“Generation Why” is the third single and video from Weyes Blood’s (Natalie Mering's stage name) forthcoming album, Front Row Seat To Earth. The song's title also serves as a homophone for 'Generation Y'; Mering is invested in the idea of how contemporary youth culture - and its obsessions with hedonistic consumerism and materialistic consumption - has created an unsustainable relationship with the environment:
'Going to see end of daysI've been hanging on my phone all dayAnd the fear goes awayI might not need to stayOn this sinking ship for longI can give it away everydayI can fly and spend all my secondsLike they're my lastIt's not the past that scares meNow what a great future this is gonna be
Y-o-l-o, why?Y-o-l-o, why?'
Lyrics: Genius
The video is aptly littered with the spoils of contemporary civilization: old computers (which house a human heart), lime green Gatorade, an old Nokie phone, a T-shirt stating that 'Everything Must Go'. But Mering's interest in modernity does not translate into her sonic palette - she creates a cosmic, timeless soundscape with a pastoral folk-inspired ballad and her 'robustly forlorn' soprano vocals.
Her deeply personal contemplation of the current state of humanity expands to take on an universal dimension - as "the song’s aching melody and deeply layered music express the anguish of our hubristic moment, where technology, climate change, and new conceptions of the human all blend together, producing a truly modern cosmology: accepting the impermanence of our existence as it truly should be, a beautiful thing" (MexicanSummer.com). Mering serves as modernity's classical muse, promising transcendence from the ravages of the digital age.
