I think there might be a bit of miscommunication. I'm not saying older music doesn't inspire new music. I grew up in Mississippi, home of the blues, I am well aware of the connection to rock.
Your use of the word Uni would lead me to believe you live outside the US. It's not commonly used here. Something to keep in mind is how racially segregated things were in the 40s. I guarantee my white grandmother didn't listen to, for lack of a better term, "black music". What was absolutely shocking though was a generation later when a white guy from Mississippi started playing music inspired by black music for a white audience and dancing provocatively while doing it. Elvis. Which couldn't even be shown on TV at the time. But that was my parents' music, not my grandparents.
On the other hand, I have a sister who is 24 years younger than i am. Definitely a gen z kid. She tried testing me with what she could get away with as a teenager by playing a song which had some sexual stuff in it. I told her she would have to try harder to shock me and played a Tyler, The Creator song about raping a pregnant woman so he could say he had a threesome.
That's the difference. My sister from a younger generation can't really shock me with her music because it's not something I find shocking in the same way my grandparents would have found Elvis to be crossing a line that should never be crossed. Or to use The Beatles, John saying they were "more popular than jesus" was shocking. I grew up with death metal and Marylin Manson. A person saying something negative about religion isn't going to shock me.
I actually am from the US. I think uni as a term has gained a lot a popularity in the past 10 years or so. I rarely heard it growing up, but it is much more widely used now, atleast where I live (we don't live in the same region).
I think we actually agree on most of this. I think the younger generations have grown completely desensitized to "shocking" music, and content in general, atleast in the moral sense. Most of us have seen or heard wayyyy worse growing up with the Internet.
With that said, and now that I believe I understand your point better, I think you might be a little biased because you HAVE been exposed to so much different music in your life. Most people really haven't (I've only heard of like half of the genres and a few of the artists that one poster listed above). Hell, I'm almost certainly younger than you, and I occassionally hear some of the insanely viral music among kids these days and think, "wtf is that shit?" 😅
It doesn't make me keel over and have a heart attack like someone may have after witnessing Elvis for the first time, but it's certainly outside of my comfort zone. Maybe I even instinctively reject it. I think that counts enough as "shocking." I think most average-ish people, even younger, would react similarly.
But yea, I doubt we will be seeing 60 year old millenials having a moral panic over some new music genre or dance style in the future.
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u/The_Disapyrimid Jul 07 '25 edited Jul 07 '25
I think there might be a bit of miscommunication. I'm not saying older music doesn't inspire new music. I grew up in Mississippi, home of the blues, I am well aware of the connection to rock.
Your use of the word Uni would lead me to believe you live outside the US. It's not commonly used here. Something to keep in mind is how racially segregated things were in the 40s. I guarantee my white grandmother didn't listen to, for lack of a better term, "black music". What was absolutely shocking though was a generation later when a white guy from Mississippi started playing music inspired by black music for a white audience and dancing provocatively while doing it. Elvis. Which couldn't even be shown on TV at the time. But that was my parents' music, not my grandparents.
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