40 Gen X Songs That Make Us Wiser

Jan 04, 2025

Musicians born in the 1960s and 1970s have shared with us an awful lot of personal wisdom about life. I regard each of these as a great song, so I’ve created a playlist on Spotify and YouTube for these, and each song listed below has a link to its main YouTube version.

These are songs for all of us, whether or not we are spiritually inclined. (I’ll share a list of great spiritual songs by GenXers soon.)

Also, these songs contain personal wisdom, not social wisdom, not wisdom about our relationships with other people (although a couple of them are that too) but internal wisdom about ourselves as individuals.

To oversimplify, these 40 songs do convey a collective message:

Image result for michael stipe 1980s singing

We can get stuck in life. We can end up living our lives day to day without any real meaning. We end up just going through the motions, running on empty, beaten down, stuck in the dust and the rust and the rubble. We can get weary. Our vision gets clouded, our love of life gets faded. Maybe we get confused. Maybe we get dislocated, isolated, desolated, dazed.

Even worse, we might plunge into a crisis. The walls close in. Things don’t feel real anymore. We’re drowning. We’re hurt. We’re on our knees.

Sometimes this is all because our career has swallowed up our identity. We’re spinning through life’s fast lane, lost in the fast-paced maze of the chase, and find ourselves living in a cage of our own making. We’re playing our roles, doing what’s expected of us, but our ambition and greed have left us empty inside. We’re saying all the right things to move up in our job and in society but our life becomes full of things we want but don’t need. We keep taking and taking but we’re not gaining anything of real value or worth.

So what’s the wiser approach to life?

Start by thinking. Who do you think you are? Ask the right questions. Time is a gift; what are you going to do with it? Learn from your life, learn from your experience.

Don't try to be what other people think you are or should be. Don’t let other people step all over you. And don’t be a pretender. See your foolishness and move beyond the lies and insincerity.

Know things can change. It’s hard, but you can find a new approach to life. You can find the right path for you. Just breathe. And as you find your way, take your own sweet time.

Expect better days. Yes, you made mistakes, but you can find your direction again. Yes, you missed opportunities, but you can find new ones. Don’t wallow in regrets. Maybe you need to release some of your fears, maybe you need to unburden yourself of some of your secrets, maybe you even need to let yourself break down and let out some of your pain. But don’t look back in anger.

Be strong, start over, keep developing your mind, change your life, and become something better. Move from greed to meaning. Understand your real needs. See the things you can do without. (Even if you’re on top, you’ll find yourself humbled, and you never know what the future holds anyway.) You’ll never be perfect, but keep your standards high, be trustworthy, and just do your best. Forgive others and forgive yourself. Know it’s all right.

When you need to, break away, break free. Run on the borderland where you can heal. Get away (physically or in your mind) to where the streets have no name.

Accept the pain in life even as you celebrate life’s joys. Live in the present. Keep sailing on. Stay wide awake. Live your life to the fullest and don’t be afraid to turn things upside down, cuz the world as we find it is kinda upside down. Trust yourself, do what your heart tells you, and even if others don’t see it, live your life your way.