1994: The Year Boomer Hate Rock Broke

When five middle-aged schmucks get the band back together after years away from the spotlight, it’s usually the kind of nostalgic feel-good ride saved for a Hollywood sequel, not an excuse to spew bile on their audience being led astray. After all, it’s not like the Eagles, America’s patron saints of bridge and tunnel rock, were ever known for pushing any sort of political agenda beyond venerating SoCal hedonism and the male ego, both of which contributed squarely to their demise in 1980. Yet when the Eagles emerged from hibernation in 1994 for a reunion tour and the Hell Freezes Over comeback album, it wasn’t to fondly read the room and remark on how much we’d all grown those last 14 years.

That same year they dropped the single “Get Over It”, a hateful Boomer anthem that amounted to a declaration of war against Gen Xers and anyone else Don Henley and Glenn Frey felt were leeching off honest, hard-working Americans. Lording their arbitrary success over welfare queens, ambulance chases, and anyone else who hasn’t sold 150 million albums worldwide, the Eagles declared that the only real tonic for one’s woes was to stop reliving past trauma and simply “Get Over It". In an especially uninspired moment, Henley screams at his nameless target that he’d “like to find your inner child and kick its little ass.” Sick burn, Don. Of course, during the 1970s the Eagles were too busy “livin’ it up at the Hotel California” to pay any attention to society’s supposed ills, or at least record a tedious song about them, so what changed?

Beaten down by divorces and personal failures, perhaps the Eagles were looking for convenient scapegoats. The politically correct culture of the 1990s just didn’t jive with the Eagles’ belief in their own greatness. After all, these were self-made men who’d packed arenas across the world. Never mind the fact that their music reeked. If they could do it, why couldn’t all these lazy Gen Xers? Maybe if we’d all just stop to consider the lucrative benefits of getting “over it”, the world would be a better place. Now there’s some real food for thought on the day after Election Day.