Playlists from My Gen Z Little Cousin

For years, millennials have been considered the tastemakers, and more rapidly than you can say “old,” it seems like our generation has aged out of setting the trends. Our usurpers? Kids born between 1996 and 2010, AKA Gen Z, and hey, I’ll be the first to admit they’re cooler than me. What I’ve learned about this generation is they’re savvier than millennials ever were. They’re more enlightened, more cautious, more allergic to punctuation, and more given to hyperbole.

They seem more acutely aware of the consequences of their action than any other generation before. It’s really no surprise considering they’re a generation who grew up reading public shaming pieces of bad behavior. They understand the permanence of the internet. Snapchat and Stories where such evidence doesn’t threaten their future college admissions nearly as much is popular amongst this group. Am I talking in broad generalizations? Yes, yes, I am. But one this is a fact is that this generation spends more time on their homework than us. According to the Pew Research Center, “teens (ages 15 to 17) spend an hour a day, on average, doing homework during the school year, up from 44 minutes a day about a decade ago and 30 minutes in the mid-1990s.” And all that time doing homework means they must have some pretty cool playlists.

My insider in this generation is my little cousin Pattie, who’s graduating from college this June (a year early to boot, because she’s an overachiever). It was Pattie’s idea to write a post on underrated music artists for the blog, and I decided to hand the reigns for this piece over to her, because frankly, I’ve been listening to a lot of the same songs for the last five years, and also because I’m kind of curious what the kids are playing these days. At my request, she created three playlists for you guys. If you’re wondering why Harry Styles is on these playlists, well, just remember this is the generation of One Direction.

Here is a workout playlist, a playlist for home, and one for the commute she’s aptly named “move,” “chill,” and “drive” respectively. Enjoy.

Featured photo by Fimpli