The Confusion of Conan Gray's "Generation Why"

I want to start by saying that I really like Conan. I’ve watched, I think, every video of his, and I have all his songs saved. I think he’s so cool and inspiring, in terms of his fashion sense and his work ethic and his art.  Even though I think his jumpy-pop songs about a psychopathic almost-ex, while relatable, are getting repetitive, I look forward to every new song. But I dislike “Generation Why”. I think it’s confused.

For those who don’t know it, here’s the song:

The first thing that’s confused is what generation he’s talking about. The title is meant to be a pun on “Generation Y”, which would be really clever if he wasn’t actually talking about “our” generation, gen Z. I suspect he thought of the pun, thought it was really clever, and thought that despite the obvious disparity, he could get away with it; the pun would shove itself in and make itself fit. He then goes on to call us “millennium kids”. Which one is it, Conan?

His lyrics, at least at first, seem to represent the Gen-Z diaspora:

Millennium kids, that all wanna die
Walking in the street with no light inside our eyes

….

'Cause at this rate of earth decay
Our world's ending at noon
Could we all just move to the moon?

This is the zeitgeist we’re all familiar with: suicidal, existential kids faced with the ruins of the world caused by the greed of the generations before us. 

But his lyrics also include sentiment that is almost antithetical to it:

We are the worthless, cursed with too much time

So which is it, Conan? Do we have time or not? In fact, his lyrics seem to verge often into “Idle Town” territory, which, in fairness, is a great song, but which does match this one.

This town don't got much to do
And you and I haven't got much to lose
So do you wanna leave everyone in this place for good?

vs 

We all vowed that we wouldn't stay

Kissing signs on the interstate

…

Yeah, we invent our own little games (in our idle town)

And everybody's trying to escape (in our idle town)

Given that this was his first official release under UMG, maybe he was trying to stick to the idyllic idleness sentiment that made his breakout song so popular. The music video (above) seems to reflect this too. But it just doesn’t fit here, at least not for me.

What surprises me about all this is that Conan is part of UMG, the biggest record label in the world. Surely someone along the lines would have pointed out these inconsistencies? Just like how, in the official release of “wish u were gay” by Billie Eilish, about how she wishes a boy were gay so it would be less humiliating that he’s not interested in her, her lyrics “maybe I’m just not your preferred gender orientation” were “corrected” (probably by her label, Interscope Records) to “maybe I’m just not your preferred sexual orientation”, which makes little to no sense.

Now, the obvious answer to all this is that he’s voicing a rift, the juxtaposition of his life in his small town and the larger global mood that him and his friends feel and see online. But somehow, given the clumsiness of the title, I don’t think that’s what’s going on here. Just like how, in “Crush Culture”, Conan writes, “crush culture makes me wanna spill my guts” instead of “spew my guts”, giving a whole different meaning to what he’s saying, I think it’s a case of confusion that has been for the most part, in his rising popularity, overlooked.