Thursday, August 27, 2009

Music from College

I have no idea why I thought of this.

I think that five of the six of us all went to the same undergrad (not sure about Buck, and know that Will didn't). These were obviously very formative years of my life, as I'm sure they were for y'all as well, and as I got to thinking about my half-hour daily commute to school....we were subjected to some really crappy music in the mid-1990s. Sure we had our grunge and the end of old school hip-hop, which was good, but if we happened to turn on the radio we were likely to get a lot of garbage from Electric 99.3. For example:

Barbie Girl - Aqua
Mmm Bop - Hanson
Rhythm is a Dancer - Snap
What is Love - Haddaway
Where Do you Go? - No Mercy
How Bizarre - OMC

I could continue, but you get the point.

So the question, should anyone feel led to pontificate on the tripe songs I just posted.....better or worse than what today's kids have?

3 comments:

Rev. Joshua said...

After a brief respite from 1991 through the middle of the decade, mainstream music went back to shit and you really can't tell the difference between then and now. "Barbie Girl" by Aqua was replaced by "Pokerface" by Lady Gaga, the Jonas Brothers are the new Hanson, and on and on.

Nate said...

Ah, the old "everything is cyclical" issue, but why is it that only holds true for kitsch & crap? Ex. Where's the new Wu Tang Clan?

But on the topic of rap music, that genre has it way worse off that mainstream music, when it comes to the cycle. Seriously, everything you hear on your urban radio station of choice lately is ringtone rap, consisting of the same four to eight lines of verse repeated ad nauseum ... hell, there's a song out now that's simply a beat with a sample of "You're a jerk" played repeatedly.

Oh, and then there's "Birthday Sex," perhaps the greatest fucking song in the world.

Different note, the rental I'm driving has Sirius Sattelite Radio, and it was on the 80's station, so rolling into work today, I heard "Funky Cold Medina." So, no matter what, today trumps all the other days of the week, hands down.

Rev. Joshua said...

The reason there's no new "Wu Tang Clan" or new "Nirvana" is the same as the reason why they were so great to begin with: they were singularly different. They took from their influences and created one spectacular sound. The key is not to look for "the next (insert great artist/athlete/thinker here)", but to look for the next great artist/athlete/thinker while the rest of the world is just eating what is put on their plate.