#3 Millennials Are Going Gray (“Millennials Are Going Gray” album, track by track)

Welcome to blog #3 of 7 in my track by track guide to my new DIY album, Millennials Are Going Gray — almost halfway there, yay! Track #3 is the title track “Millennials Are Going Gray.” At least one person has mistaken this one as a pretentious attempt to “define a generation,” so I assume some others might be thinking the same thing. But make no mistake, I’m not claiming to speak for anyone but myself. Just like everything else I’ve written, everything in the song is true and personal to me, and I felt that some of my memories and stories about growing up around the turn of the century were worth telling. I wouldn’t be surprised if many people around my age can relate to them, but it would be a bonus. I’m still just telling my own stories for my own purposes, not for someone else to validate them.

For your convenience, you can stream the track on Spotify and YouTube and read the lyrics at the bottom of this post.
***

This all started as a joke song to poke fun at people who don’t know what a millennial is, both colloquially and in the media. For quite a long time after millennials began ageing, people were still using it as a synonym for youth. They weren’t understanding that just like baby boomers or any other generation, we age with our generation, not out of it. Now that the “Generation Z” label has become more popular over the past year or two since I wrote my first draft of this song, people seem to be starting to learn the difference between the two generations, so the song doesn’t seem as useful, but it still stands.

At first I thought it was going to be a very silly, lighthearted song (like “Live Music Makes All My Decisions” or “The Old Lady at the Open Mic”), but I needed to fill in the details of the song because, “Hey… we’re not actually teenagers?” does not a song make. And as I started thinking about what we’ve been through as a generation, shit got kinda real. I’ve since dubbed it my “lighthearted acoustic emo song,” which I think is accurate.

The two most obvious defining moments were 9/11 and the financial crisis, so I brainstormed some of the thoughts, emotions, and stories surrounding my experiences with them.

I can still remember 9/11, I was in middle school. I had to run an errand for my teacher in the school library, and the librarian was watching the news on TV, where some building was on fire. Even after I found out it was the Twin Towers, it didn’t really mean anything to me. Then some shitty person (probably a child) called in a bomb threat to our school and we all got evacuated and sent home. I was already slightly confused and afraid by that point, but when I got home my entire extended family was over and glued to the TV news. The adults were clearly agitated and anxious, so I took on the same emotions, not really having my own understanding of what was happening. For some reason (maybe because my family enjoys drama), they thought it was a good idea to drive over half an hour to the ferry in Hoboken just to watch the smoke rise across the river with several young children in tow. Personally I don’t recommend doing something like that, especially in hindsight, but it did give me a much more vivid and poignant memory of the event, handy for songwriting.

As for the financial crisis, I started college around the beginning of it, and when I graduated unemployment was still high and underemployment for young people was through the roof. Even talented people with experience were having trouble finding decent jobs, and I was competing with them, looking for my first full-time job. I did not get one, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. I must have sent out 50 applications for entry-level jobs around graduation time (most of which “preferred” at least five years of experience?!) and didn’t get a single interview, despite having excellent grades and experience with work, professional internships, academic research, volunteering, and leadership. I’d also spent quite a bit of time reading about resume and cover letter best practices and maximizing every detail of mine, all to no avail. I even got passed over for more experienced workers for several retail jobs until I finally got a part-time job stocking shelves overnight.

That job sucked in certain ways, but it definitely “built character” as they say, and it gave me a lot of mindless, solitary time to think. You know what it taught me, right or wrong? That “doing everything right” and sacrificing your dreams for stability and “growing up” was bullshit. Doing everything right doesn’t actually guarantee stability, so you might as well just live the way that seems right to you and hope it works out in the end. I don’t even think my life would necessarily be worse if I’d gotten a stable job right out of college and never pursued music seriously. It would just be different, and I suppose actually better in certain ways. But I literally find it impossible to get into the “stability” mindset after what I went through when I entered the workforce. Regardless of whether I’ve been misguided or not, I don’t think I can ever unlearn what it taught me. And anyway, in my life right now I have no idea what will happen in the future, but I spend nearly every moment on something that’s important to me, and I wouldn’t trade that for anything.

I’m in the middle of the millennial age range, so some were a bit older or younger than I was when these events occurred. They were still all in their formative years though, so again, I wouldn’t be surprised if most of them could relate to a lot of these thoughts and experiences.

Bonus fun fact: if you enjoy this song but you’re one of those silly people who’s offended by the F word, there is a secret clean radio version available. Feel free to ask me nicely for a download of it.

SPOTIFY

YOUTUBE

LYRICS

“I don’t know,” they told me when I asked if we would be okay
Watching the world burn slowly
We drove to Hoboken and watched the smoke rise
Just staring speechless at a terrifying sight
I was very young, wondering how much closer I was to dying
But then we’re all dying

Millennials aren’t the children, we remember 9/11
It was decades ago now
Millennials are going gray, just another generation trying to make our way
Millennials are going fucking gray

And I’ve got two gray hairs
Right in the center of my scalp, bold and ready
For my enemies and friends to stare down
And the baby that I babysat is smoking lots of weed
Down in the shadows right behind my high school bleachers
I’m getting older, wondering how much closer I am to dying
But then we’re all dying

They try to tell us we should be chasing an elusive stability
That when we’re old we’ll want the money
And we won’t give a shit about these dreams
It’s like they’ve never seen those deathbed surveys
And when you graduated college when there were no jobs anywhere in sight
It’s only natural to wonder, what do I really want to do with this short life?
And if you’ve never wondered that then you’re not living it right

Millennials aren’t the children, we remember 9/11
It was decades ago now
Millennials are going gray, just another generation trying to make our way
Millennials are going fucking gray
We’re never gonna be perfect but we’ll find our way
Millennials are going fucking gray

Da da da da da da, da da da da da da
Da da da

#2 Empty (“Millennials Are Going Gray” track by track)

This is blog #2 of 7 in my track by track guide to my new DIY album, Millennials Are Going Gray. Track #2 is “Empty,” a song about the positive side of physical, emotional, and philosophical “emptiness” — that it gives you the space to fill up with something good.

For your convenience, you can stream the track on Spotify and YouTube and read the lyrics at the bottom of this post.
***

“Empty” was one of those ideas kicking around in my head (and ideas folder) for years and years. The basic idea behind it, partly inspired by a Bouncing Souls lyric (“Destruction leaves an empty space/ In emptiness again, I begin to create/ Feeling good again now, in some new kind of way/ Feeling good again now” –Apartment 5F), is that emptiness can’t be all bad because it creates space for new, positive things. From the first time I jotted it down, I always had the idea of one verse being more about an emotional emptiness or hopelessness and another verse being more about spiritual emptiness, of not believing in anything outside the natural, observable world.

I never got further than an outline because every time I came across the idea, it just didn’t inspire me. The only reason I finished it when I did is that it was one of my simpler ideas (if you know me at all, you know I’m not the best at keeping things simple — and no, that’s not a humblebrag, it’s absolutely a hindrance to everything I do). From time to time when I’m feeling uninspired and need a quick songwriting victory, I try to finish one or more of my simplest ideas that has been hanging around for a while and never inspired me. When it comes to ideas I LOVE, they tend to take forever because I’m more prone to overthinking and coming up with way too many ideas, whereas if I’m not as into it, I always know I can cobble together a lyric and melody fairly quickly. What’s interesting is that while sometimes they do come out mediocre as expected, many times they surprise me and become fan favorites, or even more surprising, I actually grow to love them.

I wrote the chorus first, standard for me since catchier and lyrically abstract lines come easier to me than more detailed/descriptive ones, which I’ve always found weird. Then it really started to come together when I started playing the strumming pattern over it. I’m not sure how to describe it music theory wise and I’m sure it’s fairly common, but I’m happy to admit that I stole it from Frank Turner’s “I Knew Prufrock Before He Got Famous.”

The chords and the rest of the melody came to me fairly logically (I won’t claim it’s a musically imaginative or innovative song in any way), and there you have it, I got a pretty catchy song out of an idea I only felt so-so about. Many people have told me it’s one of the catchiest songs I’ve written. My dad compared it to Taylor Swift, ha! (I’m not quite sure why since my style sounds nothing like hers in any way, but I’ll take it.)

P.S. The eagle-eyed (and those who watched my Facebook Live listening party) might catch my lowkey Marie Kondo reference. I got a bit swept up in that craze with everyone else… for about a day before I lost interest, though I did adopt some of her principles and, well, it made it into my song.

SPOTIFY

YOUTUBE

LYRICS

If you ever feel lost in your life when you think that you’ve failed
And it’s one thing after another like you’re sitting on a train that’s derailed
You can always escape with mindless TV and sweatshop sweeps
But what if you took the challenge to do something of value, to keep dreaming?

This is not a dark abyss, it’s a big empty pickup truck
And not every space needs some junk just to say it’s filled up
But if you’re gonna fill it up, if you’re gonna fill it up…
If it’s empty, then fill it with the things that you love
If you’re empty, give your best, don’t you know you’re enough?
Know you’re enough

What lies beyond this planet and this life is still mostly unknown
And it’s something that we all must come to terms with all on our own
And I know you’ll be tempted with tales of better places and higher plans
But sometimes the greatest beauty is to design it yourself
And live it out as best as you can

You can fill it up with trash someone told you you needed to have
Or you can fill it up with magical things that spark joy that will last

Empty, empty

#1 We Were Pioneers (“Millennials Are Going Gray” track by track)

Welcome to blog #1 of 7 in my track by track guide to my new DIY album, Millennials Are Going Gray! The first track is “We Were Pioneers,” a song that is musically on the acoustic punk side, and conceptually about a literal dream about being a 19th century American pioneer while actually being an underachieving 20-something in the 21st century.

For your convenience, you can stream the track on Spotify and YouTube and read the lyrics at the bottom of this post.
***
Like most singer-songwriters who wear their hearts on their sleeves, everything I write in a song is pretty much true. I do indeed dream of what I think about before bed (probably pretty normal, I guess) and I did once have a dream about braving the Old West with an old friend. I also did spend an entire day watching Ken Burns: The West (it’s still on Netflix! Come back in a couple of days when you’re finished, I’ll wait) and a different day staying up way too late playing classic Oregon Trail on Archive.org (sigh, okay, fine, I’ll wait for you to do this too). Those are all individually true. But I’ll confess that I don’t remember if the dream actually occurred on either of those days, so technically, the implication that one or both of those activities directly caused the dream may or may not be accurate.

You might notice a pattern in how I come up with ideas for songs. It’s not that I go out of my way to find poignant metaphors in every little thing that happens in my life; they just randomly pop into my head because to be honest, I’m a little bit emo. (I remember once in high school, a classmate asked if he could scroll through my iPod, and I let him, and he said, “I’ve never seen so much emo music on one iPod in my life!” I was obviously deeply wounded by this comment!)

In this case, the dream was about a friend I hadn’t seen since high school, not even on Facebook. Just remembering her got me thinking about my life and imagining hers potentially being similar in certain ways. I never imagined my life would be so unsettled in my late 20s. To be fair, I’m happier than I’ve ever been because the one thing I’ve gotten better at year after year is being true to myself and doing exactly what feels right to me every single day. That’s a good path to contentment, though, evidently, not really any kind of path to financial stability for most of us. I think I just imagined myself to be successful at something by this age, and to have at least some idea of what the rest of my life would look like. As it is, I have no idea. I know how I’d like it to look (and I’m pretty outspoken about it), and I like to be as optimistic as possible. But I’m still aware that a lot of my dreams are probably not that realistic, and I honestly just don’t know how things will turn out in the end.

Another part of it is, yes, I’m trying, hard (to the point where a lot of people tell me I inspire them, and I so appreciate that sentiment!), but deep down, I know I could be doing so much more. I have plenty of lazy, unmotivated days (usually caused by something small and frivolous causing me to lose confidence in myself). As the song alludes to, some days I waste hours playing games, some days I eat enough junk food to grow a “food baby,” and some (okay, many) days I stay in my pajamas all day. It bothers me especially because reliable people (read: people who work in music and aren’t that nice) are constantly telling me I’ve got potential, and typically when I set a goal I always achieve it. As I say, I’m someone who’s not supposed to lose. (Incidentally, because they sound pretty much the same, I can never decide if it should be “we’re people who are not supposed to lose” or “we’re people who were not supposed to lose.” The latter alludes nicely to being a teenager with big dreams, but the present tense tends to hit harder. So I still haven’t settled the matter yet and opinions are welcome.)

As these thoughts were inspired by a dream about being a pioneer, I felt a metaphor coming on. Faced with the image of my old friend and I minimizing our possessions, packing them up, and heading out on a dangerous adventure where pretty much anything could happen, I felt lazy and cowardly in my own life. Just like a pioneer, I have things I want to change about my life. But all too often, I take careful, safe baby steps, when sometimes a big leap is warranted. I have plenty of excuses like anyone else, but the more I actually examine them, the more I can see how obviously illusory they are.

My own songs are therapy for me (which is also common among songwriters), both as I write them and as I perform them and mull them over. In the case of this song, it helped inspire me to begin planning two DIY tours in the next year (one on the East Coast and one in Europe — and if you can help with a sofa or a performing opportunity of any kind, please fill out this form!). I have no idea if anything good will come of it, and while I probably won’t die (I hope), there’s a good chance I will be very uncomfortable and exhausted during most of my time on those tours. But of course, those are the nights when I sleep better than ever.

As far as the music goes, generally speaking, all of the songs on this album remain simple and, some might say, uninspired in terms of chord and melodic choices (and of course I didn’t use any fancy instrumentation or production to hide that fact). Occasionally I get feedback, from people who aren’t particularly invested in my music, that I need to go back to the drawing board and develop my musicianship rather than focusing on performing and releasing music. But by and large, a lot of the people who hear my music (and are the right audience for it) already enjoy it. This is who I am musically right now, and I’ve got an endless stream of things I want to say in song, so I’m going to keep doing it. Hopefully, I will always have some time and energy left over to develop that musicianship, learn new techniques, listen analytically to other music and see what I can glean from it. But if I run out of time and energy, so be it. Saying what I want to say as best I can while I still have it in me is more important to me than saying it in an impressive way. And that pretty much sums up my entire music career through the present moment.

SPOTIFY

YOUTUBE

LYRICS

I dream of what I think about before bed
And I had a lazy Sunday marathon of Ken Burns on the West
So I had a dream we escaped all oppression
And we went somewhere, somewhere where no one could touch us
And there we were
Modest possessions packed up in our wagon
All to leave this behind for a better, freer life
And it’s a dangerous world out there
We could fail and we could die
But we’re itching for adventure, for a change and it’s our time

Why do we spend our days lazing around?
Talking a big talk and playing games
We don’t do what we want because we’re too afraid
And I know, I know, I know we could do better
There’s nothing we can’t do if we stick together
Because once, we were pioneers
Yeah, we were pioneers

I dream of what I think about before bed
And I played Oregon Trail last night until my eyes were red
Do you remember when we played it in school as kids?
Do you remember the dreams that we dreamed when we played it?
Back in our new home
More than a century and two thousand miles away
We plotted over drinks with the exciting friends we made
We’ve got a blank canvas here, this town is the edge of the earth
And we can make it anything we want it to be, it’s our turn

I had a dream that you and I were pioneers
I woke up wondering what had happened that we wound up here
We were the kids with the big dreams and the bright minds
And now we’re overgrown kids cramping our parents’ styles

And it doesn’t seem it’s going to work out how we wanted
You’ve got a food baby, I’m still in my pajamas
But the way I see it, life’s a game
Where you maximize its length, maximize the pleasure and minimize the pain
And you and I, we’re people who were not supposed to lose
And every day is a potential new beginning

We’ll leave everything behind, build a new life in a new place
If only in our minds
Because once, we were pioneers
Yeah, we were pioneers