This video went viral a while back – two young, African American men reacting to Phil Collins’ “In The Air Tonight” on their first time listening to it.
It seems like a lot of African American YouTubers have picked up on the trend – witness my results when searching for the video up above.
I read somewhere (sorry, no cite, don’t remember where) that these personalities may not be telling the truth. The author speculated that it’s virtually impossible for any American with access to a TV, FM radio, and/or the internet to simply escape mainstream pop culture. And though my source didn’t specifically mention “In The Air Tonight,” I do have to concede that this is almost certainly one of the Top 50 Most Important Rock Songs Of All Time, maybe even in the Top 20. It seems unlikely that anyone could have missed this.
On the other hand, however, I don’t know what goes on in minority homes in the U.S. Maybe the kids are only exposed to “their” music and only watch TV oriented towards them. Maybe they truly are experiencing ITAT for the first time.
So what’s your take on this? Are these YouTubers lying to us and making money by reacting to something they’re already familiar with, however obliquely? Or do you think it’s possible that someone growing up in a minority family in a minority community in the US could miss key parts of mainstream pop culture?
I don’t know if it’s a generational thing or perhaps the way music is consumed now and hits and pop culture are all more niche, but I definitely know that most of my black friends around my age know that song and Phil Collins. Almost everyone knows that drum break. In fact (not to say that all black people primarily listen to hip-hop) that song has been sample MANY times, including songs that retained much of the lyrical content and basic structure and identifiable parts. Google “Phil Collins hip hop samples” and you get an Ultimate Classic Rock article from 2 years ago that has 20 examples of just that song being sampled in recent rap songs. Going through that list, the DMX song wasn’t a single or hit but that album sold something like 4 million copies almost immediately (perhaps dated being from the lats 90s, idk), the Lil Kim song was pretty much a cover featuring Phil. a lot of deep cuts here, for sure. One song I didn’t even see mentioned, Beanie Sigel’s “Feel it in the Air” was a single on his #3 album in 2005. Not a hit, really, but inescapable if you listened to mainstream rap in 2005.
Then there was the Bone Thugs single that sampled “Take Me Home.” They even flew to Switzerland so that he would be in the video. I remember seeing that and apparently it made a VH1 countdown as one of the “least hip hop moments” in history. So I don’t know about these guys specifically or kids these days, but Phil Collins was not unknown to black music audiences.
Those dudes are 22 years old and have spent most of their musical lives listening to hip hop and R&B so it is very possible that Phil Collins only recently entered their awareness.
Many of the hip hop songs sampled from Phil came out before they were born or when they were very young.
I’ve checked out a few of their videos and they are just being introduced to artists like Prince, Al Green, The Fugees, Earth Wind & Fire, etc… If these kids weren’t familiar with these standard-bearers of black music then I have no doubt they didn’t know who Phil Collins was.
I think they decide the next song to listen to based on which recommendation has the most likes in the comment sections of their videos
Most rap fans don’t give a shit about where a sample came from and do not seek out the original
The American cultural experience isn’t as ubiquitous as many of us would like to believe. There are lots of gaps and blind spots
Yes. Entirely possible. Especially something that was outdated way before the current time.
This has got jack to do with them being minorities and everything to do with the complete irrelevance of dinosaur rock to modern youth.
A friend’s younger sister thought the Commodore’s “Brick House” was a brand new song when it was featured heavily in the trailers for Big Mama’s House in 2000. And that song was only 20-something years old at the time.
Back in the 1980s, I was in college - a friend of mine though that “All of Me” had been written for the movie (the song is from 1931 All of Me (jazz standard) - Wikipedia ). No doubt many people thought the theme from Married with Children (“Love and Marriage”) was original - but it was from 1955. No big deal.
I’ve seen them where they are getting their first listen to the Andrew sisters signing “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy”. Others are country songs from the 60’s and 70’s.
Growing up I didn’t seek out musical genres outside of a limited few, why would that be any less true for anyone else? I mean, hell, I’ve been on the internet nearly every day since the mid 1990’s, own and watch a TV, listen to radio, etc. and am still largely ignorant of the whole hip-hop genre. For that matter, since I don’t care for jazz and don’t seek it out I’m pretty much oblivious to that, too. On the other hand, if you want to talk about the Beatles, rock and roll from the 1950’s through the 1980’s, traditional bagpipe music, English-language folk music, and some of the 500 year old Irish tunes originally popularized on harp I’m your gal.
I’m also pretty ignorant of a lot of the pop stars and young actors these days. I just don’t bother to keep up with them all. So maybe something by Beyonce is old hat to you but it is entirely possible it really will be brand new to me.
So yes, it is entirely conceivable to me that we have folks in their 20’s only familiar with a narrow range of music.
Are there some fakers taking advantage of the trend? Probably - there always seems to be someone “taking advantage”.
But I think the two young men in the linked video at least started with very limited musical exposure. As time goes by they become more and more informed and their reactions are probably less raw.
Speaking to some of the young’uns at my work (early 20s mostly), and it’s amazing the stuff they don’t know about. And I work in a big media company in London where popular culture is at the centre of the stuff we do. However the kids at my work certainly know a ton about new stuff that I don’t.
One of the guys I work with does a music podcast and I recently played him Rage Against The Machine for the first time. He’d never even heard of them.
Is Phil Collins really that ubiquitous? If you don’t listen to certain mainstream radio stations that haven’t updated their playlists in the last 30 years why would you have heard this song?
Back in the 1990s, I remember a survey of the top 10 shows that were popular in white and black American households. The only two shows that both groups had in common were The Simpsons and Monday Night Football. While on the surface it does seem incredulous that someone might not have heard “In the Air Tonight,” I imagine it didn’t receive a lot of airplay on radio stations with a lot of black listeners.
And you also have to remember something, “In the Air Tonight” is almost 40 years old at this point. If these reaction videos were made by people who mostly listen to contemporary music on stations aimed towards a black audience, there’s a good chance they haven’t heard the song. Or may very well have heard it and forgotten about it.
I myself cannot remember ever hearing “Word Up” by Cameo in the 1980s. It’s not as wildly successful as “In the Air Tonight,” but a lot of people remember the song and even though I listened to a lot of radio back then I cannot recall hearing that song. I didn’t know it existed until I saw an SNL skit in the late 90s with a bunch of celebrities complaining about Napster.
Billie Eilish was recently criticized for not knowing who Van Halen was but at least one member of the band defended her though. Eilish was born in 2001 and I think the last time Van Halen made a big splash was in 1991 so it’s understandable that she didn’t know who they were.
