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The wave of millennial nostalgia is still rolling strong, with pop culture and younger folks putting the spotlight on all things from the early 2000s. However, there’s a particular music moment from the Obama era that many online are eager to forget: the “stomp clap hey” genre.
It’s a distaste that has been percolating online for years, only to burst across social media in recent days.
Recently, one user on X commented, “This whole generation of stomp clap Ho hey indie folk was terrible,” blaming it for some of humanity’s worst missteps like pumpkin spice lattes, Brooklyn’s gentrification, and even Taylor Swift.
This distinct rustic pop-indie folk style, prominent in the early to mid-2010s, has been a point of contention in music history. It was characterized by its catchy, rhythm-heavy tunes popularized by bands like The Lumineers, Mumford & Sons, and Of Monsters and Men. This quirky music often featured at Coachella and Bonnaroo was perfect for group sing-alongs, hand claps, and, indeed, literal stomping with shouts of “Hey!” that captured the millennial-hipster vibe.
Recently, a clip highlighting this subgenre has circulated online: Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros performing “Home” during their 2009 NPR “Tiny Desk” concert. The clip shows the group’s two lead singers performing in faux-Appalachian accents, delivering their hit song that became synonymous with the era’s hipster Americana style.
And the internet is riled up about the reminder of the “worst song ever made” in the “worst genre ever.”
This week, David Weigel, a politics reporter at Semafor, posted on X saying, “Go ahead. Put the ‘Alabama, Arkansas’ stomp clap video in my TL again. Do it,” referencing a line from their song “Home.”
The backlash against this fleeting subgenre has lingered for some time, even getting its nickname from a 2021 viral tweet featuring a man dressed in a typically cheesy hipster outfit. Since then, platforms like Reddit, TikTok, and several articles have been abuzz about “stomp clap hey,” considered by some as one of the more cringe-inducing pieces of millennial culture. Even comedian Kyle Gordon joined in, crafting a parody music video styled in Brooklyn, complete with catchy chants, skinny jeans, and a multitude of hats.
“The fight over what’s ‘stomp clap hey’ is a great example of Twitter music discourse because it wasn’t coined by a musician or music journalist: it was a tweet that wasn’t even about a band or specific subgenre but a type of guy,” one person wrote on X.
For some haters, the genre is a reminder of a cultural and political flash point, when Americans were grappling with the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and desperate for the hope-filled Obama era as millennial hipsterdom hit its peak. Others, however, believe the genre is fun and represents a fleeting moment of social escapism, and the discourse is par for the course for varying music tastes.
“Stomp Clap Hey music is the perfect relic of the Obama era: inexplicably ascendant movement built from the worst bits and pieces of the past, cobbled together into vaguely hopeful yet ultimately meaningless chants and slogans,” an X user said in response to the “Tiny Desk” clip.
Martin Scherzinger, an associate professor of media, culture and communication at New York University, described the “stomp clap hey” genre as “a brand of invented nostalgia, coopted, on the one hand, by the music industry and the bland corporate logic of music streaming; but also, on the other hand, obviously continuous with (and legible to) a brand of genuine folkish (if globalized) Americana.”
“The periodic eruptions of collectivized hating on a music genre — branding ‘stomp clap hey’ as indie gentrification, the commercialization of whimsy, nostalgic inauthenticity, etc. — is often a kind of trend of its own, a slightly misguided target for a larger issue concerning social and class resentment,” he wrote in an email to NBC News. “Like so many other cultural eruptions, this is identifying a dated genre as a bigger problem than it ever was; a cultural response to a structural issue facing us today.”
The re-emerged hate for “stomp clap hey,” however, is still slightly surprising given the newfound social adoption of all things millennial across generational lines and the ironic coolness that has returned to previously critiqued bands like Limp Bizkit and Korn. And as new artists, such as Noah Kahan, seem to invoke the same folksy soul, some are questioning whether “stomp clap hey” is back.
Gen Zers, who once mocked millennial culture as “cheugy,” are now glamorizing it online, as hundreds of TikTok users pay tribute to all things early 2000s. Reboots of millennial classics such as “The Devil Wears Prada” and “Freaky Friday” are now driving Hollywood, while the Backstreet Boys are playing sold-out shows at the Sphere in Las Vegas.
Kate Kennedy, author of “One in a Millennial: On Friendship, Feelings, Fangirls, and Fitting In,” previously told NBC News that this recent surge of millennial-focused pop culture serves as “the next level of escapism” for the generation. And if there is anything “stomp clap hey” provided for fans in the 2000s — and could soon do again — it’s nostalgia escapism.
“The last two days of stomp clap discussion was the first budding of 2010s nostalgia btw. Strap in,” one X user wrote.
