A rock critic imagined future generations finding 1960s music alien and noted how originals spawn imitators that reshape cultural memory. A viral Tiny Desk clip of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros forces millennials to reevaluate late-2000s folk-rock aesthetics. The performance's homespun cheerfulness collides with contemporary images of suffering, creating a jarring, cringe-inducing effect. Observers question whether the band's popularity reflected genuine taste, corporate radio promotion, earnest belief, or calculated shtick. The clip functions as a cultural artifact that now feels distant and puzzling, prompting reflection on how recent musical pasts age and lose familiarity.
Projecting himself into the old age he would never reach, he pictured his future grandkids asking him about the music of the '60s: "What's all this shit about the Yardbirds?" It was a challenge to articulate the significance of a decade that had already hardened into a myth, as well as to reckon again with an original whose legions of imitators would go on to take over the world.
A clip of the folk-rock band's 2009 Tiny Desk Concert has become one of those pieces of internet backwash that periodically float to the top of one's feed. One moment you are reading the news and seeing images of unspeakable human suffering, and then suddenly there they are again: two extremely unshowered people singing greeting-card lines at one another, flanked by a phalanx of their pals, who play ukuleles and hand percussion and occasionally join in with a hey!
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