The summer season of millennial nostalgia remains to be going robust as popular culture and youthful generations appear to be celebrating all issues early 2000s. However there’s one Obama-era music second that the web is determined to depart previously: the “stomp clap hey” style.
It’s a distaste that has been percolating on-line for years, solely to burst throughout social media in current days.
“This complete technology of stomp clap Ho hey indie people was horrible,” one X person wrote this week. “It’s answerable for a few of mankind’s worst errors akin to pumpkin lattes, Brooklyn’s gentrification and Taylor Swift.”
The country pop-indie people subgenre that dominated the early to mid-2010s has at all times been a controversial second in music historical past, finest outlined by its anthemic, usually percussion-heavy sound made well-known by The Lumineers, Mumford & Sons, and Of Monsters and Males. It’s the type of quirky music tailored for Coachella and Bonnaroo, group sing-alongs, hand claps, and, sure, actually stomping and shouting “Hey!” that reigned supreme within the millennial-hipster zeitgeist.
During the last week, a clip of one of many defining moments of the subgenre has been making the rounds on-line: Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros performing “Residence” of their 2009 NPR “Tiny Desk” live performance. Within the clip, the 2 lead singers of the 10-person troupe are dancing and singing in faux-Appalachian accents to their hit track that serves because the unofficial anthem of the period’s hipster Americana aesthetic.
And the web is riled up in regards to the reminder of the “worst track ever made” within the “worst style ever.”
“Go forward. Put the ‘Alabama, Arkansas’ stomp clap video in my TL once more. Do it,” Semafor politics reporter David Weigel posted on X this week, referring to a lyric from “Residence.”
Outrage over the short-lived subgenre has been within the zeitgeist for some time, with the music even incomes its nickname from a 2021 viral tweet that featured an image of a person sporting a stereotypically corny hipster outfit. Since then, Reddit threads, TikToks and articles have emerged about “stomp clap hey,” which some consider is without doubt one of the extra cringeworthy moments of millennial tradition. Comic Kyle Gordon even made a parody music video a-la “stomp clap hey” set in Brooklyn, New York, full with a chant, skinny denims and plenty of hats.
“The battle over what’s ‘stomp clap hey’ is a superb instance of Twitter music discourse as a result of it wasn’t coined by a musician or music journalist: it was a tweet that wasn’t even a couple of band or particular subgenre however a sort of man,” one individual wrote on X.
For some haters, the style is a reminder of a cultural and political flash level, when People have been grappling with the aftermath of the 2008 monetary disaster and determined for the hope-filled Obama period as millennial hipsterdom hit its peak. Others, nevertheless, consider the style is enjoyable and represents a fleeting second of social escapism, and the discourse is par for the course for various music tastes.
“Stomp Clap Hey music is the proper relic of the Obama period: inexplicably ascendant motion constructed from the worst bits and items of the previous, cobbled collectively into vaguely hopeful but finally meaningless chants and slogans,” an X person mentioned in response to the “Tiny Desk” clip.
Martin Scherzinger, an affiliate professor of media, tradition and communication at New York College, described the “stomp clap hey” style as “a model of invented nostalgia, coopted, on the one hand, by the music business and the tasteless company logic of music streaming; but additionally, however, clearly steady with (and legible to) a model of real folkish (if globalized) Americana.”
“The periodic eruptions of collectivized hating on a music style — branding ‘stomp clap hey’ as indie gentrification, the commercialization of caprice, nostalgic inauthenticity, and so on. — is usually a type of development of its personal, a barely misguided goal for a bigger problem regarding social and sophistication resentment,” he wrote in an e-mail to NBC Information. “Like so many different cultural eruptions, that is figuring out a dated style as a much bigger downside than it ever was; a cultural response to a structural problem going through us immediately.”
The re-emerged hate for “stomp clap hey,” nevertheless, remains to be barely stunning given the newfound social adoption of all issues millennial throughout generational strains and the ironic coolness that has returned to beforehand critiqued bands like Limp Bizkit and Korn. And as new artists, akin to Noah Kahan, appear to invoke the identical folksy soul, some are questioning whether or not “stomp clap hey” is again.
Gen Zers, who as soon as mocked millennial tradition as “cheugy,” at the moment are glamorizing it on-line, as a whole lot of TikTok customers pay tribute to all issues early 2000s. Reboots of millennial classics akin to “The Satan Wears Prada” and “Freaky Friday” at the moment are driving Hollywood, whereas the Backstreet Boys are enjoying sold-out reveals on the Sphere in Las Vegas.
Kate Kennedy, writer of “One in a Millennial: On Friendship, Emotions, Fangirls, and Becoming In,” beforehand advised NBC Information that this current surge of millennial-focused popular culture serves as “the following stage of escapism” for the technology. And if there’s something “stomp clap hey” offered for followers within the 2000s — and will quickly do once more — it’s nostalgia escapism.
“The final two days of stomp clap dialogue was the primary budding of 2010s nostalgia btw. Strap in,” one X person wrote.
