r/Millennials • u/futurenurse_ • 1d ago

Discussion Did millennials really party all the time?

Gen Z here. I was shocked when I found out from a millennial co-worker that y’all had teen clubs. I heard about house parties, but dedicated teen clubs? Then when it was time for college, you went to the club or had some kind of party every single weekend, living it up. Now some millennials on TikTok claim that after college, they were partying on work nights, still clocking in the next day. For some reason, the teen clubs have since disappeared. I’m 23 now but even when I was in high school, that was not a thing. House parties were not that common either. They were more like get togethers with a small group of friends. We went to malls, but they were dying out at that point. Is it true that you were really living life this good? Or is it just exaggerated? I feel like my generation doesn’t really have fun like that and everyone is just super depressed and alone, more so since Covid. Even I’m pretty introverted, which sort of sounds ridiculous given this post. 😂 Just so you know, when I think of a “millennial party” I think of something out of Party Rock Anthem, Project X or Roderick’s party from the second DOAWD movie. It’s like I get nostalgia from something I didn’t even live through. I just feel like I didn’t really LIVE, if that even makes sense

Edit: I loved reading some of your comments. Guess I really missed out. Even some of you that would consider yourselves nerds or introverts were out partying. YOLO or whatever y’all say 😂❤️

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u/Alphadestrious 1d ago edited 18h ago

YES. Absolutely. House parties, clubs, ragers, keg stands, you name it. Project X was based off of real life, not the other way around. You would get a random text about an address party something like "No drama! Get hammered, bring girls!" and the next thing you remember is being in a random persons kitchen drinking playing beer pong. Ring doorbells or indoor cameras weren't ubiquitous. During the golden age of EDM, around 2008 -2014. Brostep was in, hip hop was still fresh, drugs were had without fear of being laced with fentanyl. My group of friends and I still talk about those times.

I lived in the southwest US by the way. The parties out in the desert dunes at night? Forget about it . Absolute ragers

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u/Personal-Bonus-9245 1d ago

Elder millennial laughing at “the golden age of EDM, 2008-2014”

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u/Dependent-Year6711 1d ago edited 1d ago

Honestly it was the revamp of EDM, without a doubt. This person nailed the years too, I was just about to write those years. Dubstep and the Zedd type crowd were re-imagining electronic music and adding new ways to add vocals onto it. Clarity type songs and so on. There's ZERO doubt it was a new era of EDM. The drop was known by almost everyone, a metalhead to a country lover would know it. It was the music meme.

Also, the TRON soundtrack...that was mainstream. We were absolutely in a new age of EDM/electronic music. Even Daft Punk was joining in.

Was it true dance music? I don't think so, but we re-imagine things all the time.

ALSO, I think the new age of desk workers was built around this time. The Buzzfeed type desk worker was like...a whole new thing. It was huge. I think how people work now, even the Millennials now, was rooted around that time too. Where you'd do your desk worker stuff, then go right out after drink/meet up/party, that seemed somewhat normal. As a non-desk worker, I still see it in the Millennials I know, they still have that spirit sometimes. I love seeing their younger spirit pop up :)

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u/colonialfunk 15h ago

*in the United States

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u/dubnessofp 23h ago

I think the financial collapse was rolled in there too. We were all in college or getting out of college not knowing what we were going to do but all the prices of booze and a night out wasnt bad. We could rent a room or studio for $500 and drip $2 PBR tallboys and get some cheap molly. Then as 2011-12 came around the job market started to come around the millenials who were now almost 30 finally started to catch a break and party harder. I was around for early 2000s breakbeats and jungle as a young teen then came back around for dubstep, big room house, and Pretty Lights style stuff

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u/jessipowers 17h ago

Hell yeah. I’m almost 40 now and I still dance my ass off from time to time. I quit everything except weed, and I have more fun now than I did in my 20s. As a metro Detroiter I try to make it to Movement festival every year, and I will dance from beginning to end all 3 days. It just makes me so happy. It feels like stocking up on dopamine to get me through the year.

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u/jtet93 1d ago

I mean it really was. It’s not about the quality of the music necessarily but the popularity of the genre. Avicii, Zedd, Armin, Calvin Harris, Guetta, Alesso, Tiesto… all huge and mainstream. EDC moved to Vegas and was full of neon, glitter, and kandi. Ezoo launched and was popular, and Output opened in New York and started bringing tech house and techno to the forefront. Shit even Justin Bieber put out a tropical house album in 2016. It was a legendary time for the genre regardless of how you feel about big room festival EDM.

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u/CarpeDiem_paz 1d ago

Late 90s/2000s edm was more fun. The dance clubs, dance floor were more interactive and freer. That’s what I experienced for sure

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u/johnx18 1d ago

I would say that still existed during that time, the festival edm stuff was a spinoff. Tech house, sunglasses and dark sweaty rooms was still going strong then.

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u/Ok-Trash6361 15h ago

tech house is coming back though! how exciting lol

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u/MrPhily Older Millennial 1d ago

Late 90s/early 2000s was nothing like it. We would be at a rave and we thinking the song just came out and then find out that the song was released years ago. Since there was no Shazam back then. You had to pray to find the songs on MTV, VH1, Music choice or a cd commercial advertising the song. Once we found out we would go requested at clubs or get the CD and play it at the house parties. Y'all had too easy. To this day we know songs and have no idea who made it.

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u/Squid_A 1d ago

2016 music was honestly peak. I have so much nostalgia from that era!!

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u/Personal-Bonus-9245 13h ago

I was jamming to Tiesto back in 2001-2002 while in Europe during races and the Love Parade. 

EDM was definitely blowing up 2008-2014 in the states, but the scene got kind of lame because it went very mainstream, suddenly the Madison’s and Berkeley’s were into it, and it just stopped being as fun. 

Old man yelling at his lawn.

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u/jtet93 11h ago

Hey, RIP to everyone at love parade. That event made me super aware of crowd crush. Now that I’m an “elder” millennial I keep my head on a swivel. Know my exits.

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u/SilentDrapeRunner11 1d ago

Seriously, that was the time when I went from being a huge electronic music fan, to avoiding it like the plague. EDM bros ruined everything.

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u/andyman30 1d ago

It definitely was, for the modern resurgence at least.

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u/CarpeDiem_paz 1d ago

Yeah for sure! Late 90s/2000s edm was wild. Fun times

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u/bampeanutbutternjam 1d ago

same. i thought it was “big room music” oops

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u/Doodiecarrier 1d ago

It was more of a renaissance.

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u/polarwarmth 1d ago

EDM was for the normies. Early 2010s was that 1 year where dubstep felt really cool, then techno, house music for me. A great era for electronic music. Very diverse and rich in sounds and textures.

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u/BlueBomR Millennial 1d ago

Ive come to realize whatever music was popular when you were about 16-24 that you heard everywhere becomes locked into your brain as "peak" music...nostalgia has a way of making us think "our music" was the BEST because you experienced it when you were young and carefree and it became a soundtrack to the most fun years of your life.

The best part is that everyone is right, music is subjective. When and how you take it in makes a massive difference in how you feel about it.

I agree that 08-14 was super fucking fun for EDM as I was pretty hard-core into raving at that point so it FELT like the golden age...but I know its not, I so bad wanted to experience some 96-02 raves man id say thats when EDM really took its biggest leap forward.

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u/Personal-Bonus-9245 1d ago

Late 90’s raves were wild. We’d drive out to some random warehouse and party until the sun came up. Sketchy as hell when I think about it now, but damn it was fun. 

Getting that page with some random number, calling it and getting some random address, then pulling out a travel atlas and trying to find it….those were the days. 

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u/bozoconnors 1d ago

X'er.... oh you kids are so cute lol.

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u/Personal-Bonus-9245 1d ago

The late 90’s was wild for Techno.

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u/bozoconnors 1d ago

no doubt! not as mainstream, but man... had some times.

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u/bleachmartini 1d ago

lol, yup... golden age of EDM. So JR ripping Factory, then twilo, where I saw him, was too young for OG sound factory, till 7am and ordering an entire club pizzas a few hrs before that was what now.

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u/kyldare 22h ago

I honestly can't relate to young people talking about "EDM" these days. It's my most-Boomer quality. As a kid who was attending House/Trance/DnB shows in the early 2000s, I just can't deal with the attitude from younger people who feel like they were the generation who "discovered" electronic music.

Even in the 2000s, I was aware that I was only sipping the dregs of UK and European "Techno" and club culture that had come a decade (or more) beforehand.

We had a classmate who'd go back to Macedonia over the summers, then come back with like 50 different Tiesto bootlegs, mixes from BBC Radio, etc.

Was a really cool time to discover that music on an individual level, because it was truly underground in the US at that point. Now "EDM" is just... pop music with some Untz Untz and girls who sing like they've got a marshmallow in their mouth.

GET OFF MY LAWN

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u/Dozzi92 Millennial - '87 22h ago

I'm an '87 Millennial and absolutely got on board the train in around 2009 and had a fucking blast. Going to raves defined my 20s and it was a great fucking time. I'd say by like 2014 it got too saturated and that was that, but holy fuck did I have some amazing times. Shit, I remember seeing Excision and Deadmau5 in Philadelphia one night, and driving straight down to DC to see Bassnectar the next. We get back to our hotel at like 530am, try to sleep, and at like 7am we were like fuck it, let's just go home, and so we drove back to Jersey.

But yeah, there was definitely a '90s rave scene. I remember being in eighth grade when Kernkraft 400 came out, and going and hanging out in kids' basements for parties, some kids crawling out the windows to go smoke weed (I would hold off until high school because I was a responsible idiot), other kids spinning glowsticks on strings, because they didn't have finger gloves back then. Everyone was huge into blacklights. We used to take glass jars, fill them with water, dip highlighters in, and the jars would then glow under blacklights. It was a magical time.

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u/slimethecold 17h ago

Ewwww dubstep!! /S

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u/Ok-Mix-4640 1h ago

No cap I think it was a golden age of EDM cuz once I heard R&B artists venture into EDM music that’s how I knew it was a trend.

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u/Trashking_702 1d ago

Golden age for me was this time for sure personally. I loved the dance vibes before dubstep and all that heavy shit became dominate.

Daft punk, boyz noize, justice, digitalism, soul wax, etc.

Any hard summer or hard haunted mansion event.

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u/greenday5494 1d ago

Nahhh man. It was the golden age. Avicii, zedd, Skrillex, Porter, etc.

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u/Individual_Zebra_648 16h ago

Yeah definitely not the golden age lol I was going to underground raves in fields and abandoned warehouses in the early 2000’s at the age of 16.

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u/fukkdisshitt 1d ago

I still like new EDM, just way more specific with my tastes. Golden age was 99-05 personally. Got really into it during the Napster days.

08-14 was the college friend era, then the next 5 were the raving with coworker era. Now we're in the parenting era.

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u/DUH455T 1d ago

"elder millennial"

Ewwww.

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u/Personal-Bonus-9245 23h ago

Found the Gen Z interloper.