Millennials are so yesterday. It’s all about Gen Z – young people roughly between the age of 14 to 29 or Zoomers to us. The youngest are taking GCSEs, deciding about further education and where their lives may take them, the oldest are forming companies, running for parliament and starting families of their own. So, as a Gen X woman, I’m thinking maybe it’s time to gen up on Gen Z.
The first fully digitally integrated generation, they are reputedly more surveyed and analysed than any generation before. They’ve grown up with social media, ubiquitous hard-core pornography, climate breakdown and cancel culture. They’ve had to navigate the rise of AI, Covid, the manosphere and fake news. In order to employ, exploit and market to them, all manner of twaddle is written about them, particularly by Gen X and Boomers who are desperate to understand and connect to them.
When I was in my twenties, the last thing I wanted was to connect with my parents’ generation, who I saw as arrogant, irresponsible and hypocritical. So do Gen Z even want the older generations to connect with them? And can we ever understand them? If so, what is the key to that?
As I parse my own life I realise that things change, stuff happens and what you thought you knew at twenty just isn’t always relevant as you age. In short, the young have a thing or two to teach us. One can always dismiss Gen Z ideals and get set in the ways of the proverbial old fart, but we all need to remember that this generation has come of age, and the future of mankind is in their soft young hands.
Sometimes dismissed as flaky or judgemental, they are in fact a lot more motivated, creative and wiser than we may deem. If they challenge the way we see things, perhaps we should listen, instead of doubling down with an outmoded viewpoint. Then we might just find ourselves assimilating new language and new critical thinking with which to understand this weird new world. Gen Z are navigating minefields the older generations could never have imagined, but if we just open our minds we can find a mutual sense of hope and stay relevant ourselves as we exchange ideas and share our lived history with them.
They are creating the music and entertainment of our future, and we need to get with the programme: we need to be there or be square – or we will be left behind in a sea of confusion and irrelevance. So check out the following profiles which offer a snapshot of the lives, outlook and ambitions of four Zoomers that I think are ones to watch…
Molly Burnam of Molly & the Dolly Shop
Singer-songwriter, 24, She/Her
"I was a crazy fangirl for this band called The Vamps. They were the reason I learned guitar.”
Molly is bright and vivacious with a Betty Page fringe and a Gilda demeanour. When she performs live she moves like a tiger on Vaseline, and boy, can she play guitar. She grew up as part of a lively creative family who all play and create music so that has always been a big part of her life.
She has a close loving relationship with her parents who are both hard-working teachers. Her mum is Irish, her dad is Jewish. Molly has taken inspiration from the music she grew up with, like Bowie, Kate Bush and the Beatles. Her first love was Adele and she adored Abba – even going so far as to be in a tribute band for a while. But her true obsession in her teens was with The Vamps. (She’s over it now). She loves vintage clothes and vintage posters made of bright colours. Yet there is something undeniably modern and unique about her own musical style and personal outlook.
She talks freely and without inhibition about her struggles with adenomyosis, saturation with social media and the insecurities women her age grapple with, concerning looks and plastic surgery. Her friends and her fans are loyal, kind and disarmingly accepting. Her current passion project focuses on the challenges Gen Z face with the pressure to engage in extreme sexual practice and subsequent problems with consent.
Her band, Molly and The Dolly Shop, have a healthy catalogue of catchy, danceable rock-pop-psychedelic bangers. Her latest single, Chokehold, however, really is something of a tour-de-force, with its discussion of common place choking during sex, and expectation to be anything but vanilla. The song showcases a musical sophistication with simple lyric brilliance that quickly becomes an earworm you’ll find yourself humming forever more.
Stream Molly and The Dolly Shop on Spotify or download on Apple Music
LaMont
Model and singer-songwriter, 26, He/Him.
“What got me through was humour and fantasising about what my ideal future looks like.”
LaMont grew up in Pinner, the only black kid on the block, with a British Jamaican dad and a Kenyan mother. He’s always known he’s gay. He’s beautiful, tall and striking, yet an easy, funny and smart conversationalist.
After a difficult divorce, his mother was struggling to raise a family solo on a psychiatric nurse salary, so she moved back to stay with relatives in Kenya. LaMont, then only 16, decided to stay in the UK and was housed in ‘semi-independent living’ accommodation by the social care system. He won Pride’s Got Talent whilst on an Access to Music course and gained a place at the Academy of Contemporary Music in South London where he really honed his singing and songwriting skills.
LaMont describes himself as ‘care-experienced’ and highlighting this through his work is a passion for him. Even so, he has a good relationship with his mother with whom he has regular zooms and phone conversations. He has no contact with his father.
A couple of years ago his younger brother came back to live in the UK with him. LaMont got him enrolled as a boarder at a specialist level sports school which has helped him manage his neurodiversity as well as develop his prowess as a champion skier of all things – LaMont also has an ADHD diagnosis. Even so he still managed to launch a flourishing modelling career (he’s repped by Crumb Agency) alongside continuing to raise his profile as a singer-songwriter.
He gigs regularly, most recently at the O2 and Soho House White City as part of a showcase. He cites his musical influences as Mariah Carey and Michael Jackson, but his music also has a definite rock feel. LaMont has recently also set up a business hiring out an events space.
Finn Brown
Writer, artist & curator, 29, They/Them.
“For me, queerness and transness are as wide as it gets.”
Both of Finn’s parents are actors, and the whole family shares a deep love of musical theatre. Finn is queer and non-binary. They came out as queer at uni when they met their first long term partner and knew this felt different emotionally to a straight relationship. It took them much longer to come out as non-binary. They worried at first that it was their experience of sexual violence that made them feel the definition of ‘woman’ wasn’t one that fitted the way they saw themselves. It was whilst studying for a Masters in Creative Writing and spending more time within the queer community, tht they realised they identified as non-binary.
They know it can be hard for older generations to understand and have endless patience when they explain themselves to people who question them. For Finn, being non-binary is about possibility; the space to exist as themselves without confines. Finn writes queer literary fiction and is passionate about trans rights. Trans for them is an umbrella term for anyone who identifies as the gender opposite to the one they were assigned at birth, as well as people feeling something other than strictly male or female.
Finn has published numerous short stories in a myriad of publications, including Queer Life, The Raven Review and Booth Journal. They’ve been commended for the Moth Short Story Prize and recently won a commission for Spread the Word. They co-founded and run t’ART Press, an arts and literary collective which publishes a print magazine, anthologies and the Trans Tongues zine series, as well as hosting regular live events and art exhibitions. Always an avid artist, they have graduated to oil-based portraits and have been longlisted for the Jackson’s Art Prize.
Gigi Moss
Singer-songwriter, 26, She/Her.
“Falling in love – but being terrified of it at the same time.”
Gigi Moss has been writing and performing songs as long as she can remember. She’s fresh-faced, sincere and classy. Her mother is a jazz singer and her father a renowned drummer who has played in The Damned, The Stranglers, The Clash to name a few, but most famously perhaps in Culture Club the band he also co-founded in the 80s.
Gigi has grafted hard to hone her live performance and songwriting skills by busking, doing workshops in schools and performing all over the UK and Europe. She has built a steady, loyal and fast-growing fanbase. Her musical influences range from Adele to Sam Smith and Amy Winehouse, but she has a distinctive voice and style that is all her own. She has an impressive catalogue of pop songs which mainly use her own life experience as inspiration, particularly relationships and their breakdown as a theme.
She believes that it’s important to be completely open with her inner most feelings and sees her songwriting as a vehicle with which to explore her deepest insecurities and intrusive thoughts. She feels that Gen Z can be very guarded when it comes to their emotions and wants to convey to the people who listen to her music that’s okay to be insecure and express how they really feel about things – especially when it comes to love. She’s had her share of heartbreak but is now in a happy relationship with her boyfriend of nine months, whom she has now introduced to her family.
