My twelve year old granddaughter and I are several generations apart. She begs for Roblox gift cards and spends her days in worlds of her own creation. She’s boujee and frenetic and carefree. She dances and throws her arms with abandon. And she wears Mom jeans.
My teen years in the 70s, with its free love and marijuana smoke hanging heavy over concert venues while cops just winked at us as we toked, was just as carefree, but thankfully Mom jean free. AC/DC sang about wet patches on seats, Fleetwood Mac’s Gold Dust Woman addressed drugs, Rush sang about dystopian futures, Ted Nugent growled about Wang Dang Sweet Poontang, and REO Speedwagon sang about a barely legal teenage girl. We sang loudly and didn't give one thought to what the lyrics meant. It was only decades later that I realized what these songs were really about.
Then the 80s exploded and sexual lyrics became even more overt (or maybe I was just noticing more). Women started singing about sex right along with the men. Madonna sang about being like a virgin and Pat Benatar challenged men to hit her with their best shot, and Joan Jett owned her Bad Reputation. There was sweet romance with Heart and clean good fun with the Go Gos. We were Footloose looking over our shoulder for that Man Eater or those Betty Davis Eyes while Simple Minds reminded us, “Don’t Forget About Me.” The Police glorified stalking with Every Step You Take and we sang along at the top of our lungs. Boy George moaned, Do You Really Want to Hurt Me and we felt the pangs of broken romance to the core of our young wounded hearts. While this music was blossoming and booming I was in my early twenties, just starting my life with a clean slate and a fresh optimistic view of the future and of my role in the world.
That was almost forty years ago. I’m now a bit jaded and suspicious and careful. My heart has been broken so many times it has deep fissure cracks in it and I don’t trust as easily as I once did. I walk in a mine field in a society molded by social media that has us grappling with politics and religion and justice and equality and truth. A world where science isn’t real, families are divided, a pandemic has killed over five million people worldwide in a little over a year and a half, cops kill young black men with impunity, disillusioned fear soaked people storm our Capitol building in D.C to overturn an election, people attack flight attendants on planes, conspiracy theories leave us reeling, and we’re split into our own insular communities that internet algorithms have created. A Brave New World.
I still listen to 80s music so I can re-live a time when worries were fewer and the future was secure with hard work and hope. Meanwhile, my aforementioned twelve year old granddaughter skips down the road on our walk to the store singing loudly, “I always feel like somebody’s watching me!” a song released in 1984 by one hit wonder band Rockwell. 1984, the year I became a mom for the first time and my rose colored glasses began to slip. "Yes, baby," I want to tell my granddaughter as she skips gleefully, “they are watching you. So be very careful, but meanwhile dance, dance, dance! And don’t listen to W.A.P until you’re old enough to understand it."
