has been labeled as ‘slackers,’ a term that oversimplifies and misrepresents the diverse experiences and contributions of this generation.” – Author Lisa Chamberlain, Slackonomics

The actual origins of the ‘Generation X’ and ‘slacer’ labels

By the time Beck popped onto the cultural scene in such a big way, and became a fixture on MTV, the ‘Generation X’ label had already been in circulation in the U.S., and was widely paired with the ‘slacker’ term (popularized by the 1991 film of the same name), for a few years.

A 1990 Time magazine article also fueled a larger media fascination with disparaging and labeling the youth of the time as a ‘lost generation’.

The Time article referred to a ‘lost generation’ growing up in the 1990s as “twentysomethings” and questioned whether they were “laid back, late blooming or just lost,” encapsulating what would become a relentless, decades-long narrative.

And yet the ‘Generation X’ label did not even originate in the United States, and it was not first coined in the 1990s. To highlight another one of it’s malignancies, the media has a long history of taking credit for things it had nothing to do with.

The term was first coined by British author and photographer Robert Capa in the early 1950s to describe the generation (that he called ‘Generation X’) growing up after World War II, who he thought were uninspired and directionless.

Then, in 1965, authors Charles Hamblett and Jane Deverson released Generation X, a book based on a survey of British young people’s attitudes at the time.

A quarter of a century later, the term – which obviously had ‘media sex appeal’ – was co-oped once again, this time by Canadian author Douglas Coupland for his 1991 novel, Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture.

The book’s theme seeped further into the cultural soup of the times as it gradually gained more sales and media coverage.

Coupland, however, did not relate the origin of the ‘Generation X’ label to the aforementioned British authors. He explained that his book was inspired by Paul Fussell’s 1983 book, Class.

In it, Fussell used the term “category X” to describe young people who desired to drop out of conventional social hierarchies.

Coupland also mentioned that his use of the ‘Generation X’ label was further influenced by the punk band Generation X.

In a 1991 interview with the Boston Globe, Coupland said, “I just want to show society what people born after 1960 think about things… We’re sick of stupid labels, we’re sick of being marginalized in lousy jobs, and we’re tired of hearing about ourselves from others.”

Not surprisingly, the mass media, especially in the United States, helped publicize the book as a way of adding ammunition to their war chest of combative generational narratives.

The term ‘slacker’ actually gained popularity more than a century ago during World War I. It was a common label given to draft dodgers. It did not originate with the 1991 DIY film of the same name. Another misconception that still has currency.

In either case, the mass media, which includes news outlets, advertisers, record labels, television, cable and now digital channels, concert promoters and merchandisers, increasingly consolidates and conglomerates these interdependent industries to ensure corporate profits survive no matter where people go for news, information and entertainment.

By the mid-2010s, six major conglomerates—Comcast, Disney, AT&T, CBS, Viacom, and Sony—controlled approximately 90% of all media platforms in the United States.

The media consolidation has led to fewer independent voices, a reduction in local news coverage and profitability by any and all means necessary.

Mass media spins lies for ratings and profits

The media specifically analyzes audience reactions to stories about generational conflict, reinforced negative stereotypes, and even petty, ridiculous side stories. Then they structure ‘news’ narratives and coverage towards those ends.

By weaponizing sensationalism, generational conflict, confirmation bias and stereotypes, the corporate mass media generates higher engagement and increased ad revenues.

In 2018, the Harvard Business Review published a study that found by exploiting stereotypes and generational conflict, the media intentionally creates emotional content targeted at certain groups to increase ratings and lure advertisers.

Another study by Psychology Today in 2016 concluded that the media actively promotes ‘fear-mongering’ and ‘conflict-driven narratives’ to keep audiences hooked, drive engagement and boost revenues.

Furthermore, a 2019 study published by the Pew Research Center details that the news media is responsible for approximately 70% of advertising revenues across the economy.

The media’s dependency on advertising drives sensational and polarizing content to attract viewers and increase engagement via generational stereotypes narratives and coverage.

In a November 2017 New York Times article, The Myth of the Lazy Millennial, writer Malcom Harris explores how terms like ‘slacker’ for ‘Generation X’ and ‘lazy’ for ‘Millennials’ (Gen Z) are perpetuated by media to create controversial and engaging content and on-going narratives to drive ad revenues.

A study from Thomas Frank (The Conquest of Cool) and Lisa Chamberlain (Slackonomics) demonstrate how media narratives drive traffic and create profitable advertising opportunities.

In her book, Chamberlain concluded: “Mainstream media loves to paint entire generations with broad strokes, reducing complex groups to simple, often negative stereotypes.”

“Generation X, in particular, has been labeled as ‘slackers,’ a term that oversimplifies and misrepresents the diverse experiences and contributions of this generation.”

“This portrayal was not accidental,” Chamberlain adds, “but a deliberate strategy to create engaging, sensational content that would drive higher ratings and increase ad revenue.”

The evidence of the mass media’s deliberate disparaging of young people for the sake of engagment and ad revenue is overwhelming.

But now, all of you who have been targeted and maligned by the mass media over the years, sweet revenge is yours. (And you didn’t have to hurt anyone.)

Mass media outlets these days are pretty much totally distrusted by the majority of Americans.

Their old channels, 90% consolidated into just six conglomerates, continue to lose out to the folks it calls the ‘Gen X, Gen Y and Gen Z’ podcasters and social media influencers.

Free from corporate board rooms and orthodoxy, hundreds, if not thousands, of independent opinion makers regularly pull in 10, 20, even 50 or more (i.e., Joe Rogan and Theo Von) times as many viewers than the incredibly shrinking audiences of corporate news media.

Over the past decade, brilliant, talented folks of a new generation learned how to attract and retain viewers/subscribers the old fashion way – through honesty, representation and integrity.

Nowadays, the corporate mass media needs their false narratives of generational stereotypes, along with political and cultural sideshows, to rile up emotions of viewers to make money.

So, there it is – what an actual loser looks, and smells, like.

UK National Album Day 2022 will focus on debut albums

Sync your diaries everybody, this is no April fools joke, the UK’s National Album Day really is returning on Saturday 15 Oct with ‘debut albums’ the theme for the proceedings.

It’s the fifth year that record industry trade group BPI and the Entertainment Retailers Association have staged the annual event to celebrate the album format, with support from sponsor Bowers & Wilkins and media partner BBC Sounds.

BPI boss Geoff Taylor and ERA chief Kim Bayley say in a joint statement: “Artists love telling their stories through the artform of the album and fans love to listen, but in a world where there is more streaming of individual songs, we take the appeal of the album format for granted.

National Album Day is about celebrating the continuing vitality and cultural relevance of the long player, in particular with the next generation of fans, and we invite everyone who loves the format to join in and enjoy this year’s National Album Day”.

Meanwhile, focusing on this year’s specific theme, Giles Pocock, VP Brand Marketing at Bowers & Wilkins, adds: “The debut album is an important milestone for any artist and remains such a pure form of storytelling.

Everything from the track order and artwork, through to the arrangements and choice of recording studio can feel like a big decision. We are pleased to continue our support for National Album Day, helping to celebrate those truly great debut albums that made their own rules and brought something truly unique into the world”.

Original report from CMU

The soul-crushing machinery of the music industry

By Thor Benson

White Chocolate & the Cigarettes, featuring drummer Chase Spross and guitarist/vocalist Michael Whitby, is essentially a band that has done everything in its power not to appeal to the mainstream. Even their name was created in homage to how stupid most band names are. They’re not in music to make money, and this is evident in how little thought they put into what the masses will think about their music. I shared some brews with them and made them talk about the music industry.

In order to get a more diverse set of opinions I also had Kevin Evans of the band Ghost Tiger chime in via the internet from Santa Barbara, CA. Kevin and the rest of Ghost Tiger have been involved in the music industry for some time and are starting to make waves in Southern California with this new ensemble.

I decided to talk to bands of low notoriety because not many people realize what goes into becoming the music that ends up on their mp3 player, and no one understands this process better than someone who’s currently maneuvering through it. Many of us download music for free and end up at shows where we barely know anything about the band. I discussed this with White Chocolate & the Cigarettes in their home and tried to illuminate what it really takes to be known. It was a smoke-filled room that Robert Plant might have chosen as a place to die. The show posters on the wall were like obituaries, highlighting the ephemeral nature of music.

One of the hardest parts about being a musician is that everyone wants to book bands that will bring people in, and record labels are constantly berated with requests for representation from people they’ve never heard of. “You’re drowning in a sea of other musicians, even just in your city, and the internet puts you in a sea of even more musicians,” Chase pointed out. The advent of music technology available to everyone has made it so any jackass in an armchair can make an album. However, as we talked we realized how little of an effect this has had on what music is actually making it.

“Most of the music that gets recorded at home doesn’t get listened to by anyone who’s really willing to pay for it… Fucking Julian Casablancas recorded his shit on a little 8-track thing, but he knew people. Everybody in his band knew people,” Michael stated.

The meat of the thing is that people who are recording at home are often paying for equipment with money they could have invested in recording with a studio. Both methods require an investment in order to achieve quality. The deciding factor in finding success becomes if the music is quality or not and if you know the right avenues to get it noticed. “I didn’t want my personal bias going into it. We’re a two-man band, so I might as well have a third opinion,” Michael said in reference to recording their first album in a studio. He also pointed out that he didn’t really know where to market the album once it was finished, because there are so many music companies out there. Even when the album is complete it is very difficult to get attention to it. Most record labels don’t want to touch a fully formed album that has already been available for sale online for a number of months. “We put our first two years [of music] on our first album, and that’s not shoppable,” Michael said. “There are more musicians making money out there than there used to be, but they have to tour to do that…Record sales are only about recouping your expenses.” Even if you’re not in it for the money, making music is expensive and every musician would like to survive off of their art.

“When you count up the expenses that go into just having a band like, practice space rentals, gas to and from rehearsals and shows, not to mention all of the equipment needed to perform, a lot of bands barely break even. Before you have a label you can make money in all the same areas that you would with one, but having a label can give you more credibility and the same kinds of gigs will pay you more,” Kevin pointed out.

Michael and Chase have toured on their own dime, and claim that busking in Las Vegas was the most profitable thing they’ve ever done. Without a label backing you there is little chance of you making money that you don’t directly seek out and fight for. “You can’t just be passive and be doing it to do something,” Chase said. “I don’t think the internet’s done anything good for the music industry up to this point except killing the major labels,” Michael added. If you want to be successful on your own then you have to be your own publicist, manager, and music producer in many ways.

Kevin agreed with this concept by adding:

“In order to be consistently employed these days a musician often plays a multitude of instruments, sings, works as a sound technician, engineers/produce, and works as a concert promoter. In order to really make a real living as a musician, you need to do everything.”

Once you are on a label your music becomes a business model, and people expect you to dance on cue. Put on the tutu damn it, this is rock and roll baby! “If you get signed to a label, people come into your show with a preconceived notion,” Michael stated. You end up having to play shows you wouldn’t otherwise have wanted to play, and your activity on social media suddenly becomes a major conversation point.

Michael pointed out that even some of the bigger bands in their current residence of Portland had to work very hard to get where they are. “I feel like bands like Y La Bamba, Sally Ford, Sons of Huns, and maybe Wooden Indian burial ground have been around for some time in the Portland scene.” These bands appear to have meteoric rises to local stardom, but their foundations are actually in years of effort. There is also the fact that some bands just hit at the right time. Certain genres sell at certain times, and others don’t.

“I feel like all of these sub-genres come from us being overwhelmed with technology… When do we realize that we’re creating genres for the sake of creating genres? What we’re doing right now could be a whole new genre, two-man blues psych,” Michael said. “Everything has to be an iPod commercial with Feist playing in the background, and it’s fucking bullshit. If you’re stuck on these sub-genres you’re only going to look into these very small spectrums, and maybe that’s good for narrowing things down in an over-saturated market, but when does it end?”

“Labeling the music gets in the way of just listening to it and actually enjoying the music… You’ll get bands that are starting movements because that’s what they like to play, and then you get other bands latching on because that’s what’s becoming popular,” Chase added.

“Overly specific genres are inevitable if you’re trying to really express what you’re music sounds like using terms that are nonspecific in nature. Though my band would aptly fit into the genre “electronic-world-indie-rock” we have some songs that don’t use any electronics or rhythms from far off places, and some are very upbeat and poppy, so I guess that means to be really true to our sound we’d have to amend the genre to be “folk-world-electronic-indie-rock-pop” which I hope everyone would agree is just dumb,” Kevin said.

The ever-evolving world of what music genre you fit in is something that is often created by one musician. As The Guardian pointed out a couple of years ago, genres like ambient come from a Brian Eno album name. Genres like heavy metal originate from William S. Burrough’s character “Heavy Metal Kid” from his book The Soft Machine. Burroughs told The Paris Review in 1965: “I felt that heavy metal was sort of the ultimate expression of addiction, that there’s something actually metallic in addiction, that the final stage reached is not so much vegetable as mineral.” Burroughs wasn’t trying to invent a genre, and essentially it’s all a bunch of trendy doublespeak that should not define how a musician directs their endeavors.

Michael and Chase spent some time talking about what’s popular on the radio. From a musician’s perspective, the radio is both a mockery and yet a possible route to success. Radio play can be a game-changer for a band, but much of the music on the radio is… terrible. “The radio is in everyone’s car, and it’s passive and easy to listen to,” Chase said. “Music on the radio is always very well polished. They have access to great recording studios, studio musicians, and professionals.” Michael claimed to know the formula that the radio uses by saying that all is necessary is “a mediocre songwriter, a person with an image, and a producer that can fix it.”

“The music industry used to be very responsive… but now Clear Channel basically decides what we’re listening to, and they design it to be liked. Nothing gets onto the radio if it’s not a sure-fire hit. There used to be a little more chance-taking, and Ray Charles would be a perfect example,” Michael stated.

He expressed frustration with how many talented musicians still have to work day jobs because people are not willing to pay for music anymore. “The fucking 80’s are over, and it’s not all about touring and getting laid. Chlamydia is a thing, and not all of us want it.”