The Kids Are Alright (Part II)

My first "dad at the concert" experience

Photo credit: Kara Hawley/American-Statesman

Last night, our family journeyed to Milwaukee to see Paramore, a band that our daughters love. For some backstory, when my older daughter was a toddler, she somehow stumbled upon their song “The Only Exception,” and I quickly learned it on guitar (it’s easy, even for me) and she would sing. When Paramore played “The Only Exception” during the show, all the feelings came back (oh my heart). The concert was great, a good time was had by all, but that’s not why we’re here.

Given Covid’s recency, it’s been some time since I’ve been to a live rock concert (not something I do much anyway), and the last one I attended was Paul McCartney at Lambeau Field (incredible). But Paramore was the first show I’ve been to that really wasn’t “for me”—I was “a parent at the concert” for the first time, and I have to say, the show’s environment was as warm as any I’ve even been to, while also being very different and accepting.

First, I don’t think I’ve ever been to a live show where the star/lead singer is a woman—women artists are now selling out stadiums with much more frequency, and that’s fantastic. Hayley Williams, Paramore’s lead singer, is a superstar, and my daughters love her; they look at her with complete awe for who she is as a professional. Representation really does matter.

The first of two opening acts included The Linda Lindas, a punk act composed of—get this—four girls (I believe all non-white) aged 18, 16, 15, and 12! The drummer is 12! Now, my younger daughter played drums for a bit, took lessons, and could play just as well, if not better. For her to see The Linda Lindas and know that she could do that meant a ton to her. She is not much interested in drums anymore, but she also knows that when she was, she gave it her all and she could play. In other words, she did a cool thing and then decided to move on to some other cool things.

But to get to the point: this was the most diverse crowd I’ve ever seen, and it all felt so natural, especially to my daughters, who don’t think twice about this stuff. They don’t know how a man wearing a dress, or attending this show publicly in drag, would have been received extremely differently (and not positively) when I was their age. There were same-sex couples everywhere at the show, holding hands, openly enjoying themselves, including two folks seated directly in front of us. There’s no other way to put this—“the kids” today are far better at this part of life than my generation (at least as I knew my generation). When I was my daughters’ ages, words like “faggot” and its endless permutations were regular linguist currency, as common as pennies. (Good thing pennies aren’t as common anymore.)

I’d like to say I was a better, more enlightened person when I was my daughters’ ages and that I could see “above” that era. I wasn’t. At least not in this way. My daughters are simply better at seeing people as people. Sure, they still have categories and cliques, but sexuality is largely absent from that worldview, or maybe it’s assumed a much lower place in whatever makes up the current high school hierarchy. My kids regularly talk about same-sex dating among their friend groups and in a perfectly matter-of-fact way. I’m not sure if attaching this change to chronology matters much—whether it was slow or fast (unless we’re talking about specific rights, like the right to marry), but there exists a profound difference between how my children experience and interpret gender than how I did at their age. Frankly, it makes me ashamed of my younger self. The power of “fitting in” is excruciatingly real.

There were a few other moments that stood out. Hayley Williams, Paramore’s lead and superstar, invited a young black girl on stage to join her in a song—the girl, maybe ten years old—was understandably frozen and didn’t move much (her father was with her on stage, recording). Milwaukee, for a long-time running now, has some of the worst social outcomes for black communities in the United States; to put it plainly, this is not by accident, with deliberate resistance and consistent funding cuts to public transportation being one of many tools to limit opportunity for black citizens to, for example, travel to suburban areas for work. Calling this young girl, Audrey, to the stage and letting her be both seen and heard was powerful in a city like Milwaukee. Of course, the crowd was fully supportive and loved this, chanting Audrey’s name as she made her way back to her seat.

There were also two incidents where people required medical assistance—this was accomplished so politely and efficiently, with the bands stopping their shows, that it felt barely noticed. The crowd would signal, the vocalist would see/point, the person was safely taken away in 30 seconds, the singer would say, “thank you for looking out for each other,” and then boom, right back to it. The niceness, unity, and warmth shared among 18,000 people, nearly all younger than me (I did see some grandparents there, and they were cool too) was, frankly, astonishing.

Why was my generation, at my current daughters’ ages, not this warm? Or am I wrong in asking this? Why are they able to look at something that once seemed to matter so much (sexual orientation or identity) and not blink or even really notice? Why are they so much better at this? I truly need to reflect on this more, but I will say that I love my kids for uncountable reasons, one of them being simply how much better and smarter they are than me. However that happened, I am grateful.

I am happy for all of this. I love it. And based on what I saw in last night’s crowd, they are far from the only exception. The kids I saw last night are alright.