My favorite NPR music program, All Songs Considered, is doing a series of decade retrospective episodes. The first one is
here. Mind you, it's majorly skewed to the NPR perspective, which means a lot of indie-pop, out of the mainstream stuff, so it's not the most complete picture. But the do spend a lot of time on general cultural trends and trends in the industry vs. specific music, at least in this first episode. Plus, it's worth it just for the last 20 seconds or so where they start spewing all the things they didn't get a chance to talk about. A lot of, "Oh yeah, THAT!" moments
The host, Bob Boilen, decided to pick an artist that exemplified music that could only have come from this decade. He went with Animal Collective and I couldn't agree more with that choice. While no music can claim complete independence from their predecessors and influences (surely they owe a huge dept to Radiohead, just to name one off the top of my head), Animal Collective I think synthesized all of it into something uniquely Millenial. YMMV, but the track is on the page linked above if you'd like a listen (7th track down).
I definitely feel more connected to this decade over any other. Surely the next decade is going to be a radical change for me as a person, but that's independent of the cultural environment. As a matter of fact, in all likelihood, despite the increased importance in my personal narrative the next decade will undoubtedly represent, I imagine I'll find myself more removed from the cultural narrative than in any other decade as my focus will be largely inward.
Beardy bands, social networks, an explosion of partisanship, a complete sea change in how the public consumes media, a complete sea change in how the public produces media, the seeds of an important civil rights movement, the death (or at least the beginning of the long convalescence) of the printed newspaper. Just to name a few. Whether I can think of witty party decorations to represent what I feel about the last 10 years couldn't be any more irrelevant to me. I find it far more relevant that I can have an real time conversation with someone from just about any part of the world than whether I can guess what year's design of jeans someone is wearing.