Don't blend in! The generation gap at concerts

By Sage Liebowitz

It’s not every day you find yourself in a sea of one thousand middle-aged New Englanders sipping beers and bopping their heads to another middle-aged guy from North Carolina slamming the keys of his piano. As a twenty-year-old, you suddenly transform into an absolute weirdo, turning to your fellow twenty-year-old friend every fifteen minutes to tell him how “different” the crowd is to you. Then, you start thinking about how maybe you aren’t supposed to be there. You’re an imposter — this artist isn’t for you. He’s for parents with toddlers, and you certainly don’t plan on being one of those anytime soon. So, what do you do?

On a stormy Tuesday night in the heart of Boston (as most stories start), I had the joy of seeing Ben Folds slam the keys of his piano for 99 minutes straight. This is a side note, but let it be known that by using the word “slam,” I mean absolutely no disrespect — Folds just made that piano his “bee-eye-tee-see-ayche,” if you get what I’m saying. It was a truly thrilling evening.

When telling people I was seeing Ben Folds, I actually got the same response across all platforms. I had no expectations of the guy until the moment my friend and I planted ourselves in line outside the venue. The number one thing I was told about going to a Ben Folds concert was that it was guaranteed I’d be the youngest person there. This really didn’t sink in until I was actually there and drowning in a sea of “true” adults. My anxious energy eventually eased once the show was in full swing, but even so, every time Folds made a joke about growing up in the 70s, I put on my little awkward smile and laughed along as a way of blending in. You never want to be the person who looks miserable while everyone else is having the best night of their lives.

The topic of age gaps has a great amount of stigma surrounding it. There always seems to be a clash between younger and older generations, both groups vying for validity. This is no exception when it comes to concerts and music in general. I feel like every generation has its artists they like to stick to, but it is more likely you’ll see younger people gravitate towards the music of people like their parents, but not so much the other way around. For instance, would you see a group of suburban moms at an Olivia Rodrigo concert screaming “favorite crime” at the top of their lungs? Probably not, but I support! However, I’m sure you’ve heard of more than a few instances of the Beatles being part of a twenty-year-old’s Top 40.

Back to the whole idea of concerts — is it possible to stick out in a crowd when the people around you are clearly out of your age range? Are people actually looking at you, or is it all inside your head? I think it’s completely valid to feel uncomfortable in a public setting where you feel “too old” or “too young,” but I don’t necessarily think it’s anyone’s fault. I feel like there are expectations of us (even outside the music world) to stay around people who we supposedly “mesh” with. It’s looked down upon to have older friends, yet isn’t that what we always want to do? I know that when I was in high school, I always wanted to be friends with the cool seniors who I looked up to. And whenever I go to a dinner event with family friends, I would take my plate and make a beeline to the “adults” table. I don’t want to generalize, but it seems like people my age want to appear wise beyond our years, so we connect more with people and music from the past to make us fit in more with the cultural status quo.

I’m not part of Gen X, so it’s difficult to know how they feel when they go to concerts where the audience is decades younger than them. Do they have the same feelings as I do? I think it’s interesting to think about how older audiences deal with situations like this because at some point in their lives, they were just like us. They moshed at concerts and screamed until their throat burned. Perhaps by going to concerts with young people, they are able to reminisce on the time when they were that age. When my dad and I went to a Love and Rockets concert over the summer, I knew he had traveled back in time to when he was in his twenties and was singing to this same music with his closest friends.

If you’re worried about not meeting the unspoken “age requirements” at a concert, get out of your head. It doesn’t matter if you’re surrounded by a bunch of dudes that look like your dad. If anything, they’ll think you’re cool for enjoying the artist they all grew up listening to. Music is such a universal experience that it shouldn’t be expected to carry any labels or restrictions. It’s hard to shake the intruding feeling, but sooner or later, you’re going to have to realize that most people don’t mind all that much, so you should start swaying to the music along with them. Like now, because this guy’s hit from 1993 just started playing and the crowd is gonna go wild with or without you… might as well join in.