Music, Dissidence, Revolution, and Commerce: Youth Culture between Mainstream and Subculture

Youth culture and pop music have long become synonymous, but this has not always been the case. In the year 1942, when the American sociologist Talcott Parsons coined the term “youth culture,”¹ music figured only marginally in its understanding. Instead, youth phenomena largely referred to points of view, attitudes, and common sets of values, which boiled down to a premature state of adulthood within the age-specific context of adolescents. The dynamic of their cultural behavior was characterized by their desires to appear as early on as possible as what adolescents understood as “adult,” in particular, to partake in their seniors’