httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pbioVBwX_g
Thinking back on yesterday, I probably should have started with something like The Monkees or some other band from the 50's/60's because of the previously mentioned KOOL108 listening. But, I can't really say that that stuff really started to get me much interested in music like today's entry. We've moved from late elementary school to junior high cheaptoy. This is when I really started getting interested in things, with the three albums getting the most spin time being Melloncollie and the Infiite Sadness, Dookie and The Blue Album. I decided on Weezer for the video because I couldn't bear to inflict Billy Corgan's voice on anyone. (Above the jump, anyway.)
I think these three albums pretty much carried me from junior high up through about my sophomore year in high school. I remember listening to them over and over again in my '93 Geo Metro in my Sony Walkman connected to a cassette deck adapter. Man. It was also the sound track for many, many Super Street Fighter 2 sessions for reasons I doubt I can explain.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPU-ika3d4s
Clearly I was showing a trend towards a more guitar driven sound. I never really resisted it, so this is a trajectory that never wavered.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwH3tUwGh0E
I watched this live with help from a cable descrambler. We had free PPV back when that was a thing that was possible pre-widespread-internet.
I'm not particularly embarrassed by this period. I don't remember exactly how I came to decide to own these albums. Most likely saw some of it on tv at some point and liked it. The important thing is that I sort of dived into a muscial direction on my own as best as an eigth grader could.
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This is my favorite Weezer performance and it happened 19 years ago, 13 years before I became a fan.
Yesterday, we shared an album on tape, today, we share 3 of them. My first album (CD) was Weezer (The Blue Album) and Green Day (Dookie) & Smashing Pumpkins (Melloncollie) were among the first dozen or so CD's purchased.
I suspect that a lot of this stuff was probably on commercial radio at the time and thus my exposure to it. That being said, we were also exposed to the following #1 Top-40 and didn't run out and buy them.*
*I think I did end up with this one.
I'm not sure I've even heard of half of those. I bet putting that list next to today's list would be funny to read because I'm guessing that, while the names/titles are different, they're all the same.
EDIT: Except for Ace of Base, I've heard of them.
Those were the "#1 Songs" for most of '93-1994...I know/knew a bunch of them, but my excuse is that I had a sister.
As to your second point - I'm sure it's not far off.
I'm sure we'll both get to re-visit the top 40 list in about 13-14 years from now, too...
I just saw this...ugh. I'll admit, there's always a few songs on pop radio that I can enjoy, but the other 23 hours, 45 minutes of broadcasting is generally forgettable.
I paid good attention to the pop charts well into my 30s but really just had to give up around the time that I realized that "Party Rock Anthem" was the best thing I was hearing on it. There's something about the mixing and mastering or production or something that completely sucks the air out of the songs. I first heard it on Britney's "Toxic", which other people assured me was still "Good" but I thought was the beginning of her first fall from the charts. I think I was proven sorta-right. Plus, her albums since then have basically been disposable "commodity music": she even re-used some songs!
It'll swing back eventually, but I probably won't be paying enough attention to recognize it anymore.
There's always the hope that the monoculture has atomized enough by our youngests' teenaged years so that your concerns are misguided. #MyHope #AvoidingTVHelps
I was immediately able to sing (in my head) all but Janet Jackson's Again (though I suspect I would know it if I heard it). Those are all from my Sophmore and Junior years of high school. Despite liking better music, this stuff was totally unavoidable. Especially if you wanted to dance with a girl.
Also, I sang the Meatloaf song at karaoke last week. Ironically, but secretly not totally ironically.
My knowledge of these songs is pretty much on par with yours, and I'm also drawing a blank on that particular Janet Jackson song. I likewise found this music unavoidable. (Is this because I'm a girl? No idea.)
The only one I've owned from this list is Lisa Loeb--I had the album it was on. Probably one of my first CDs, in fact! I'm pretty sure "Stay (I Missed You)" was also on the Reality Bites soundtrack.
You're right about the Reality Bites soundtrack.
Album came out like a year later. (Checked wiki: Single hit #1 in July 1994, album was released in Sept 1995.)
I was in 7th grade, so that was pretty much my favorite year for pop music.
That Dolly Parton cover by Whitney is pretty fabulous.
I hated the songs by Ini Kamoze and Snow not because they would play them at HS dances and clear the dancefloor because they were midtempo: to slow to do whatever the thing we did for fast songs was (polite moshing? no, I will coin the term "Funkytowning" -Thanks, Lipps, Inc!) without being extremely awkward, and wayyy too fast to be a slow song.
(Best fast song for HS dances? House of Pain, "Jump Around")
Lisa Loeb gets credit for the first unsigned artist to hit #1. There was a song on her second album that I found quite enjoyable at the time and the first album had moments, too. A few years ago, on like our last night with cable, I saw her looking for love on a VH1 programme.
I didn't appreciate anything from Ace of Base (I had a pithy putdown, "Roxette with[out] [something]") until a few years ago when Girl Talk used the beats on Feed the Animals.
I was never much for the R&B ballads (still am not), so I've got nothing to say about the rest of the list.
i was a big enough weezer fan for a time (bought the blue album from the new releases section at the fetus, abandoned them for a time, revisited after high school, then abandoned them again by maladroit), huge pumpkins fan through mellon collie (perfect high school album), but green day never did it for me. i think i even had their debut, but never listen to more than the hits.
I got into Weezer around the Green album. I mean, I had heard the 'hits from the previous two albums but never went out and bought the albums. But then I found the (like 3 incarnations ago old) Weezer message fan boards and got me tuned onto Blue and Pinkerton. I cant believe I skipped out on those albums for years. And hanging out on those boards changed my musical world. I got into Elvis Costello and Wilco and The Police and a few other bands, and then those artist branched out to other interests like The Kinks.
I gave up on Weezer after Make Believe. I mean, I hated that album so much I couldnt listen to any Weezer song for a year, and I havent bought their new stuff. But that band, and its fan board, have a place in my musical heart.
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I never could get into Mellon Collie, but '1979' is one of my all time Top 100 favorite songs.