On August 6, 2025, I was on the Seattle monorail going to the Paul Simon concert with my son Liam. A stop at the Armory at Seattle Center for a bite to eat before the show was in order since the concert venue is a short walk from there
As we were eating, I noticed an alarming number of millennials dressed up in extreme party gear - feathers, glittery jackets, and too many sequins for a man of my age to witness
I was puzzled…were these folks also going to take the walk to McCaw Hall to see the Paul Simon Show? There were clearly 2 generations eating in the food court that night - my generation (who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s) and millennials who came of age after 2000
By some strange coincidence I was reading The Who’s lead singer Roger Daltrey’s biography entitled My Generation at that time - pretty spooky, eh?
The sequined feathered partygoers were not destined for McCaw Hall. Their destination was ANOTHER venue pretty much equidistant from the Armory - this was the first night of Lady Gaga’s stop in town at the Climate Pledge Arena
A prodigious talent and destined to be the voice of her generation, Lady Gaga has literally spanned generations with her musical talents
Tony Bennet, born as one of the last of the Greatest Generation, was my one of mother’s heartthrobs. Along with her fellow Silent Generation colleagues, I remember her swooning over Bennet’s romantic ballads and claiming to leave his heart in Northern California
Tony Bennet and Lady Gaga collaborated on a number of projects, their first being their 2014 US chart topping collection of jazz standards which was followed up in 2021 by their Grammy award winning follow up Love For Sale record
So we have Tony Bennet from the Greatest Generation, my mum from the Silent Generation, me as a Baby Boomer and Lady Gaga as a Millennial
By my count, that’s 4 generations
Oh yeah - before I forget, I caught my Millennial son Liam quietly listening to Frank Sinatra tunes when he was a teenager…
Lets celebrate the musical mastery of Lady Gaga and Tony Bennet with their recording of one of Cole Porter’s classics…