These days baby boomers, especially women, are in something of a panic. Demographically, professionally, financially and sociologically, they’ve been dominating American culture for nearly half a century now, while succeeding generations have waited, often impatiently, for them to get the hell out of the way. This summer, however, boomers confront the reality that whether they look to the left or the right, neither candidate for the highest office in our land represents their generation. One guy is old enough to be their dad’s little brother; the other guy wasn’t even out of kindergarten when Martin and Bobby were killed. Should Obama win the presidency and hold it until Generation X is fully ascendant in the political realm, the boomers’ entire presidential legacy will likely rest on the shoulders of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

I note this fact not (merely) to rub the boomers’ presidential mediocrity in their faces, but because I’m so sick to death of celebrating political and entertainment milestones that perpetuate the boomers’ vision of themselves as the most culturally significant batch of malcontents ever to walk the planet. The most recent of these is among the most egregious: last week’s release of a “30th-Anniversary Edition” of Billy Joel’s breakthrough album The Stranger. The release is timed, no doubt, to coincide with Joel’s pair of sold-out shows this week at the soon-to-be-torn-down Shea Stadium, a facility that (like Joel himself) has been sitting fat and happy on Long Island for far too long. This coalescence of events resulted in a lengthy, at-times humorous profile of Joel in the New York Times yesterday – an article whose accompanying photograph by Damon Winter revealed the full measure of Joel’s advancing age, in a manner similar to Richard Avedon’s iconic image of a dying Humphrey Bogart.

Don’t get me wrong – I don’t really have anything against The Stranger, or Joel in general, and a fresh digital remastering is almost always nice. But if The Stranger is going to be offered up as the latest boomer nostalgia trip, then let’s really think about its significance.

Jason Hare will be the first to tell you that “Just the Way You Are,” the album’s leadoff and biggest hit, is one of the touchstones of ’70s Mellow Gold; in retrospect, it stands in the memory with certain other artifacts of middle-class pop culture in 1978 – The Goodbye Girl, say, or perhaps Barry Manilow’s Even Now album – as anecdotal evidence of a generation starting to go soft. Meanwhile, “Vienna” reflects the boomers’ ’70s-era shift from changing the world to an “I’m OK, You’re OK” self-help mentality, and “The Stranger” (apart from sounding like a perfect theme song for Eyes of Laura Mars or Looking for Mr. Goodbar) seems to warn against the very emotional openness engendered by boomer trends from Flower Power to disco. (more…)