This year’s interminable election season has helped spawn an outsize assortment of frequently vital protest music. Late Tuesday, as part of Stephen Colbert’s election-night special for Showtime, Arcade Fire premiered the first big post-election protest song of 2020.
Titled “Generation A,” and praised by Colbert as “a hopeful message to the youths,” the song leans hard into rousing grandiosity. And, while summing up the frustrations and furies of an entire generation is no easy feat, singer Win Butler finds a smart angle: the deep undercurrent of impatience that comes with waiting for your turn to lead.
“I don’t think they understand that I am not a patient man,” he sings en route to a chant-along chorus of “I can’t wait” and, less hopefully, “Too little, too late.”
Assuming it gets a studio version, “Generation A” will be Arcade Fire’s first release since… okay, a song on last year’s Dumbo soundtrack. But let’s consider it a sequel—and a worthy companion—to 2017’s Everything Now.
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