every generation has its U2: a huge artist that’s Super Important to people and taken seriously by critics but is utterly ignored or reviled by subsequent generations

(In the spirit of “Every big band has its New Jersey”)

Was talking with the kids tonight about this. They (elder Gen Z) do not get the appeal of U2, will not brook any talk of their being at all worth even listening to 3 minutes of. And you see this everywhere — I don’t think they’re gonna get a critical revival. Once Gen X is packed off to the nursing home, our U2 records will be the Roger Whittaker albums of their day.

Somehow U2 are still out there, still a huge concert draw, yet anyone younger than about 45 will be hard pressed to give them even a grudging nod.

(For the record, I’m not a U2 stan or anything, but I was a teenager in the 80s and the run from War to Joshua Tree still sounds major to me. Despite them being bombastic and cringey at times, it sounds like there’s an essential animating force behind even the duds of their imperial phase, and the high points are pretty fuckin high.)

I think I’ve identified the U2 of a couple of previous generations, and the elder daughter put forth a good candidate for the millennial version. I have a speculative pick for Gen Z although of course it’s too early to tell whether that will pan out. I’ll share them in a bit, but for now I trad of poisoning the well I’ll just ask the question: Who are your picks for the U2 of other generations? Also free discussion of the premise of the thread.

probably discussed in the relevant threads about him, but i feel like millennials and after never caught onto bob dylan nearly as much as they did the beatles, which is crazy considering what a boomer icon he is. on a similar note, i remember me and my classic rock loving friends really digging jimi hendrix and there being a decent amount of revival of his catalog when i was younger, and i feel like he has so little cultural salience today.

as an elder millenial my generation never really cared about U2 either. all we got, basically, is that Bono is a joke.

Hendrix, Beatles, Bob Dylan... I mean there were always hippie/classic rock kids. Its my impression that that stuff has more fans among Gen Z/Alpha as teens/young adults than it did Millenials (when they were the same age).

actually, come to think of it, most Gen Z know u2 as the band that forced an album on everyones ipod.

weezer

(one hopes)

These guys are from England and who gives a shit?

there was a time when Elvis records were certain sellers at a market stall, now I would probably not even bother pricing them

i remember when Bowie died i felt you could put together a pretty good pop music cosmology that had him as year zero and consign the entire 1960s to prehistory status - macca has fought a pretty good rearguard actuon since then but i still broadly feel that way

yeah Elvis fits in here for sure

Is the Millennial version Arcade Fire?

i'm borderline gen z and love zooropa

never got into dylan though

Coldplay, surely?

xp

i'm elder gen z i guess and u2 despite everything are one of my favourite bands. admire dylan but rarely listen to him, same with a lot of people i suspect.

REM - when I was growing up in the 90s they seemed as big a deal as U2 but they're never spoken about now, at least not anywhere I hear or see

The Strokes lost a lot of fans on their last few tours, I think. It's more 'Seven Nations Army' / 'Mr Brightside' that everyone knows from that era.

I was born in the mid 80s and I think both U2 and REM had unusually long runs as 'current' bands, i.e. I remember the music press in the early 2000s still treating new their new albums and tours as big events, when most of their contemporaries were by that stage regarded as legacy acts or has-beens. Maybe they're less of a big deal for younger people because they never really went away long enough for people to rediscover them? (or because the memories of the mediocre late period albums still loom too large) (I remember when REM finally quit in 2011 people pointing out that if they'd split after New Adventures then we'd have just about reached the point where folks would be excited for a reunion, instead people seemed mostly indifferent about them retiring)

a lot of baby emos are into Weezer unfortunately. My Gen Z stepkid loves The Strokes and Arctic Monkeys still

It makes me sad that Madonna seems to be mostly a joke for younger folks these days, even when elder Gen Z/millennial popstars like Ariana Grande have paid tribute in their own music

Post Gen-X generations may not like U2 but why is so much of their anthemic campfire-stomp music indebted to it (via Coldplay and Arcade Fire)?

and I'd say the same about REM, they're not a cited influence but you can hear it filter down in modern indie/rock

Madonna might be experiencing a comeback. "Hung Up" has appeared in several viral posts, and last month this classic also got a reappraisal:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3VSjkR9Pxw

when is "god control" going to be a tiktok hit

Post Gen-X generations may not like U2 but why is so much of their anthemic campfire-stomp music indebted to it (via Coldplay and Arcade Fire)?

Think that set of (mostly millennial) fans generally loves U2 as well

Tbh I feel that most of these artists' times could come round again yet. There are some major artists whose work and stature has been repeatedly revised (McCartney and the Doors come to mind).

U2 themselves see these mini-waves, for instance Zooropa (and maybe Pop, if the P4K 8.0 of late is anything to go by) feel relatively 'in' now, 'U2 for people who don't like U2' type attractions to non-fans, where once they were more generally spoken of as 'skip those until you'be heard these others' to newcomers. And I've noticed kinder notices for No Line on the Horizon as the actual "last interesting one".

hey i'm older than all of you and alfred is right: madonna has always been successful finding a stadium full of marks. gotta send that ill-gotten journo cash to the proper collection plate after all.

The fuck are you talking about now?

i think the word we might be looking for is curdling, when a good thing with the right ingredients cooks too long. elvis is a u2, the doors are more like guns n’ roses who had a brief run of hits and were a word critical outlier but didn’t overstay so they can periodically be rediscovered.

i’m wondering if the millennial u2 is jay-z. huge and critically acclaimed through mid 2000s but keeps putting out late period garbage trying to stay relevant and that style of rap has no relevance to gen z.

*the doors and gnr were weird critical outliers

stepping back i’m not sure i grok the premise. there was a viral article recently about how rem was the band that disappeared from cultural memory cos they won’t reunite and stipe retired. it seems like they’re in the same category as u2, shouldn’t there only be one per generation

Is Jay-Z actually still releasing music

i guess not since 2022, maybe he’ll finally stop

for REM's part I feel like they might be on a little upswing. the Michael Shannon/Jason Narducy cover band tours have been really successful.

also it's not like they do much to keep in the public eye. Stipe does an interview now and then and Buck has all his little low stakes power pop side project
projects

Does Grimes count for late millennials, or is she not important to anyone anymore?

grimes wasn’t big enough you need actual top 40 hits for years to be a u2

Not quite top 40 regulars but how are The Smiths perceived by the younglings, has Morrissey trashed any goodwill forever or do they have the cultural cache that, say, Jefferson Airplane did for people born in the 60s/70s?

I've known a few 20somethings into Morrissey/The Smiths.

The Smiths endure for sure

Grimes is way closer to Dan Deacon than U2

also at least with my daughter and her friends they just get stuff through streaming I don't even think they are aware of all the Morrissey stuff

can’t speak to uk gen zers but the smiths are outsize big for us gen z kids compared to their peers with mostly uk hits like pet shop boys, elvis costello, duran duran, depressed mode, even the cure by an inch. morrissey has a kexp/npr/kroq hit every few years too, only very far left americans have cancelled him really

Bands that retain critical credibility and popularity over 40 years have to be the exception rather than the rule, right?

ill-gotten journo cash

I think there's some confusion between Madonna and June Carter here

Do younger people rate Pearl Jam?

I don't even know anybody my own age who rates Pearl Jam all that much?

Coldplay is the only band I can think of who are as hated as U2, rather than just not carrying over (like most bands). Even Dave Matthews seems to have more esteem now than back in the 90s.

U2's 90s work still feels pretty fresh and i think it feels like the work of an entirely different band from their '80s and 2000-present period. i don't get the roger whittaker thing, just bc for a solid few years they were regarded as actually cool (with some caveats), vs being regarded as lame (with some exceptions). i do think they're having more of a moment lately, maybe partially due to the Vegas thing, but also i just think they sound pretty good compared to a lot of bands that came in their wake via their influence. the Coldplay and Arcade Fire comps aren't off the mark at all but overall to me they sound pretty tepid and strained compared to peak U2.

Grimes had her chance to be a genuinely iconic pop weirdo, but she threw it all away and based on everything I can see, most of her old school fans think she's a joke now (while obv a lot of terrible people still breathlessly follow and adore her every move.) I still like her music but had to sell all her albums, just can't listen to it anymore.

another thing i'm sure everyone knows now is Oasis won the war w/Blur for American supremacy but the kids really like Gorillaz even more than both.

my point there was actually Blur doesn't seem to have much carryover into the next gen over here at least beyond Song 2, which feels like it's been overplayed to the point of being annoying now.

Public Enemy doesn’t really seem to have left any impression on younger generations.

I wonder how Metallica are received by the youngs. They're undeniably huge, selling out stadiums across the planet, but where they were once a revolutionary force in metal, they feel like "dad metal" to me now. I often think they're the uncoolest band I love.

My son likes Master of Puppets because of Stranger Things.

Public Enemy is a weird one, they were definitely just about one of the biggest acts at the time, just truly essential, and i just don't get a sense they have much cultural impact at all these days.

Sleater-Kinney is another act i think about in terms of having had a huge decline culturally, their image took a pretty big hit when Janet Weiss left in the manner she did.

ELP.

I mean, most other proggers seem to have been rehabilitated to some extent.

xp wow “depressingly weak and shallow pool”? sb!!!!

Oh wow I never made that connection but it’s uncanny, yeah

Generation after that is Maroon 5. Wow is that band gonna have a crash and a sad third act.

I dunno, they feel like they're exactly the right level of universally reviled to get a 80's AOR/Nu Metal style revisionist revival down the road.

Years ago, my other kid was playing me a rock song she liked that had a longish solo, and asked 'what am I supposed to do during this?"

Click suggest band all you want, it won’t make “Games Without Frontiers” a good song or that Kate Bush duet any less soggy

Flaming Lips is a good one. Or it seems that’s the direction they’re heading. Who knows, they’ve already kinda come back from the dead a couple of times. I assume most of their audience at this point is oldsters reliving concert experiences from the Yoshimi days and taking their kids. With Drozd out a lot of serious fans are skeptical of what comes next.

Generation after that is Maroon 5. Wow is that band gonna have a crash and a sad third act.

I dunno, they feel like they're exactly the right level of universally reviled to get a 80's AOR/Nu Metal style revisionist revival down the road.

Ya who knows. I definitely did not expect emo to be the most robust surviving genre of the 00s

Back in the day the Lips were an amazing heartfelt show, now it feels tired. It was better when everything was held together with duct tape and shoestrings.

Click suggest band all you want, it won’t make “Games Without Frontiers” a good song or that Kate Bush duet any less soggy

i want to speak to your manager

Maroon 5 / Train / Sugar Ray is a nostalgia tour for suburban moms

and here I thought that with his first post flamboyant goon was here to defend Gabriel.

I think that SB halftime show killed Maroon 5 for a lot of people, it was the Howard Dean yell of alternative pop rock music. i think obv they're nowhere in the same league as U2 and i don't necessarily think they're a comparison as far as perception either.

I don't know if anyone has actually tried to quantify nepo-baby stuff in the arts vs 40 years ago, but it sure feels that way.

i do get a sense that many more musicians who get pushed into to public eye come from families who are ably capable of supporting their dreams, is one way i might put it. how that all leads to different music creatively speaking in terms of certain qualities, idk how to assess that fairly.

completely baseless, half-baked, pre-coffee theory: cuts to school arts funding mean fewer kids discover a love for playing and mastering a musical instrument, which robs some key ingredient/constituency that would build the critical mass of youth excitement/support for someone attaining technical mastery in that particular way. like, obviously not all "guitar god" worshippers are band kids, but is/was it part of the mix???

― Mighty Morphin Is The Subject of My Sentence (Doctor Casino), Friday, April 3, 2026 8:15 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

the degree to which mainstream rock merged with country is probably a bigger factor in any case

― Mighty Morphin Is The Subject of My Sentence (Doctor Casino), Friday, April 3, 2026 8:18 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

It's always been this way, however it's become more skewed as time goes by thanks those Arts in Schools budget cuts, but a lot of kids get started learning music and playing instruments in Church and related off-shoots (day camps, after-school programs etc).

I’m having a rough few days, I’m generally positive about Gabriel I think I’m just needing to blow off some steam

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qt87bLX7m_o

^there should have been a British Batman movie with PG as The Joker.

guitar god solos were a trend in the 60s/70s due to people on weed/acid at festivals and giant darkened amphitheaters. there was a rated pg (peter gabriel) version for nerds without drugs called prog. all this got cringe by the scifi 80s.

not sure school arts funding is a big deal in this story as flashy instrumental music was really big in the 20th century with/by poor people who didn’t finish high school (jazz, bluegrass, surf). seems like something else bigger was happening to all the arts across the 2nd half of the 20th century to prioritize simplicity as media channels expanded. maybe hundreds of millions not going to church and absorbing harmonic concepts is a factor... there’s still tons of high school kids with jazz chops and their influence on music is very slight although they find their way into jam bands, indie bands, working jazz groups, etc

i don’t like the “rock merged with country” narrative. country did lose its characteristic two step rhythms gradually from the 50s on and by the 90s it occasionally had guitars a bit louder than before, but not often. basically country sounded like a mix of current pop styles which was this narrow spectrum of soft rock rock and light rnb, while keeping the lyrics focused on storytelling. rock didn’t really borrow from country since pedal steel stopped sounding weird in the 70s.

Years ago, my other kid was playing me a rock song she liked that had a longish solo, and asked 'what am I supposed to do during this?"

- worship
- play air guitar
- follow along to a note-for-note internet transcription
- other

Weed interferes with short-term memory; the listener forgets you're on your fourth minute of pentatonic doodling and, as a result, grades you on a curve.

Hence the popularity of jam band music with potheads (and vice versa).

What did the Deadhead say when the drugs wore off?

"Wow, this band sucks!"

You can vibe to a guitar solo by Santana in a way you can’t to one by an 80s hard rock dude.

it’s the reason we’ve had to put up with “Smooth” forever

I think that SB halftime show killed Maroon 5 for a lot of people, it was the Howard Dean yell of alternative pop rock music. i think obv they're nowhere in the same league as U2 and i don't necessarily think they're a comparison as far as perception either.

― omar little, 3. april 2026 16:22 (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

See also: Black Eyed Peas

Maroon 5 is huge but they were never important

yeah "taken seriously by critics" seems like an issue there. dunno about the 80s hard-rock comparison either - Maroon 5 seem too boring and characterless, lacking the risk-taking ridiculousness that lets some rock arrive to "lol so bad it's good" followed often by a "no irony this shit is actually awesome" reappraisal.

fair critiques of my school-band hypothesis! like i said, half-baked, and not intended as sole explanation... just one ingredient in the cultural ecosystem that shapes what teens might get into (and in what ways).

maybe perhaps a better armchair theory would have to do not with school bands but with garage bands and bedroom noodling: we're looking at a vicious circle of guitar popularity. if fewer kids are into guitar music, fewer parents buy them guitars, and fewer of them are primed to be gobsmacked by the technique of whoever's being touted by guitar magazines which no longer exist anyway.

i'm probably also projecting from my experience as a non-music-playing 90s teen, responded to classic rock the way i responded to pop: i liked generally uptempo, catchy songs with clear singable hooks and riffs. i didn't vibe out, i sang along. instrumental passages were a tough sell for a long time. feel like if I'd been *playing* instrumental music from an early age, that would surely have been a little different.

I think that’s a lot of people’s experience, since you usually just encounter classic rock singles until you take a dive into album buying, where you might encounter 10 minute long jams—especially on live albums.

Maroon 5 seem too boring and characterless, lacking the risk-taking ridiculousness that lets some rock arrive to "lol so bad it's good" followed often by a "no irony this shit is actually awesome" reappraisal.

Contemporary critiques of 80's AOR (by which tbc I mean bands like Styx, Journey, REO Speedwagon - whom I wouldn't call hard rock really, so maybe we're thinking of different bands) absolutely characterise these bands as boring and characterless!

Maroon 5 are the unthinking man’s Jamiroquai

maroon 5 are the single-digit matchbox 20

(Doors Down + Eye Blind) - Maroon = Pilots - Matchbox

lol

(though technically, eye blind consist of only one eye, not three. the first and second eyes have not, to my knowledge, ever performed with them.)

Also ending the guitar reign: GarageBand et al that let music-curious folks not even have to learn an instrument first.

yah i guess if we're talking Journey/Speedwagon, Maroon 5 are probably a pretty good comparison. i do think that their relentless rhythmic bopping kinda works against the operatic drama/build that i think is a big part of people coming back to, say, "Don't Stop Believin'." but that wasn't even that big a hit for Journey, so maybe there's some forgotten mid-tier M5 single that will turn out to fit the bill. i would certainly expect to hear them in dentists' offices for as long as I've got teeth.

along the lines of the 'after-school/church' hypothesis re: shredding, i think logistics is a big part too. related to general social/economic decline just as cuts to arts education are, it's simply harder to play with others if you don't have a car, access to rehearsal space, surroundings which can allow or tolerate high volumes, etc. i think folks' living situations are related to this, more roommates/apartments (or simply living with parents) but logistics stands out to me as less obvious but as important. i've taken my blues jr on the bus before, and even that is a pain in the ass

terrible amp by the way

the third eye is all eyes

Peter Gabriel is the best example of an inescapable 80s musician who feels comparatively reviled in contemporary terms

he holds up well enough (3, 4 and so are all very good) and kids still love the "sledgehammer" video whenever they discover it. harry styles covered "sledgehammer" a few years ago. i remember when i was on tumblr as a teen the video would go around fairly regularly and that was the first time i saw it

Obv I’d argue that the next generation’s “U2” is/will be The Flaming Lips, if even they’re popular enough to occupy that position

i don't think the flaming lips were ever a u2 but their critical reputation has rightfully been on the downswing for a long time i think, and that likely has flow-on effects. people used to talk about the soft bulletin as one of the best albums of the 90s and it's just really not that good

I don't think PG is reviled at all. His stock is a little farther down than it should be since his 21st century has been a little patchy. But i/o absolutely ripped and should have been on year end lists, plus everyone liked that "I Have the Touch" needle drop in Marty Supreme

He’s not really throwing himself in the spotlight and has done low key collaborations and has an audience, just not a broad worldwide audience.

I think that in the streaming era you’re defined by placement in pop culture media properties and the old way of just blasting out albums and touring, regardless of whether those albums are any good. He’s just not really done either.

Seems like Eno is filling a role these days that PG used to—organizing political fundraising concerts with mostly world musicians

i looked up pg’s chart placing to compare to talking heads, who feel fairly ubiquitous by comparison. gabriel had 5 us top forties including a number 1, to three for the heads topping out at number nine (in both cases, their dumb fun funk song). gabriel was just two years older than byrne but carries himself a generation older.

maybe it’s the playlists… gabriel has a bunch of conventional sounding material and bunch of weirder stuff and it doesn’t flow together. a pair of vinyl compilations separating things might help? and throw in a few genesis tracks?

PG isn't reviled so much as generally ignored commercially. His last album was well received; new one that is trickling out less so but people are happy enough he's still doing something? I'd say Phil Collins was reviled for a while there but younger people seem to be embracing even his schlockiest stuff.

talking heads have "this must be the place." pg doesn't have that.

pg’s weirdly affecting ballad getting rediscovered by tiktok/soundtrack editors is currently mercy street, but could become either lead a normal life or come talk to me. hard to compete with the ultimate nerd prom song though.

xpost Solsbury Hill has basically the same amount of plays on Spotify as This Must Be the Place

Click suggest band all you want, it won’t make “Games Without Frontiers” a good song or that Kate Bush duet any less soggy

this comment is a crime

anyway i've def found the 'new generation' (ie, gen z, alpha, whatever is younger than 28 now) seems to like whatever. they don't seem to hate shit with the passion we hated shit when we were their age (like how much we all hated the Eagles in our 20's/30's). this is probably a good development in some ways; it also means they have no standards w/r/t music though.

Four solo albums called Peter Gabriel in a row? Suggest band.