I Heart the '90s

One of my coworkers turned me on to the '90s channel on XM Satellite Radio, and I'm absolutely, completely hooked. I've been listening to it nonstop for the past two work days, to the detriment of all other projects. When they say '90s, they mean it -- the channel is completely exhaustive, from the last throes of hair metal to early-mid Britney. It's been a reeducation of sorts.

In 1990, I turned 10. I started that decade as a fourth grader and lived through middle school, high school and even a couple years of college before the millennium turned. They say that the music playing in the background while you're young is the music that sticks with you forever, the songs you'll love and be nostalgic about for the rest of your life. If this is true, god help all of us '90s children.

There's a classic line in High Fidelity (both book and movie) in which Rob says something to the effect of "I grew up listening to songs about heartache and loneliness -- no wonder I'm a mess. Did pop music make me miserable, or am I miserable because I listen to pop music? Which came first, the music or the misery?"

Well, what about really, really bad music? What of kids who came of age to lyrics such as "Rhythm is a dancer" or "Girl, I know you really love me -- you just don't realize" or "Am I Johnny Ray? Am I Jimmy Ray? Who wants to know, who wants to know about me?" Who, indeed. I applaud those of us who made it through the '90s with any sort of taste at all. Let's all take a moment to pat ourselves on the back, and to remember lessons like "You can buy your hair if it won't grow/ You can fix your nose if he says so."

They play a hit from TonyToniTone and I'm back in my fifth grade classroom, having dance-offs during an indoor recess (we were a funky bunch of suburban white kids). That's where I first heard gems like "Poison" or "Ice Ice Baby" -- which, granted, also see me savoring beer out of plastic cups at college parties in 2002, not to mention a bout of drunken karaoke with the softball team two weeks ago. But every once in a while they'll play a song I literally haven't heard in a decade. It'll be absolutely horrible -- cheesy, club-lite synth beats, meaningless lyrics -- but all of a sudden it's 1992 and I'm comparing tans with my friends at the public pool, or riding through a strip-mall parking lot in the back of my mom's long-gone minivan, or talking about C&C Music Factory during homeroom. (For some reason it's usually summer in these memories, and the sun is bright and hot.) Go a few years later -- Natalie Merchant's Tigerlily album, maybe -- and I'm driving around in my own car, to and from high school practices or through the winding neighborhood streets at night after all the traffic lights have shut off. And the 2005 computer-bound me will be gleefully IMing my office cohorts who are tuned in to the same station, to see if they, too, are bearing witness to "Don't want to fall in love" by someone named Jane Child ("I don't wanna fall in love/ Love is just like a knife/ You make the knife feel good"). Bands I couldn't stand at the time -- I'm looking at you, Gin Blossoms -- are now embraced like prodigal children. How could I ever have switched the station on that song by Sister Hazel?!

Mainly, '90s XM radio makes me feel really freaking old. Have I already reached the age where it's possible to embrace utter crap simply because it's reminiscent of the good ol' days? Like a baby boomer who waxes nostalgic about the Animals or the Beach Boys, I'm inextricably linked to Biggie and Tupac, En Vogue and Sublime, Pearl Jam and Jock Jams ("Come baby come baby baby come come..."). But I'm resigned to my fate. I have lived without my Toad the Wet Sprocket for far too long, and I'm now downloading their entire catalogue.