Rise Against’s “Nowhere Generation” is a song that I’d like to put on a pedestal as being the most laughably bad punk song that I have heard possibly in my entire life. Even the name of their band “Rise Against” is so vaguely rebellious that it’s a literal fill-in-the-blank about whatever you want to rebel against.
That’s basically all you get with this song; it’s your typical rebellious song with vague lyrics taking shots at whatever they are taking shots against. Either that or they just want you to decide who it’s against; adults, the government, businesses. Basically, whatever “the establishment” is that’s holding down this generation these days.
I’ll even give an example of some lyrics to give a taste of how “rebellious” this song is: “We are the kids that no one wants; We are a credible threat to the rules you set. A cause to be alarmed.” It’s just your typical ‘we are going to go against your status quo and show you just how powerful our generation is.’
I think the lyric that made me give up on this song having any redeemable qualities is “We speak a language you don’t know.” That’s basically the equivalent of “Parents just won’t understand us youth.” That may have been a cool, rebellious thing to say in the late 80s/early 90s, but it’s extremely corny in the year 2021.
The instrumentation doesn’t even attempt to sound unique; just a distorted electric guitar with a boring drum beat, almost like a Green Day song except instead of something creative, it sounds similar to the opening to “Last Week Tonight.”
If you want to listen to some good, rebellious music made with care, creativity and has actual messages to convey, I recommend picking up Pink Floyd. Compare their song “Brick in the Wall” to “Nowhere Generation” and you can see there’s more instrumental creativity and an actual message that’s explained and conveyed lyrically rather than sentences for people to convey their opinions onto.