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Pop Culture

Gen X woman shares her music playlist, nailing the generation with most eclectic taste

"I think Gen X hit the jackpot culturally. Signed, a Millennial."

Photo by @felipepelaquim on Unsplash

Gen X invented the mix tape and we have the playlists to prove it.

Gen X is famous for being forgotten in most discussions of generations, which is hilarious because Gen X is totally awesome. Everybody says so (when they remember we exist).

Seriously, though, if you need proof that Gen X is fabulous, look no further than our playlists. The generation born between the mid-60s and the early 80s might just have the most varied and eclectic of all musical tastes. Our hippie/classic rocker parents passed down their 60s and 70s tunes, then we got the 80s in all its power ballad glory, then a brief 50s music revival during the 80s, then the rise of hip-hop, rap and grunge in the 90s.

A Gen X mom shared a video demonstrating the wide range of music she listens to ,and it's 100% familiar to those of us in our 40s and 50s.

As Word up with Jen points out, Gen X was "born in the 70s, raised in the 80s and partied in the 90s," cementing every decade's jams in our memory, from Anne Murray to Snoop Dog. Watch:

@wordup_withjen
Ya never know what you’re gonna get 🤷‍♀️ #genx #70sbaby #raisedinthe80s #partiedinthe90s #carjams

The comments confirm that Gen X really does have the bead on everyone's beats.

"I’m glad I’m not the only polyjamorous gen x out there."

"So I’m not the only one with a playlist that looks like it belongs to some with multiple personalities? This is a relief."

"Gen X is the only generation that covered so many genres of music AND decades of music. Don't give me the aux unless ur ready for a lesson in music."

"SO true!! You may get Metallica, you may get NWA, you may get Donny Osmond,you may get Duran Duran…who knows? 😂👏"

"I can relate 100%! It's not just one genre or decade. If you knew songs by NWA, Dre, Snoop, you also knew country songs by Shania, Garth Brooks, Tim McGraw and metal songs from Metallica to Pantera and so on. Even if you had a specific genre of music like me (90's hip hop/rap/pop) you also knew Sweet Child O' Mine by Guns n Roses by the very first riff and rocked the hell out of it lol. Love Gen X life!"

"I think Gen X hit the jackpot culturally. Signed, a Millennial."

Naturally, every individual has their own musical tastes, and people from other generations can certainly appreciate different music genres. But Gen X really has had the biggest exposure to a mix of musical styles during our formative. years. Our ingrained musical knowledge would make us excellent "Humm…ble" competitors, and we can sing along with pretty much anything pre-Y2K. (Some of us got Mom Brain in the 2000s that ruined us for memorizing lyrics to newer songs, but we can sing "Hotel California," "Sister Christian" and "Baby Got Back" in our sleep.)

The funniest thing about this is that the younger generations only know "playlists" as digital collections. Never will they know the hours of work that went into creating the "playlist" known as the mixed tape. Especially a mixed tape from the radio, where you curse the DJ for talking through the entire intro of the song. Even making mixed CDs took a lot of effort compared to few clicks it takes today to piece together a playlist.

Gen X may have its issues—all that angst didn't come out of nowhere—but when it comes to music, we are the unbeatable generation.

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Pop Culture

The 'Last Gen X playground' has been found, and people can't contain their nostalgia

Dangerous? Sure. Super fun? Absolutely.

@over40slbmom/TikTok

Feeling nostalgic yet?

It seems like so many iterations of unfettered joy from our childhood haven’t made it to the modern age, and playgrounds are no exception.

Gone are the days of metal slides that scorched the derriere in the summertime, seesaws that doubled as human catapults and the notorious merry-go-rounds that separated the weak from the strong. Good old fashioned character building—safety be damned!

As it turns out, a few of these old relics are still standing. And footage of kids playing at one of these bygone parks is filling adults—particularly Gen Xers—with sweet nostalgia.

Dubbing it the “Last Gen X Playground” by Ronda Schofield filmed a video of the local haunt in all its rusted glory.

As the iconic 80s song “Maniac” plays in the background, we first see some kiddos swinging on a very odd contraption that sports a generic clown face.

Then the camera pans out to reveal a metal slide weighted down by a concrete cinder block (classic), dilapidated rocking horse swings, and a spinning seesaw that’s certainly seen better days.

But you know what? The kids today seem to like it just fine.

@over40_slbmom Last GenX Playground!❤️ #genx #genxtiktokers #over50 #bestgenerationever #genxkid ♬ Maniac (Flashdance Version) (Re-Recorded / Remastered) - Michael Sembello

While plenty of these staples have been replaced by safer alternatives, viewers on TikTok couldn’t help but reminisce about their childhood favorites.

“The lunch ladies at my elementary school would give us waxed paper so we would slide faster down the slide,” one person recalled.

The horse swings were my favorite,” add another. “Impossible when you get bigger, no knee room!”

One even quipped “Metal slides on a hot summer day... getting blinded and burnt at the same time.” Ah yes, a simpler time.

As people shared their recess war stories, it became all the more clear why many of these fixtures are no longer around.

“Broke my leg on the spinning thing and got stitches in my chin from the teeter totter,” one person joked.

Still, folks definitely felt their childhood come alive again after Schofield’s clip. Many felt it should be restored and kept a historic landmark of sorts.

The pre-internet days might have been a little rough around the edges, but there was an undeniable rugged charm about it all. In many ways, it was easier for kids to just be kids, allowing for social interaction, reckless abandon and learning that a few knee scrapes doesn’t signal the end of the world.

Those days might be behind us—and probably for the better, ultimately—but it’s still nice to hop back in from time to time.

Now, where’s the vintage mall with cheesy glamor shots, vinyl shops, video game arcades and RadioShacks?

This article originally appeared on 9.21.23

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Pop Culture

Millennials reveal the phrases they heard growing up that kids are never going to hear today

A fun trip down memory lane on "the information superhighway."

Photo by cottonbro studio/Pexels

Do kids these days even know what "rewind" means?

Every generation has its slang and catchphrases that eventually become outdated. But in the modern age, there are also some totally normal, everyday phrases that become totally obsolete by the time the next generation comes along.

Millennials are still viewed as young by a lot of the boomer generation, but they're solidly hitting the middle age stage where the Gen Zers and Gen Alphas don't know what they're talking about when they reference their own childhood in the 90s: "What do you mean your phone was attached to the wall when you were a kid? And you really had no idea who was calling you?" Yep and yep, youngsters.

In the digital age, with technology moving incredibly fast, this generational phenomenon has become even more marked. Just for funsies, millennials on Reddit are sharing phrases they heard growing up that kids today will never hear, and it's quite a nostalgic trip.

"We'll look it up when we get home." – Wazzen

Ah, the days before smartphones and cellular data. That's right, kids. We only had internet at home and at internet cafés, so if we were curious about something, we had to wait to look it up. (And we also had to wait for the dial-up internet to connect, complete with the screechy-scratchy garbley noise we'll never forget.)

Speaking of which:

"You've got mail!" – Nate16

There was a whole movie based on this phrase, which was how AOL (America OnLine—one of the big internet companies of the 90s) let you know that you had email in your inbox after you got connected to the internet. A cheery voice announced, "You've got mail!" Can you even imagine? So quaint.

Cell phones as we know them were just a futuristic idea.

Photo by Jimmy Jimmy/Pexels

"“I got it!!!” When the house phone rang. – KatyDid749

See, the "house phone" was the landline telephone—the one connected to the wall—that the whole family shared. When we knew a friend was going to call, we'd clamor to be the one to answer because otherwise your friend had to go through the mortifying experience of saying, "May I please speak to so-and-so?" Saving our friends from such horror was a mark of true friendship. Plus if it was a love interest that called, there's no way you wanted your mom or dad to answer.

Someone is "calling long distance" – shakeyjake

Back in the olden days of the 90s, if you wanted to call someone outside of your town, you had to pay extra money for it. And the farther away they were, the more expensive it was. It was called "long-distance calling," and it was a standard feature of our lives. Want to call someone internationally? Might have to sell a kidney to pay for that. The ability to not just call but video call people in other countries, and without paying anything extra, the way we do now? We barely even dared to dream we might see something like that in our lifetimes.

Describing the internet as an "information superhighway" – TheKnightsTippler

Oh, we had several ways to refer to the internet: the information superhighway, the Worldwide Web (or just "the web"), cyberspace, etc.. If we could go back and tell ourselves that in the future the kids would just call it the internet, we could save ourselves some now cringey phrases.

"Gotta check the want ads for jobs" - Didntlikedefaultname

Yep, jobs were listed in the newspaper in the "classified ads" aka "want ads," and that's how you found out who in your local area was hiring. Some localities had a separate publication just for such a purpose, while in other places it was part of the standard newspaper.

Smoking used to be ubiquitous

Photo by Alexas_Fotos on Unsplash

"Smoking or non-smoking seats?" – heatherista2

This might be one of the biggest shifts from the 90s to now in terms of being out in public. It used to be that every restaurant had a smoking and non-smoking section, frequently only separated by a wall of glass that didn't even go to the ceiling. Smoking was allowed on airplanes, too, up til it was phased out from 1988 to 2000. Yes, we used to inhale a heck of a lot of second-hand smoke and considered it just part of life. Wild times.

"Did you remember to print the directions to our destination?" – dexterstrife

Ah, MapQuest, the revolutionary direction-creating website that marked the beginning of the end of road atlases and fold-out maps, but preceded Google Maps and real-time GPS. It was a specific era some of us will always remember fondly.

"Check the Yellow Pages" – muchlovemates

I think the Yellow Pages still exist most places, but kids these days likely never see them. Every business in town was listed in the Yellow Pages under different categories. So if you wanted to find out what movies were playing at the local theater, you'd open the Yellow Pages, look under "movies" or "theaters," find the theater and get the phone number. Makes you appreciate how much easier the internet has made our lives.

If you didn't rewind your video rental, you sucked.

Photo by cottonbro studio/Pexels

"Be kind, rewind." – Gubble_Buppie

Oh my. The days of the VCR and renting VHS tapes from Blockbuster. Not only did we have to physically take ourselves to the movie rental store to rent a movie on tape, but if you watched the movie and didn't rewind it before turning it back in, you were deemed a bad person. Period.

"You won't always have a calculator." – Wizard_of_Claus

This phrase was drilled into kids in math class and turned out to be the biggest lie of the 20th century. Who knew?

From Your Site Articles

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Joy

Hilarious lost gem from the early '90s wants to sell you a headset for your landline phone

The '90s were a wild ride!

YouTube

The phone headset that wanted to change the world

What was even happening in the '90s? I'm not sure we know. Somehow everything was beige but people wore all the colors of the rainbow at the same time. Everything seemed to be in some sort of geometrical shape or pattern. Overlapping triangles, random trapezoids. It was madness I tell you, madness. But nothing encompasses the chaos of the '90s like this unearthed and unintentionally hilarious advertisement for a headset to connect to your phone.

The idea seems to be to stop consumers from holding their phones between their shoulder and head. For some reason avoiding a crick in your neck was very important. How long were those phone calls? Boy would people from the '90s be shocked if they were dropped into 2022 where people avoid phone calls at all costs. The ad isn't completely useless in our current place in the space-time continuum. It's certainly good for a much-needed raised eyebrow chuckle. You can always count on 1993 being weird, no matter how far in the future we go.

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Culture

Extreme yo-yo's, high rise jeans and fluffy blowouts show the '90s are officially retro now

Freepik

Background vector created by freepik

I'm a millennial. One of my greatest joys is making my Gen Xer boyfriend feel ancient. I love to remind him how I was in high school when he was enjoying Phish concerts. When he mentions his pop culture icons, I revel in saying "who?" as I watch him appear dumbfounded. And oh, you should see his face when I remind him that I have never, not once, seen "The Breakfast Club." Nothing brings me more sadistic delight.

Well, it looks like I'm about to get a heaping serving of humble pie. Karma is real folks, and it got me.

It all started with a viewing of this yo-yo commercial from the '90s.

This Yomega yo-yo commercial—with background music reminiscent of "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air" theme and some in-your-face teenage boys sporting Beastie Boys hairdos—was going viral.

The video received a flood of comments remembering the yo-yo craze:

"I went crazy and bought one called the metallic missile. It's the coolest yo yo I swear"

"Ah man, totally remember using baby oil to grease the axle on my fireball."

"Back in elementary school we had a school assembly because a 'yoyo artist' was coming to visit."

As I thought back on my own pride at having accomplished my first "walk the dog" yo-yo trick back in 7th grade, I thought about other trends I've seen recently. Ones that were all too familiar. Butterfly clips. Mini skirts. Velvet. Then I tasted the bittersweet flavor of nostalgia, dread—yes karma—as it slowly dawned on me that…

…the '90s are now retro.

OMG. It's true. Things that appeared not only in my childhood, but in my teenage years, are resurfacing. "Making a comeback," as the headlines say. As I list these out, I feel a newfound sense of empathy for older generations.

Low-rise jeans

See on Instagram

Are you kidding me? I only just bought my super high rise mom jeans! How many waistlines can one woman sport? Is it just me, or do fashion styles come and go at a super speed pace nowadays?

I was relieved to see the universally flattering bell bottoms trending once again. But I'm not ready for this. One, I'm not ready to accept that low-rise is considered "vintage." Two, I'm not convinced anyone finds this fit actually comfortable. And three, on a more serious note, many women don't remember this style fondly, for reasons that InStyle made a great article about here. Let's just say, the '90s were a time where hypersexual culture and purity culture came to a head in a weird way.

Fluffy blowouts

Topanga from 'Boy Meets World' and Kylie Jenner.

Instagram, Disneywiki

Even though Gen Z has dubbed the side part as "old," this voluptuous hairstyle is apparently in and ready to serve some serious Topanga vibes and I'm psyched about it. (Do I have to explain that Topanga is from "Boy Meets World"? Do I have to explain what "Boy Meets World" is?)

Blockbuster

Randall Park to star in @Netflix's workplace comedy 'Blockbuster' set at the last Blockbuster Video in America, @THR reports. pic.twitter.com/eha8R0dlN3
— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) November 17, 2021

Sorry for the mislead, readers. No, Blockbuster is not coming back. And probably never ever ever ever will. But it is making a comeback of sorts. Randall Park will be starring in a comedy series, aptly and simply titled "Blockbuster," that takes place at (you guessed it) the world's last remaining Blockbuster. The ultimate irony? This show will be on Netflix, the company that put Blockbuster out of business. One final twist of the proverbial knife.

Barbed wire: tattoos and more

Hulu recently released its trailer for the new Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee biopic, starring Lily James and Sebastian Stan. Though I'm not entirely sure why anyone needs this show, the transformation that Lily and Sebastian undergo for the roles is pretty incredible. But that's not the only place where barbed wire is becoming trendy. Arm bands, wristlets and ankle tattoos have been popping up featuring the once hot design. Lets not forget the classic barbed-wire-paired-with-delicate-flowers combination, a classic symbol for "strong, yet vulnerable."

Dua Lipa even got a heart-shaped barbed wire tattoo. And she's in her 20s, so you know it's cool!

'90s are the new '70s?

Gosh, I remember watching episodes of "That '70s Show" thinking how odd and caricatured those teenagers looked. Still hilarious, though. To think that there will be a spin-off set in the '90s puts a whole new perspective on things. My childhood generation is now a potential scene for a period piece? Stop the world, I wanna get off!

See on Instagram

Pretty soon we'll be seeing yo-yos trending on TikTok. In a retro, ironic way, might I add. But I suppose that's how the passage of time works. And really, it only stands to make me appreciate some symbols from my younger days. Hopefully we can bring back some wholesome '90s classics, like just going to the mall with friends or going to a concert and just being there, without having to film it.

As I watch my old clothes turn into costumes, and I surrender to the fact that time stops for no one, at least I can take solace in one thing: I'll still always be younger than my Gen X boyfriend.

From Your Site Articles

90s

Gen X woman shares her music playlist, nailing the generation with most eclectic taste

"I think Gen X hit the jackpot culturally. Signed, a Millennial."

The 'Last Gen X playground' has been found, and people can't contain their nostalgia

Dangerous? Sure. Super fun? Absolutely.

Millennials reveal the phrases they heard growing up that kids are never going to hear today

A fun trip down memory lane on "the information superhighway."

"We'll look it up when we get home." – Wazzen

"You've got mail!" – Nate16

"“I got it!!!” When the house phone rang. – KatyDid749

Someone is "calling long distance" – shakeyjake

Describing the internet as an "information superhighway" – TheKnightsTippler

"Gotta check the want ads for jobs" - Didntlikedefaultname

"Smoking or non-smoking seats?" – heatherista2

"Did you remember to print the directions to our destination?" – dexterstrife

"Check the Yellow Pages" – muchlovemates

"Be kind, rewind." – Gubble_Buppie

"You won't always have a calculator." – Wizard_of_Claus

Hilarious lost gem from the early '90s wants to sell you a headset for your landline phone

The '90s were a wild ride!

Extreme yo-yo's, high rise jeans and fluffy blowouts show the '90s are officially retro now

Low-rise jeans

Fluffy blowouts

Blockbuster

Barbed wire: tattoos and more

'90s are the new '70s?

Researchers dumped tons of coffee waste into a forest. This is what it looks like now.

Naming twins is an art. Here are some twin names people say are the best they've ever heard.

5-year-old gave his mom advice for handling nerves. It was both adorable and spot-on.

Music teacher got two standing ovations and a BGT Golden Buzzer with 'Natural Woman' cover

Cat owner put a first person camera on their collar and accidentally filled the world with delight

Two brothers Irish stepdancing to Beyoncé's country hit 'Texas Hold 'Em' is pure delight