I’m not kidding: I don’t think I’d HEARD “Second Chance” by 38 Special since about the year 1995 or so, and then all of a sudden it crashes the supermarket party when I’m in there stocking beer at the start of this calendar year. Truth be told, it’s a pretty good song, anyway.
But once you hear “Pop Song 89” and “Stand” by R.E.M., which are both from their ’89 album Green, but not “Losing My Religion” or “Nightswimming”; and you hear zero songs from the’ 90s decade whatsoever, you realize there’s a political manifesto in place. Another hint was the company’s selection of “Radio Gaga” by Queen, a song with lyrics complaining, apparently, about reductive radio music, odd indeed since this song itself seems to completely lack creative flair in the way of structural adornments, key or meter changes and instrumentation.
In Bullet in a Bible, a documentary handling the recording and release of Green Day’s politically charged masterpiece American Idiot (2004), producer Rob Cavallo discusses how the economic boom in the 1990s gave record labels the opportunity to take chances on quirky acts like these guys, CAKE and The Presidents of the United States of America. Indeed, in no other era that I can think of off the top of my head do we have a rock band on a major label basically admitting to being a “loser” and being “so da** bored.” The result, I think, is a sort of emotional integrity that speaks for itself, in light of the 10-million-plus records sold.
In contrast, the ’80s, maligned by static Reaganomics and the Cold War, are notorious for their stylistic uniformity of pop music, which was dominated, essentially, by Prince, Michael Jackson, Madonna and Bruce Springsteen, along with a bunch of sound-alikes like Cyndi Lauper and Bananarama. I mean, when people say “’80s music,” you pretty much know it’s going to be a simple, drum-machine beat and some cheesy, faux-melodic come-ons, whereas “’90s music” could refer to anything from grunge-laden fuzzy rock songs to dance satires about “Barbie girls” to rock songs saturated in trumpet and trombone, a la The Mighty Mighty Bosstones and other culprits. Why would they be so He**-bent on dismissing music from such an economically robust, culturally multifarious decade? I dunno but they remind me of those haters late at night at Brothers who try to diss Miley Cyrus, in voices full of urgency and machismo. The motives seem a little unclear, anyway, but I hope no incidents end up on the police blotter as a result.
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