60 Songs That Explain the '90s by Rob Harvilla

I have talked about the podcast 60 Songs That Explain the '90s in this very space before. The host of that podcast, Rob Harvilla, has written an accompanying book and you better believe I  put that on hold at the library as soon as I could. 

A few caveats about this book. I was in middle and high school during the '90s, so all of this music talk speaks to me. Harvilla is from Ohio, a fact that comes up repeatedly in this book and I spent most of the '90s in nearby Michigan and the last three years of the decade at a college in Ohio, so a lot of his Midwest pride resonates with me. If you are not familiar with the music or musicians from the 1990s, this book will be a garbled mess because Harvilla assumes a lot of knowledge on your behalf (heaven forbid if you don't know how a particular musician died). 

All of that aside, this book is so funny. I know it's because I could hear Harvilla's voice after listening to every episode of his podcast, some of them more than once, so I can hear the tone when he writes the word Rude and the Stephanie Tanner of it all (look, if you don't get that reference, you should not read this book).  There's not much new here if you have listened to every episode of the podcast (maybe some of them more than once), but he organizes the chapters by themes, so sometimes there's an interesting juxtaposition of musical artists that you wouldn't get on the actual podcast. 

If you like '90s music, maybe you would like this? I really did. 4/5 stars

Lines of note:

Did you ever notice that new music, now, is nowhere near as great as the music you loved as a teenager? And you know what? You're right. Whether you were a teenager in the '60s, the '90s, or the 2010s, you're right. The music you loved as a teenager is the sweetest music you'll ever hear...(page xiii)

Harvilla is generous in his love of music, but he knows that he just thinks '90s music is the best because it's the music of his childhood. And I love this acknowledgement. 

[After Harvilla recounts an anecdote about how Prince threatened Sinead O'Connor and she had to run away from his house to find refuge in a neighbor's house.] I can't tell you how to feel about any of this. I can't tell you how it should change the way you feel about him, or about her, or about this song ["Nothing Compares 2 U"]. There is no true, clean definitive way to Separate the Art from the Artist. (page 72) 

After just having read Monsters by Claire Dederer, this was the second book I'd read in recent memory that tells all of us that we're off the hook for having to make judgments about artists. I think I need to read authors with stronger points of view.

Can I be honest and say that I find Liam and Noel's insults to be more vibrant, to be more musical, to be of greater lasting sociocultural value than most other bands' songs? (page 111)

If I need to explain who Liam and Noel are, you shouldn't read this book. 

Did you know Cher was born in 1946, which was the year after World War II ended? I don't say that to be rude, but to more effectively convey my awe that Cher, at 52, had a massive pop hit the year after "Zoot Suit Riot" came out with 1998's "Believe," an AutoTune exaltation that divided the 1990s from the 200s just as surely as God divided the light from the darkness. (page 141)

Cher is a modern miracle. When "Believe" comes on in our fitness classes, you should hear the multigenerational cacophony the first time Cher sings "I really don't think you're strong enough, no." Dolly Parton and Cher - bringing together the generations. (If you haven't heard the Robbie Fulks version of "Believe," your life is incomplete.) 

What is the single greatest opening line of the 1990s? Let's figure this out. To expedite the process of figuring this out, let's narrow the field down to two choices. Your choices are "Alright stop, collaborate and listen" or "Man, it's a hot one." You pick.

Harvilla really tickles my funny bone. 

One summer in my teenage years, I spent a week at a literary workshop at Bowling Green State University, and my parents both drove me there and back and sat through an hours-long climactic student reading in which I recited a poem about dreaming about being a bean in a bowl of chili. (page 267-268) 

Harvilla shouted out my alma mater in the acknowledgements and I squealed out loud, just like I do every time I see or hear a mention of it in the great big world. (A lady in my fitness class recently came up to me after class and complimented by BGSU tshirt. "Did you go there?" "Yes, I graduated in 1986." Without pause, we both chanted "Ay ziggy zoomba" and then we left to go home. Go Falcons.)

Hat mentions (why hats?):

Best fashion accessory: in a huge upset, the floppy hat with the giant bow on it in the "Borderline" video. (page 9) 

This is referring to Madonna and I can think of at least five other accessories I'd include on a list of Madonna's best fashion accessories from the "Papa Don't Preach" video alone. 

You can buy so many porkpie hats and trombones and Skankin' Pickle records with that money. (page 45)

I have nothing to say about the '90s swing revival.

The Atlanta pop trio of Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins, Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes, and Rozonda "Chilli" Thomas, is, by the numbers and also by the feelings, the biggest girl group of all time, which in retrospect as pretty obvious just based on the riotous video for their 1992 debut single "Ain't Too Proud to Beg": the exuberant primary colors, the giant hats, the baggy pants, the overalls, and of course, the glasses with a condom over the left eye that gave Lisa Lopes her nickname. (page 67) 

I did not know her name was Rozonda. I'm just going to leave the rest of it there. (Biggest girl band? Really? The Supremes? The Spice Girls? Destiny's Child? I love TLC so much, but this seems like hyperbole to me.)

They are led by singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, charming Only Guy on the Album Cover narcissist, and bucket-hat enthusiast Gregg Alexander, who I would've sworn to you was English (it's the hat), but who apparently grew up in Gross Pointe, Michigan. (page 137)

Why is bucket-hat hyphenated here? I've never hyphenated it before? To be transparent to all of you, I do not fully understand how to use hyphens. 

What made Tom Petty so rad to me by 1989? The super-jaunty hats in the dusty, post-apocalyptic video for 1982's "You Got Lucky." (page 240)

WHY IS SUPER-JAUNTY HYPHENATED? I guess I'll be spending the morning looking up rules about hyphens.  

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What is the single greatest opening line of a song from the 1990s, in your opinion? I do think "Man, it's a hot one" is very good, but what about "Yo, I'll tell you what I want, what I really, really want" or "You are my fire/the one desire"?