Xennials, those born between 1977 and 1983, are the generation most suited (and adaptable) to change. From an analogue childhood to a digital adulthood, here is who they are and what music they listened to.
The lifestyle, habits and interests of new generations are increasingly discussed. After the six, or perhaps already seven, generations living in the modern world, another has been identified: that of the xennials. One of the most talked-about words of the summer of 2017, xennial is a neologism introduced to define specifically a portion of "young" people born between 1977 and 1983, straddling Generation X and Generation Y of the millennials (hence the portmanteau name).
A small portion, but an important one, because it encompasses a hybrid youth — one that grew up in a world that was still analogue before stepping into adulthood, where it discovered the internet and learned to use digital technologies. The living testimony and symbol of humanity's adaptation to the greatest social, economic and cultural change in history since the time of war, bridging two distinctly separate eras.
While there is general consensus on generational belonging, the temporal boundaries — especially those of the most recently segmented generations — are never entirely precise. After the baby boomers, born during the demographic boom between 1946 and 1964, optimistic and satisfied in the workplace, come those belonging to Generation X (the MTV Generation), born between 1964 and the end of the Seventies, regarded as precarious, apathetic and pessimistic, yet also pioneers of today's major technology companies. They lived through the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall, they love junk food and they listened to alternative music, metal, grunge, new wave, pop broadcast on television, electronic music and hip hop.
According to the traditional framework adopted until now, next comes Generation Y, the millennials (the Peter Pan Generation), born between the early Eighties and the late Nineties. Unlike their predecessors, millennials have always been at ease with digital technologies: optimistic, self-confident, individualistic, enterprising and narcissistic. They witnessed the tragedy of 11 September, the invasion of Iraq and the advent of reality shows. Digital natives, they eat organic food and embrace the sharing economy. Finally, there is Generation Z (iGeneration), the generation of the 2000s, totally dependent on information technology, living their lives on smartphones to the rhythm of the Arab Spring, global warming, economic and energy crises, WikiLeaks and the cloud. And already there is talk of Generation Alpha, those born from 2010 onwards with the arrival of the iPad.
The term xennial was recently brought into the conversation by 37-year-old sociologist Dan Woodman — who, however, does not claim to have coined it — on the Australian website Mamamia, before being picked up by the rest of the world. Woodman, an associate professor at the University of Melbourne, argues that those born between 1977 and 1983 were fortunate enough to have crossed society both pre- and post-internet, successfully navigating the end of the first era and the beginning of the other. "A unique experience," as he himself recalls it — one of transition, but one that cannot be fully assimilated to the millennial experience.
These individuals, privileged but not necessarily better, moved with ease from landlines to smartphones with apps, from compilation mixtapes on magnetic audio cassettes to tracks on YouTube, from Walkmans to MP3 players, from the 8-bit of Game Boys to 3D games on PlayStation, from the painfully slow and noisy (remember dial-up?) 56k modems of the first PCs to tablets connected via fibre optic, from handwritten letters to email on Hotmail and then Google, from the chats and discussion forums of Internet 1.0 to social networks.
Born with the Star Wars trilogy, frightened by their first viewing of The Goonies (which later became a cult film for them), xennials moved from the nineties into the noughties nourished by images from Jurassic Park, Pulp Fiction, Empire Records, Trainspotting, The Big Lebowski and The Matrix, as well as TV series such as The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Dawson's Creek. Among the alternative names for xennials, alongside that of the Oregon Trail Generation — after the Apple II video game (widespread in American schools at the end of the last century) — there is Generation Catalano, named after the protagonist of the series (which never aired in Italy) My So-Called Life, a young Jared Leto in the role of Jordan Catalano alongside Claire Danes.
Xennials, then, enjoyed a genuine childhood and an apparently carefree adolescence, free from the abuses of social media or the humiliations of the web. "Meetups with friends were organised by landline, a place was agreed upon and you showed up at the appointed time," Woodman recounts. "Afterwards, we were able to adopt new technologies selectively," something unthinkable today, he adds, noting that he neither shares the depressive mood of Generation X nor the overconfidence and optimism of millennials.
In the United States, xennials have been a topic of discussion since at least 2014, when journalists Sarah Stankorb, born in 1980, and Jed Oelbaum, born in 1983, discussed on Good magazine what it feels like to be a cusp generation caught between Generation X and Generation Y, and their respective stereotypes.
Stankorb writes:
Our adolescent subcultures were still organic and intimate and not immediately co-opted as money-making opportunities. We landed in a still-sweet spot before the recession plagued the millennial launch. We were young enough when the market crashed that we hadn't invested much and didn't lose as many savings or pensions as many in Generation X did. We had the chance to get jobs and go to college as young adults, find serious employment, quit and get other jobs.
Oelbaum's words, on the other hand, are more critical:
Bush versus Gore, the Iraq War, Abu Ghraib. Nothing ever shook us, at least until the entire economy blew up. We lived an anachronistic and futile normality, with little drive towards success or adulthood. On the internet we stole music as if there were no tomorrow, becoming retromanics and reassessing even the worst of the nineties. We are a strange micro-generation; we can't live without smartphones, but our clumsy hands type better on a qwerty keyboard than on a touchscreen. We are not the future, we no longer matter demographically, and we still haven't settled down. We have no savings and we were never very cool. We xennials are a sad, cynical, sorry lot.
Xennials come of age musically during one of the most confusing and least boring moments in the history of popular music, at the turn from the nineties to the noughties. They see the chart hits of Britney Spears and boy bands. They live through an extreme fragmentation of the rock universe, never entirely dissolved but rather blended with other genres such as metal, funk and hip hop, giving rise to global crossover phenomena like Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rage Against the Machine and Korn. The milestones of grunge from Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden drag on for years, and some of these seek to live again in the commercial punk of Green Day and the Offspring.
The most compelling cross-pollinations, however, happen between pop, rock and electronica, with constant experimentation between soft jazz, dub practices, post-psychedelia, minimalism, ambient sounds and glitch. In dance music, meanwhile, the harder forms explode, such as the second wave of Detroit techno. Albums by Massive Attack, Tricky and Portishead open up the seductive new roads of trip hop, while rock classicism regenerates itself in the big-numbers Britpop of Oasis, Blur, Pulp and Verve. Indie rock mutates; people dance.
Here is the selection of tracks that xennials wore out in their twenties, on cassette or compact disc, and which perhaps they still listen to today through headphones.