Songs for Elders

Turn the music up!!! (bc I am hard of hearing)

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As the hot heat of summer wanes, thousands descend on Austin for Austin City Limits, the two week festival featuring every great indie artist you’ve never heard of. Happening since 2002, ACL now exists in the niche of concert festivals of being more mature than Outsidelands and just slightly less annoying than Coachella.

The hipsters who used to attend ACL when tickets were affordable, are now middle aged with families, forgoing festivals for breweries where their kids can play on a playground as they sip on the newest local sour. Their weekend plans may have changed, but their music tastes stay the same. This revelation has led to a very troubling trend: former ACL indie darling songs now playing in Amazon commercials for elder millennials.

I first noticed it when Mazda used M83’s Outro in their commercial from 2018. I had seen M83 two years previous at ACL, running around without a care in the world and no cell service in Zilker park. Just two years later, Outro was playing as I was targeted for Mazda’s mid-range SUV’s gas mileage.

Now it’s everywhere I look - great alternative bands in the background on Amazon, Hulu, and Targets across the nation (I assume). Below is a list of songs that if you’re a millennial of a certain age it’s possible that you were on drugs when the song first played onstage and were buying diapers when you've heard the song recently.

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Band: Portugal the Man, Feel it Still

Year at ACL: 2013

Commerical: Orgain Protein Powder so you can keep up at your kid's soccer game

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Band: Strfckr, Rawnald Gregory Erickson the Second

Year at ACL: After party 2013

Commerical: Target

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Band: Cage The Elephant, Trouble

Year at ACL: ACL Live 2020

Commerical: Amazon - buying a fort for your kid

Band: The Temper Trap, Sweet Disposition

Year at ACL: 2010

Commerical: Diet Coke

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Band: Fleet Foxes, White Winter Hymnal

Year at ACL: 2011

Commerical: L.L. Bean White Winter Christmas

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Band: Radiohead, House of Cards

Year at ACL: 2016

Commerical: NBA Playoffs

Okay, the NBA playoffs don’t scream Millennial experience, but I do love the idea of a Radiohead song from In Rainbows pay-what-you-want album being a part of the largest money-making sport.

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I know it’s natural to age. For experiences to change. And the reality is, I could use some Orgain protein powder. Also, I don’t recognize most of the acts anymore on the ACL lineup past the second line on the poster.

In a short period of time I went from longboarding to class listening to Strfckr to deciding what Christmas plates I want to use … while listening to Strfckr. So I’m keeping a close eye on the lineup at this year’s ACL. And if the day comes where a Maggie Rogers song is playing in an ad for Depends, bury me under the ACL balloon, because my bones are DUST.