Boomer song lyrics

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History of Popular Culture—Week 4, Assignment 1

Analyze lyrics from three songs during this era. Do any similarities exist between the ideals that the lyrics and characteristics portray and the ideals and characteristics of the Baby Boomer generation?

Dobie Gray’s Drift Away

Drift Away is a 1973 song that speaks to getting lost, abandoning one’s self, in music. The song’s chorus refrains, “I wanna get lost in your rock and roll and drift away,” presumably from the society that to the writer “…looks so unkind.”

Oddly, this escapist sentiment is atypical of baby boomers’ idealistic “strong passions for personal and social improvement.” The typical Boomer’s vision and decisiveness is not at all reflected in this song that promotes “drifting away” with rock and roll from a world that is “so unkind.”

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Marvin Gaye’s I Heard It Through The Grapevine

This song does embody typical boomer mentality. The loss of the special woman in a man’s life is in any generation difficult. The lyric “Between the two of us guys, you know I love you more” speaks to this lovesick boomer’s ambition to be better than the competition, much the same as Americans thought that their country was inherently better than others.

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Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Free Bird

Boomers are often credited with being the “hippie” generation, and this song speaks to that, being free: free of restraints, free of social norms, free of pressure to conform, free of a relationship. The lyric “The Lord knows…” testifies to the generation’s general acceptance—especially in the South, from whence Lynyrd Skynyrd hailed—that God exists and is omniscient (all-knowing, infinitely wise).

Based on your analysis, can you say if it is fair to judge an entire generation on the lyrics of the songs that were popular in their heyday? Why or why not?

I, for one, do not believe it is right to judge anyone, individually or corporately, whether by the music to which they listen or anything else, regardless of circumstance. Especially being in a minority among my age group as it pertains to music—one who does not listen to either rap or pop music—I can say that a generalization of my culture based on the music that is popular would very incorrectly categorize me. Likewise, I do not think that, despite the generational generalizations that have been made in the many sources I’ve cited here, it is fair to classify, characterize or judge an entire generation based on the lyrics of the songs that were popular during their primes.

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