For my first ever diary, I thought I'd start with something light.
As someone born in 1982, I'm well aware of how much my generation has made nostalgia for the pop culture of our youth (mainly the 90's) into an art form. The toys, the TV shows (Saturday morning and prime time), the movies, the video games, and, of course, the music.
This, admittedly, may have something to do with the fact that we've had the ability to share that love across social media throughout our 20's and 30's in a way that our Gen X and Baby Boomer fore bearers didn't.
Still, it's interesting to see these elements of our formative years being presented to someone who didn't grow up with them. Are we biased towards the music of our youth, or was there actually something there that could appeal to later generations?
I'll try not to sound so pretentious, as we see for ourselves below the fold.
To give a bit of back story, over the past five years, Youtubers the Fine Brothers have produced an increasingly brilliant online "React" series. What started out as simply showing viral videos to small kids, and then asking them about them, has expanded to series featuring teenagers, elders (55 and up), and even their fellow Youtube personalities, and not just viral videos, but pop culture and technology, both old and new. They've had the kids sample such exotic dishes as cow tongue, caviar, escargot, and frog legs. A few times they've delved into some serious subject matter like marriage equality, drunk driving, or the Sandy Hook shooting, but usually, it's lighter stuff.
The best ones, in my opinion, consist of kids or adults reacting to things from different generations. This has led to some amusing images, like seeing small kids type "GOOGLE" into a 35 year-old computer, teenagers playing the original Super Mario Bros and Mike Tyson's Punch Out (with varying degrees of success) on the 8-bit NES, or elders playing Grand Theft Auto V and some of them actually getting into it.
The latest "React" spin-off is certainly in that same spirit, asking teens to identify songs popular when someone like me was their age. (Cue the inevitable comments about feeling old).
As someone certainly not immune to nostalgia himself, this was fun to watch, especially since I haven't heard some of these myself in years (Ace of Base doesn't seem quite as annoying now as when it was blaring from my sister's bedroom). They seem to be as almost familiar with the Backstreet Boys and Green Day as people my age would be (there was even one Tool song some of them knew that I didn't really), but other times, it seems the parodies made by Weird Al Yankovic had more longevity than the originals.
They've actually covered this ground a bit before, albeit focusing on a single artist. About this time last year, they commemorated the 20th anniversary of Kurt Cobain's death by playing a few of Nirvana's videos. Most of them were familiar with the music, but a lot of them actually didn't know Cobain had committed suicide.
I really hope they continue with this new variation on the series, and there's no reason to think they won't. I can certainly think of a number of 90's songs (both legit classics and some of the sillier one-hit wonders) I'd like to hear the teens listen to. Just coming to mind are "Everthing I Do (I Do it For You)" by Bryan Adams, "I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)" by Meat Loaf, "Kiss From a Rose" by Seal, "Achy Breaky Heart" by Billy Rae Cyrus (especially considering who his daughter is), "Let Her Cry" by Hootie & the Blowfish, "Steal My Sunshine" by Len, "One Week" by Barenaked Ladies, "Man on the Moon" by REM, as well as the Macarena, Ricky Martin, and some early Britney Spears.
You don't even have to limit it to the 90's, as there's some 80's power ballads and hair metal I'd love to hear them listen to, or go back even further to have them hear some 70's disco hits, Bee Gees, Zeppelin, and some early Aerosmith.
Although I found myself cringing at some responses, like one girl calling her 25 year old sisters "old", or smiling at the nerve of another girl, who admits her birth date to be December 10, 1999, saying "as a 90's kid... I should know the music of my people better," I still found the experience gratifying, because what I took from this video (and the older ones) was that, even when the teens weren't that familiar with songs, they still liked them, for the most part. In fact, in some of the videos, the teens sometimes seemed to take a dim view of some of the music of their own generation.
I've heard some interesting theories on this, especially when you contrast the current state of the music industry with that of the TV industry, but ultimately what these videos tell me is, hey, maybe we were onto something after all.