Someone my age at the Whole Foods must have set the in-store music to “The Nineties!” tonight. While there, I heard:
Crystal Watters – 100% Pure Love (which I don’t think I’ve heard since high school dances…and which Ben was kind of dancing to himself)
Jewel – Who Will Save Your Soul?
Green Day – Longview
Madonna – Frozen
Natalie Imbruglia – Torn
Dishwalla – Counting Blue Cars
…and a few other songs I can’t remember that I recognized as all being from that timeframe, 1994 through 1998.
Ben and I were having dinner at Discounted Food Bar Night tonight: me with a plate full of prepared salads, Ben with hummus and pita and vegetables. And I heard all these songs going by, and realized (again) that my generation is now old enough, and well-off enough, that marketing 90s nostalgia to us is actually a money making proposition. I go to a bar in Culver City and hear the same songs that played in the clubs when I was nineteen and just turned legal in BC. I go to Whole Foods and hear the Top Tracks of 1994. We are now in our thirties, reasonably well-off, and willing to start to pay to remember our youth…so why not throw some nostalgia at the tail end of GenX?
Unfortunately, because I have been seeing nostalgia marketed to the Baby Boomers my entire life, I now associate hearing songs from the 90s with being reminded that I am old enough for the music I grew up with to be “retro”. If that makes sense. When I was a teenager, music from the past meant music from the 60s or 70s that was being played to cater to people who were old. Now, I hear music from the 90s and think, does that mean I’m old? Because it probably does.
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