Smith celebrates the excitement of the art of Generation X, calling David Bowie’s tour in 1976 a kind of “Year Zero” for the forthcoming decade of thrilling punk and New Wave music. Now that Generation X has left the scene, claims Smith, there is nothing to stop anybody from “selling out.” Algorithms and clicks are all that matter. “We tried, and we failed,” Smith laments, “to save the world from our parents.” They allowed their cultural revolution to become sneakers and beer commercials.

Smith is wrong on that last point. A lot of Generation X had no desire to save the world — indeed, one of our defining characteristics is an antipathy towards the utopianism of both baby boomers and Generation Z. I worked in a record store in the 1980s, and while there was some grumbling about bands “selling out,” many bands, particularly minority acts, were glad to sell tickets and be featured in commercials. The socialist gatekeeping was for rich kids.

Also, Bowie had serious influences that shaped who he became — his music and act were fresh and innovative, but he had arrived there through an immersion of Western art and literature. We liked the shock of the new, but Generation X had respect and admiration for artists who preceded us.

[I’m on the cusp between Boomer and Gen-X, but my sensibilities are much more to the latter, and I concur with Mark on this point. I didn’t immerse myself in music culture nearly as much as he or some of my friends did; I could identify song titles and artists, but never fell in love with any of them. (Maybe Blondie, but that was teenage hormones.) Most of us saw the Boomers and their obsession with the cultural Sixties as pretentious bulls*** even if the music was amazing. When “The Big Chill” came out, many of us were amazed how silly the Boomer self-obsession was, and it only got worse from there. — Ed]