This is like a daily thread now & people still don't know what Voice of a Generation means. Christina Aguilera is the voice of a generation not for her vocal ability, but because she
symbolized that generation's struggle. I would consider it the last generation, because the generation she was dubbed The Voice of a Generation are in their 20s with children now. The great voice part is just a coincidence, it has nothing to do with the title.
Most people are familiar with their parents repressing their looks to not offend the rest of society or whatever. She was forced to be a goodie two shoes for a while even though she didn't want to be doing that - re: her first album & bubblegum pop image. Once she was able to make her own decisions, she experimented a ton. She was "finding herself" in the public eye. She would purposely come out looking a DISASTER to prove a point about beauty. She dyed her hair from a sandy blonde to a gothic black and got so many piercings/tats - that was considered extremely rebellious at the time. She was more vocal and honest about how she felt compared to any other pop girl at the time, who were determined not to push the envelope too much & played nice. The video Beautiful caused so much controversy since she included gay men kissing, anorexic/bulimic people, people in drag, etc. and that was still a very VERY touchy subject at the time but obviously it resonated with many people at the time because it's now a classic. Maybe YOU don't remember, but 10 years ago the youth were pretty repressed still and people were A LOT more judgmental than they are now. THAT is mostly why she is the Voice of a Generation. She represents the struggle of those teens growing up being judged and controlled constantly. Her music, particularly Stripped,
reflects common grievances her generation was suffering from. She's literally won awards TITLED The Voice of a Generation. She touched the topics that other popular celebrities (who appealed to that generation) were not touching at the time in order to not be surrounded in scandal.
Times are different now. Nowadays, does anyone really bat an eye when a singer really gets ****ty? It's simply expected of them. You have to pull a Miley Cyrus and get downright ridiculous or completely naked to get attention. No one even protests popular music anymore - there were literally protests all the time by concerned parents when Christina, Britney and Eminem were out. Kids aren't even that wild with their clothing choices because that generation went overboard and caused all these dress code rules to really become enforced. Sex was very cliche still, and Britney only avoided ridiculous backlash by telling everyone every 3 seconds that she was a virgin and keeping it a bit classier with her "innocent but sexy" image, even though we all knew it was a lie.
The next Voice of the Generation is (apparently) the girl who created Girls, Lena Dunham. She is THIS generation's Voice of a Generation. I literally know nothing about this girl so don't come for me for that. Just google it. It's everywhere. Even
Anna Wintour issued a statement saying she was the Voice of a Generation after putting her on the cover of Vogue. Here are just a few more reciepts:
Rollingstone ,
Wall Street Journal,
Salon ,
New York Post,
The Wire,
TIME,
The Guardian,
The Independent, see her title as the Voice of a Generation listed
here on the front page of this magazine. Everywhere.
So if you mean best VOCALIST of our generation, then make sure you specify that. I can't hang around ATRL all day and teach you people common English phrases and their meanings. Ya'll are obsessed with this damn title and most of you seem to have no idea what it even means. I will keep repeating this in every voice of a generation thread until it's absorbed.