I have been a huge fan of fun. since I discovered Barlights because of an Avengers College AU back in 2012(?). You may remember them by We Are Young, which was their biggest hit, but this was the first band I liked in my teens and I was thinking about it because indie music has come a long, long way, but to me, fun. is the very definition of 2010’s indie.
The band started in 2008 (hmm merry crisis I guess) when the band members were around their mid-20s if I’m not mistaken. Born in the eighties these were three millennial men, like they say in Barlights, they were the get-rich-quick-kids who never got it right, making music in NYC, just you know…. trying to make it, trying to become stars, trying to succeed and well, succeeding but having to deal with it in ways they never thought about.
The song that opens their first album, Be Calm is a fucking anthem, to me, those are the words of someone who is really trying hard in many ways and who knows failure “after all you lost your band and left your mom”, “now every single crack, every penny that I pass says I should either leave or pick it up”, “If I could only find my people or my place in life”, to me, fun. represents the resentment, the disappointment of millennials. In some ways, it’s the theme that carries on through the whole first record, and I adore it.
They were the face of what hipsters were, the skinny jeans and suspenders, dress shoes, and short-sleeved shirts. The colorful melancholy of leaving home and trying to make it in a big city because well, what else is there to do? Leave your mom, leave your friends, survive, feel alive because of it, become someone else, become immortal. It’s the most millennial thing I’ve ever seen, it is in my point of view the millennial dream and also the millennial fall.
The bands I like to call Mainstream Indie, like The Killers or Arctic Monkeys, reached ridiculous success too early in some ways, Alex Turner was only 16 when Arctic Monkeys started, Brandon Flowers was 23 when Mr.Brightside blew up. Nate Ruess, Jack Antonoff, and Andrew Dost started a band in 2008 looking for something and they found it, it wasn’t exactly what they wanted I guess, because Some Nights is an album that questions, from the opening track, what they got from Aim and Ignite, “I sold my soul for this? Washed my hands of that for this? I miss my mom and dad for this?”, “Five minutes in and I’m bored again, ten years of this and I’m not sure if anybody understands”.
It’s an album where I think Nate, and I mean Nate specifically because even though he did go solo after fun., he is not interested in singing anymore, whereas Jack Antonoff is still making music, questions, if 1) this is really his place in the world and 2,) if it was worth it, and expanding it a little more, it wasn’t; because if he didn’t stick around after the success that was We Are Young, the millennial generational anthem, then it really, really wasn’t it.
But the evolution from Aim and Ignite to Some Nights to Grand Romantic and Bleachers is a beautiful thing to see. Aim and Ignite has a weird pessimism behind its happy and colorful first impression, Some Nights questions and questions but also burns in youthfulness even though it’s mature, to me there’s no band, no record that captures the voice of millennial youth better than these, the same way that Declan McKenna, Conan Gray, Billie Eilish are some of the artists that capture older Gen Z’s voice beautifully. “I close my eyes and think about tomorrow, it never came true”, It captures the voice of a moment that happened right before Instagram, right before smartphones and Tinder, right before chaos.
They were invincible, they were the future, the same way we are now, they were glorious, they were young, and in New York City, what could possibly go wrong? But aging is terrifying, not reaching an idealized idea of success is terrifying, and that’s the beauty of it, this was the generation that could not get jobs, that could only have the things society promised the later in life or never even got them so they blew up Instagram posts of their lunches and made avocado toast and light (millennial) pink a thing.
“I’m standing in Brooklyn just waiting for something to happen, I can’t help but love thinking that everyone doesn’t get it.” And I don’t think people get it, the older generation thinks millennials are spoiled brats who can’t do anything and the younger generation thinks millennials are just crybabies when honestly, they were raised to live in a world that doesn’t exist anymore and they really weren’t ready for it no one would have been. There is resentment and I think that fun. fully embodies this very specific millennial feeling of resentment and does it beautifully.
“Cause no one here is gonna save us”
