Becoming "The Greatest Generation," with The Wonder Years

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“I don’t want to take anything away and say they weren’t great, but I think it’s kind of fucked up saying that’s the greatest it can get and we’re okay with being who we are and just trying to get by.” 

-Dan Campbell (The Wonder Years), 

 when asked how his generation is portrayed in the media

From February 6-8, The Wonder Years played three 10^th Anniversary shows, one for each of their last three albums: The Upsides, Suburbia I’ve Given You All, and The Greatest Generation. During the final show on Sunday, the band will performed The Greatest Generation in its entirety, and I was in attendance.  The Greatest Generation is an album that, since it was released, was remained among my most listened to, and one of the only constant CDs I keep in my car. To celebrate the anniversary concerts (specifically the final one) I’ve decided to reexamine The Wonder Years’ fourth album, partly to see why it resonated with fans so much, and partly to try and explain my own obsession with it. 

Let’s start with the title, shall we? The Greatest Generation is lifted from Tom Brokaw’s 1998 book The Greatest Generation. Brokaw wrote his book to honor the men and women that grew up during the Great Depression, fought in World War II and have made invaluable contributions to society. Brokaw dubbed these men and women – the “they” in Campbell’s above quote – “the greatest generation any society has produced.” The “we” in Campbell’s quote is his own generation, my generation, and possibly yours as well: the Millennial generation. By calling their album The Greatest Generation The Wonder Years assert that Brokaw’s book holds a generational relevancy to young adults in their mid-twenties. The relevancy is that because of “the greatest generation,” and the supposed impossibility of matching their accomplishments, the Millennial generation is unmotivated and “have become content with mediocrity.”

You’d be right to call The Greatest Generation a concept album. Every aspect of it contributes to its message of striving to be a better person, a better generation, starting with the album art. Visually, the album gives us clues to its intentions before we even hear the first track. To further the “greatest generation” motif, the album cover features a black and white photograph of a young World War II soldier cropped in front of a drawing of a devil. The symbolism is straightforward – no points for correctly guessing that this is “The Devil in My Bloodstream” that plagues Campbell later. Inside the cover, the liner notes are littered with old photos of members of the greatest generation. These people are not the band members’ families – just old timey, black-and-white photos from thrift stores – nor do they need to be. The people could be anyone; here they represent everyone. Transposed over the black-and-white photos are visual motifs that show up in the song lyrics: blackbirds fly above a family (“The Devil in My Bloodstream”), bombs are pointed at a group of youths (“An American Religion FSF”), a devil joins a couple holding a pistol (duh), bombs in the shape of pills and prescription containers rain onto a group (“Dismantling Summer”), and a ghost lurks behind a young girl (“Passing Through a Screen Door”). The illustrations are ironic, they are the maladies that haunt Campbell’s generation, the personal struggles that show up in his lyrics. Only now they are drawn onto photographs of the greatest generation so they can feel how Campbell feels. It’s a clever role reversal.

The inside flap is where The Wonder Years state their goals for the album: “We’re sick of settling for good. We’re sick of calling someone else the greatest. It’s our turn to shape the world. This is our chance to push through the challenges and the setbacks and define ourselves.” Important to note: The Wonder Years are not out to slight the World War II generation. The band does not want to take away from that generation’s accomplishments. The Greatest Generation (the album) is, however, out to explain that the moniker of “the greatest generation” is problematic. The Wonder Years believe that their generation has been stagnated by pressure to match the other’s achievements. In many cases, like in “Passing” or “Funeral,” the lyrics reflect The Wonders Years’ hope that it is not too late for Millennials to change. When asked about the goals of the album, Campbell responds: “the idea of the record is that we should be striving to be the greatest generation and we should stop the battles with ourselves, and we should start pushing to be the people we wanted to be as we grew up.” How many of had dreams of growing up to be famous, or the best *insert your chosen career here* in your field? Probably almost everyone, because those dreams are essential to being young and exuberant. But just because I didn’t grow up to play a professional sport does not mean I have failed. What it means is that I need to fill that void with another goal, a goal that I might achieve this time. Striving to be great and actually earning the title are two different things, but only by hoping to be the best, not second best, can our generation overcome personal battles. Campbell sees (t)his generation as people whose dreams have been obliterated by the paralyzing realities of growing up and needing to do something with their lives. When it gets hard to figure out what that something is, we begin personal battles with depression and fear. Not the battles of a World War, but a different type of war. A war with one’s self.

That took a rather dark turn, didn’t it? I should apologize, but these are the stakes of The Greatest Generation and why it is so much more than just a catchy pop-punk record. The Wonder Years have long had a peculiar fascination with the generational. On Suburbia, Campbell opens and closes with allusions to figures from previous generations. On “Came Out Swinging” he calls he and his bandmates “this generation’s Morgan Spurlock.” On “And Now I’m Nothing” he sings “I had dreams of being the Allen Ginsberg of my generation without the talent, madness, or vision.” Each role comes with a caveat, however. In fact, all his comparisons on Suburbia come with caveats. He “won’t admit defeat,” implying to Spurlock was defeated by his challenge, but Campbell is determined to succeed. Later, he wants to be Ginsberg, but he is “without the talent, madness, or vision,” leading him to believe “it’s looking hopeless.” Welp. Talking about hitting the nail on the head; The universality of that sentiment nicely sets up The Greatest Generation, which references Brokaw’s The Greatest Generation to argue that putting such a label on one generation makes following generations feel inadequate, which leads to fear of failure and complacency. A generational malaise, if you will. But The Greatest Generation (the album) is more than just a pouty record about young adults in the 21^st century. The Wonder Years make real attempts to reconcile with their malaise. Because of that, maybe you did, too.

Time to turn to the songs. We’ll start with “Passing Through a Screen Door,” a song that, at its core, is about not having a fucking clue what you are doing in your mid-twenties and being worried by this. Oh, and in addition to wandering aimlessly through life, you’ve got the pressure of meeting the expectations of your elders. When Campbell sings “I’m conjuring ghosts on a forty hour ride home. / And they keep asking me what I’m doing with my life, / While my cousins go to bed with their wives. / I’m feeling like I’m falling behind” he imagines the ghosts of either dead family members or other members of “the greatest generation” asking him what he has accomplished with his life. As he “conjures ghosts” he also conjures expectations for himself. When will he get married? Compared to his cousins, he is “falling behind.” If being unmarried means “falling behind,” marriage would then be a means of “getting ahead,” an indicator of having grown up and become an adult.

Writing this album at 26, Campbell was almost ten years older than some of the couples in Brokaw’s book, yet he feels like less of an adult because he is afraid of marriage: “What they say about stability / It scares me sometimes.” By the end, Campbell realizes that he has been avoiding marriage when everyone else in his age group has embraced it. During the emotional climax of the song, Campbell screams “Jesus Christ. I’m 26. / All the people I graduated with / All have kids, all have wives, / All have people who care if they come home at night. / Jesus Christ - did I fuck up?” By not marrying by 26, has he missed his chance? Obviously this question confronts drastically different problems between this generation of people in their mid-to-late twenties and Brokaw’s greatest generation. At 26, Brokaw’s subjects had already grown up during the Great Depression, had gotten married, and were fighting in World War II. Brokaw’s subjects “answered the call to help save the world from the two most powerful and ruthless military machines ever assembled.” What call is ours to answer?

In many cases the call is death. Well, that’s not much of a call, but death rears its ugly head all over The Greatest Generation, specifically on “Dismantling Summer.” To start, Campbell’s grandfather is sick and ailing, and he remembers taking care of him: “I’m filling your prescriptions / The orange bottles stare me down. They are standing at attention. / An army on your windowsill.” Campbell compares the prescription bottles to soldiers: standing at attention refers to the military posture of standing upright with your arms at your side with little body movement. The bottles copy the soldier’s perfect, vertical posture, implying that his grandfather served as a soldier. Later in life, The Wonder Years’ touring displaces Campbell from his sick grandfather: “If I'm in an airport / And you're in a hospital bed / Well, then, what kind of man does that make me?” It is a shame-on-me moment, but it’s also a moment many young adults encounter. When my grandfather was ailing last year, I was ten hours away at school while he stayed bedridden. My first-hand experience says it sucks not being there. “Dismantling Summer” may be very personal for Campbell, but its message is pervasive.

Again, we are veering into pessimistic territory, but The Greatest Generation is more than a woe-is-me album. As the album moves along, we make progress, starting with “The Devil in MyBloodstream’s” final lines of “I want to be strong, but it’s not easy anymore.” But if “Devil” is the start of getting better, “I Just Want to Sell Out My Funeral” is the conclusion. Do you think it is a coincidence that the album opens with Campbell making apologies and excuses (“I’m awkward and nervous”) on “There, There,” and closes with “Funeral” and his saying fuck making excuses and just let it be? The closer is a “slideshow song,” borrowing lyrics from previous songs to thematically and lyrically encapsulate the generational malaise scattered throughout the album. Take a look at this first verse: “I spent my life weighed down by a stone heart, / Drowning in irony and settling for anything. / Somewhere down the line all the wiring went faulty. / I'm scared shitless of failure and I'm staring out at where I wanna be.” We get the failure to love, like on “Passing Through a Screen Door.” Settling for anything is reminiscent of “We Could Die Like This.” Did anyone take him seriously when he says “I want to die in the suburbs?” I sure didn’t, not when he’ll die of a “heart attack shoveling snow all alone.” Sounds terrible. Sounds like you can do better.

Lest we forget, “Funeral” is about making progress, and nothing indicates progress more than the album’s final verse. The coda mixes new and recycled lyrics from earlier on the album to demonstrate Campbell finally moving away from his complacency and his depression:

Two blackbirds on a highway sign

Are laughing at me here with my wings clipped. 
I'm staring up at the sky but the bombs keep fucking falling. 
There's no devil on my shoulder;

He's got a rocking chair on my front porch but I won't let him in. 
No, I won't let him in;

'Cause I'm sick of seeing ghosts and I know how it's all gonna end. 
There's no triumph waiting; there's no sunset to ride off in.
We all want to be great men and there's nothing romantic about it.
I just want to know that I did all I could with what I was given.

All of the album’s visual motifs are here, from the blackbirds to the bombs, to the devil to the ghosts. Only this time the devil and ghosts, the depression, the fear of failure and the weight of expectation, are all outsiders. “I won’t let him in” could be a call-to-arms akin to “I’m not sad anymore,” a signal of overcoming your “devil.” By closing with “We all want to be great men and there’s nothing romantic about it” the song is saying that wanting to be better, to overcome depression or disillusionment, should be an inherent desire in everyone. The desire to improve need not be considered fanciful, but a fundamental part of living. It’s anthemic, it’s exhilarating, and it was incredible hearing this verse live in a crowd full of people; people who believe that it is indeed their time to be great, that, yes, we are tired of settling for good. Will it be easy? No, but it never was, not for our grandparents’ generation, or our parents’ generation, and it won’t be for our generation either. But The Greatest Generation tells us we can do it.