Teenagers sitting in twos, grooving to music that came much before their time and giddily embracing rock and roll, are in viral videos flashing through social media pages. Far from repelling what is ancient to them, they seem to immediately connect to the sound, the lyrics or the genre, announcing how Chris de Burgh’s Lady in Red or Duran Duran’s Notorious is going straight to their playlist.
Just as record players and CDs are making a comeback as alternatives to internet’s easy listening, classic rock too is finding fans among Gen Z. Spotify data of the past few years confirm the theory that those in the 18-24 age group have been drawn to the music of the 80s and 90s, often lured into it by parents who never stopped playing the songs of their youth.
In the United States, for instance, Gen Z has an ear for bands and musicians like Grateful Dead, Billie Holiday, Miles Davis, Tiffany and Selena along with their new-age favourites, according to Billboard. Spotify’s 2024 report said that 74% of Gen Z attended a live music concert that year – a fact easily corroborated by the record sales of Coldplay’s concerts in India in 2024. Though there was some amount of mocking of the young audience as clueless (“they don’t even know who Chris Martin is!”), a number of teens and 20-somethings do develop a taste for the music that their parents loved.
“I think it was originally my father who got me into older music. When I was a kid, he would play old rock songs on the radio and at home, so from a young age, I had a lot of exposure to older songs. Some of my favorite older bands to listen to are the Eagles, and Roxette, who my father has really liked for a long time,” says Rohan, an 18-year-old Indian American, about inheriting his father’s taste for old school rock.
Nikoo and the Dad has just brought out the first single, ‘Storybook’, an adorable duet about parents and children reading stories together. (Photo credits: Vamsifoto)
Pubs in Mumbai with karaoke nights have youth in their 20s singing not just Taylor Swift but also Queen and ABBA. “I did not play Taylor Swift for my daughter Nakshatra till she was nine, but it was inevitable that she’d hear it from school. So she learned songs by Queen and Cat Stevens and sang along with them. Now she is 11 and prefers to listen to Taylor Swift while I insist on The Beatles when we are in the car. That became a song we made, called ‘Clash of Ideas’,” says Mallikarjun K, who has been performing with his daughter for two years now in Bengaluru. Their band, Nikoo and the Dad, has just brought out the first single, ‘Storybook’, an adorable duet about parents and children reading stories together. A full album, called Growing Up Years, will be released in 2026, Mallikarjun reveals.
“We began playing together for open mic shows, and had 13 to 14 performances last year. Along with the covers, we also play our own songs. Ours is a parent-child band singing about parent-child stories,” Mallikarjun adds.
There are several other parent-child bands in the alternative music scene now, proving that the taste for classic rock is not skipping generations. Even for millennial parents, the AC/DC and Led Zeppelin tracks they pass on to their kids are from before their own time. So it’s genuinely striking to hear 14-year-old Megan Rakesh belt out covers of ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ (Guns N’ Roses) or ‘Back in Black’ (AC/DC), throwing her voice around so effortlessly.
Meg and the Miracles, a band that Megan formed with her musician father Rakesh, has been touring in Bengaluru and across states, and has tens of thousands of followers on their Instagram account.
“She grew up in a house filled with music. I was part of a band called Out of Office and there was always music around us. She learned the songs of the band and became a fan. When she was four, she would correct me if I sang wrong lyrics!” Rakesh says.
She also grew a liking for the music that her father played in the car when he drove her to school. So she’d listen to Pearl Jam and learn the songs. She found her love for R&B and began singing the songs of Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston, adds Rakesh. But her parents never restricted her to one kind of music, so she also heard the pop icons who are all the rage today, like Bruno Mars and Taylor Swift.
When Covid-19 struck, the father-daughter duo began jamming for fun. They posted little clips of Megan singing covers, and she also began joining live online sessions with other artists. It was her rendition of Led Zeppelin’s ‘Rock and Roll’ (1971) that first caught on. The followers grew, the performances multiplied, and Megan slipped into heavier genres. Last month, she headlined the Hornbill Music Festival in Nagaland with the legendary band Parikrama, a huge accomplishment for the 14-year-old.
Megan puts it beautifully when she says: “I wouldn’t say that music has to necessarily be before my time in order for me to love and understand it the way I do… but those days for a lot of the artists at that time, music was all that they had. So they put their heart and soul into their art. Which is why to this day people still love and respect music from those days… passion is something that never lies.”
In Mumbai, another duo – Chandresh Kudwa and his 13-year-old daughter Eva Kudwa – formed a band called Dad N’ Daughter and brought out their first single, called ‘High 5’. They are known for their guitar harmonies, covering 80s and 90s music like Van Halen’s ‘Panama’, Ozzy Osbourne’s ‘Crazy Train’ and Creed’s ‘Higher’.
But exposure to the music of another time is not always easy. The younger generation’s love for the timeless old songs often needs to be kindled. The nudge comes not only from music-obsessed parents, but also music clubs and pub owners who seem to take an active role in gently “guiding” generations towards past treasures. Jobin, who runs Joy’s Music Room in Kerala, says that though most of Gen Z seem hooked on hip hop, he tries his best to steer them towards a bit of rock and roll by bringing in musicians and holding jamming sessions with old-timers.
Clearly, there is little risk of losing the troves of beautiful music to time, much less technology. There have always been the older tying hands with the younger, to carry on the music of all ages through generations. And this strange passion transcends not just time but places. Reminiscent of the American legend Frank Sinatra and his daughter Nancy who’d performed together in the 60s and 70s are a father daughter duo at the other end of the world, in the southern corner of India, Nandu Leo and Cindy. Every year they pay a tribute to classic rock with a concert in Thiruvananthapuram, aptly calling it Music for Peace. Last Saturday, in the 15th edition of the concert, they once again brought alive all-time favourites and less-known treasures of rock and roll before a mix of generations, who swayed together to the tunes of another time.
Meet Meg and the Miracles, a band that Megan formed with her musician father Rakesh (Credits: Vamsifoto) 
Nikoo and the Dad has just brought out the first single, ‘Storybook’, an adorable duet about parents and children reading stories together. (Photo credits: Vamsifoto)
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