Birth rates in America were sagging low in the mid-70s… in raw numbers, they sunk down near three million newborns a year. They were cresting relatively high around 1990, with raw numbers topping four million a year. You don’t exactly have to be a sociologist to notice that the sheer size of this age cohort makes its members’ lives, and their relationship with pop culture, a little different from others’. People born during a dip in the birth rate grow up consuming a lot of culture that’s aimed at someone older than them. People born during a boom do not do cultural apprenticeship, because everything is quickly aimed at them; they watch the things that appeal to their age group bloom and succeed, whether anyone else is interested in it or not. This is why some Americans have spent decades clutching their heads as the Baby Boom generation makes big chunks of our world revolve around itself: Large cohorts have a large gravitational pull.

Nitsuh Abebe wrote this great column about someone who called My Chemical Romance my generation’s Nirvana, our boom of MySpace bands, and how Skrillex is a weird outgrowth of that. 

[In which Andrew writes about… My Chemical Romance?]

Not half an hour ago, I watched the new My Chemical Romance video premiere on MTVu while I ate breakfast. The name of the song contains no real words, twelve non-words and a set of parentheses.

It’s pretty easy to hate My Chemical Romance and Gerard Way. I haven’t listened to enough of their music to launch into well-thought-out criticism of it, but I imagine it would be like shooting fish in a barrel. I think it goes without saying that the demographic of people over the age of fifteen who would list My Chemical Romance among their favorite bands without irony or nostalgia is a pretty small one.

However, I suspect that Gerard Way knows this, because I suspect that Gerard Way is a very intelligent person.

Apart from being the lead singer of My Chemical Romance, Gerard Way has also written an award-winning graphic novel for Dark Horse, so it comes as no surprise that his knack for creating music and supplementary art by way of a heavy-handed, Tim Burtonesque, classic-rock pastiche is the reason MCR is currently hanging in there better than any other hot-c.2004-emo-band.

Watching the music video for MCR’s new single, looking at the high production-value used to achieve this Tarantino-does-Buck-Rogers pastiche, and the attempt at using narrative in the space of a five-minute video, you realize that Gerard Way is a fantastic salesman and I think he needs to be appreciated for this, regardless of how you may feel about his music. 

Gerard Way is aware that his music is lacking in some regards, but he also knows that because he’s a smart guy, that doesn’t necessarily kill him in the crib. You can sell out Madison Square Garden with expensive production and spectacle - KISS knew this and Gerard Way knows this. A band with a strong image, with a personal mythology - something for obsessive people to latch onto - that sells, too.

I really don’t mean to sound cynical or bitter about it - the music industry is an insanely difficult place to remain visible for six years, so I’m genuinely impressed with them “making it” using mostly marketing and spectacle. It could be called “inauthentic,” maybe. Maybe it “compromises artistic integrity.” Whatever. I say “good for him.”

I say Gerard Way is a fantastic hustler.

The latest efforts in music blogging from Andrew Alan McClain.

21, junior at the University of Central Arkansas, journalism major.

This is my music blog.

email me your most whimsical thoughts at andrewmcclain3@gmail.com