As we are a little over a quarter of the way into the 21st century, I thought it would be a good time to reflect on where it has brought the human race. To make this historical/current reflection fun, I decided to treat the digital age as a 3-hour-long blockbuster epic—main themes scored by a killer soundtrack. All songs included were written between 2000 and 2024, spanning the 21st century.
- Pathological or Parasocial?: “Stan” by Eminem
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Eminem’s nearly 7-minute tale of a murder-suicide committed by a fictional, crazed fan of his is a reflection of the changing dynamic between fan and celebrity. The song’s title, “Stan,” even became the name used to describe fan Twitter communities. In the age of the influencer, day-in-my-life vlogs, and get-ready-with-me posts, will the parasocial Reddit snark forms and Twitter super fans take on a darker form? Or will they remain anonymous and nameless behind the screen?
- You Up? Love in the Time of Digital Loneliness: “Demi Moore” by Phoebe Bridgers
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We are lonelier than ever despite our ever-growing social networks. Despite the perceived overexposure to sex, Gen Z is having less sex than our foreparents. Interesting. Combining cybersex with loneliness, Phoebe Bridgers’s song about being so lonely that you ask your situationship for nudes while stoned, in my opinion, best represents the digital generation’s love lives.
- Mass-Produced Ultraviolence: “Pumped Up Kicks” by Foster the People
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Violence is everywhere. It haunts our screens. It’s in our memes. Due to this constant live stream of destruction, we’ve become immune to understanding the toll violence takes—not only on individual victims but also on communities at large. “Pumped Up Kicks” tells the story of a young man playing cowboy with a semi-automatic, with a commercial jingle playing in the background. Combining the 21st century’s mass consumerism with mass violence, “Pumped Up Kicks” will have a legacy beyond that of a dark indie club song.
- Fearing the Other—The Curse of the Imperial Boomerang: “Paper Planes” by MIA
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A spectre is haunting Europe and North America. That spectre is immigration. Influencing elections, social media discourse, and how kids treat each other at school, the immigrant has been deemed the boogeyman of the 21st century. Released in 2007, MIA’s “Paper Planes,” built on a 1982 sample of The Clash’s “Straight to Hell,” plays up stereotypes about immigrants (think fraud, violence, etc.). Its catchiness mirrors the dopamine-fueled rush of social media, its message ever relevant despite being 18 years old.
- Declining Birth Rates and the Nuclear Future: “I think about it all the time” by Charli XCX and Bon Iver
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There’s nothing that makes me want to schedule a hysterectomy more than conversations about the declining birth rate. The “breeding” discourse, as I like to call it, feels dehumanizing, making me feel like Bessie the Cow. Especially in the face of an increasingly dystopian future (water wars for AI, anyone?) and the cost of living, billionaires and opinion writers begging for women to get pregnant so they can increase their number of workers feels like an insult. Then again, you see a baby (the infant could belong to your friend or your cousin—doesn’t matter), and you think “These little guys are kinda cute.” Maybe I want one. Then some kid runs by you screaming about 67, and you decide—no kids for me today. Choices, choices, choices … all hinging on the ever-annoying arm of the biological clock.
- History Repeats Itself … : “American Idiot” by Green Day
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I’m tired, boss. The supposed Information Age has spiraled into an anti-intellectual misinformation-fueled fever dream. With propaganda constantly being shoved down our throats for over 20 years, you’d expect that we’d be better at knowing what’s real and what’s fake. With the advent of generative AI frying our brains beyond recognition, the future Idiocracy warned us about is becoming a reality by the second. So, don’t be an idiot and learn to think critically—before the world faces any more destruction.
- Bushwick Beckons: “Brooklyn Baby” by Lana Del Rey
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Bohemians (what people used to call hipsters) of the 20th century had Paris, and we have Bushwick. Since the late 2000s, fashion trends, indie music, and the best new A24 have been the brainchild of a “creative” from Brooklyn. This new generation of bohemians, also educated at Ivy League schools and from upper middle-class-families, prefers to leave their comfortable suburbs for gentrifying neighbourhoods instead of London or France. This subculture of emerging adults, perfectly immortalized in Lena Dunham’s HBO series Girls, was also serenaded (perhaps less gratingly) by Lana Del Rey in the fan-favourite song “Brooklyn Baby.” Lana herself took the trajectory of a “Brooklyn Baby,” cosplaying as a tradwife who found religion after marriage.
All of these songs will appear in a public Spotify playlist linked here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6ATic8SyPdJR5ttubYsT9i?si=oqa6StMqRwupZSdms48ELg&pi=whXPtpjVSEOPy.