The first two cassettes that I owned, having paid for them with my paltry allowance money, were singles: Tom Cochrane’s 1991 one hit wonder Life Is A Highway and U2’s Mysterious Ways. Coupled with my first CD–Jagged Little Pill, which still holds up as a chick-rock masterpiece–the “alt rock” genre holds a sentimental, un-ironic place in my heart. Listening to “the best of the 80s, 90s, and today” over the loudspeaker while swimming at the local water park; watching and re-watching early-morning broadcasts of VH1’s Top 20 video countdown; noodling with an acoustic guitar of my own, determined to give Toad The Wet Sprocket a run for their money and failing giddily–alternative rock music of the adult-contemporary variety may be a maligned genre, but it’s an important genre to me all the same.
Here then are a few of my favorites to which I apply the label of “guilty pleasure” somewhat reluctantly, but I’d rather we all have a good laugh about them than attempt to introduce them into any serious musical discourse. But no, I’m not ashamed to like any of these.
Fastball – “The Way” (1998)
The changing-the-dial intro is appropriate, as this song was a massive radio hit. Its ubiquity was a bit unexpected; after all, this is an ode to parental abandonment and “eternal summer slacking” with none of the commercialized sentimentality of, say, Everclear’s “Father Of Mine.” Nope, this is a jaunty, piano-driven tune that’s more than happy to rhyme “day” with “the way” several times. Maybe it’s the spaghetti-western-meets-Dirty–Harry guitar outro that made this such a pleasure to listen to in the car, hoping to cruise down the freeway but actually just getting stuck in rush-hour traffic, crawling past the second McDonald’s in ten minutes while wondering if there’s anything more to life than Best Buys and Top 40 radio, secretly fantasizing about giving it all up and running off to some unidentified tropical paradise where the women are well-endowed and the drinks are always strong. My dad loved this song, and while I’m hesitant to pin a failed marriage on a throwaway pop-rock 90s track, sometimes it simply “is what it is,” and all we can do is drink up the wine and ponder the necessity of getting a larger suitcase into which we may stuff our wares on that fateful cloudy afternoon we decide that we need to start over. Oh Fastball, I wasn’t planning on waxing philosophical but you couldn’t resist, could you?
Smash Mouth – “Walkin’ On The Sun” (1997)
That’s “walkin'” with an n-and-apostrophe, thank you very much. The grammar is crucial; it explains so much. The unabashed go-go organs, the Austin Powers guitar, the fifties-commercial jingle-jangle chorus, Steve Harwell’s generous (and Coke-aping) offer to “buy the world a toke,” the follow-along-with-the-Monkees bass line: these things don’t waste their time walking. There’s walkin’. With an apostrophe. You can keep your “All Star” and your fucking Shrek soundtrack; I’ll take this delicious slice of late-90s alternative pie with a side of NBA Jam-sanctioned “boom-shaka-laka,” thank you very much. In a twist of synesthetic serendipity, hearing this song evokes within me the smell of new furniture. We’d just moved into a new house when this song got popular; leather couches and ficus not yet damaged by the hands (and juice spills) of curious children, I’ll forever associate Smash Mouth with the sight of perfectly arranged throw pillows and sparkling-white kitchen counters. Walkin’ through Jennifer Convertibles, buyin’ stuff for our family’s new abode; some of my most vivid childhood memories feature me helpin’ my parents with new-house-decoratin’. I hope there’s a Smash Mouth equivalent when I go furniture shoppin’ with my kids in twenty or thirty years.
Matchbox 20 – “3AM” (1997)
WellIcan’thelpbutbescaredof itallllllsometimes. Yes, that’s all one word, LyricsFreak be damned. Within this breathless admission of quarterlife ennui (Rob Thomas was 25 when this song was released) lies the secret to the magic of 90s alt rock: the world–specifically, Kosovo and Cuba and the Middle East and Oklahoma City–was sincerely fucked up, so all we could do was strap on our guitars like musical shields and make love to the mic until we forgot where we were and why we felt so anxious about the imminent new millennium. Matchbox 20 was one of the last great dependable bands; you knew what you were getting when you bought one of their albums, and you could count on their style to happily refrain from evolving, because hey, why fix it if it ain’t broke, right? Some bands can explore many genres with equal aplomb, while others only did one sound but did it well. Matchbox 20 did this particular, indelible strain of post-grunge rock music exceedingly well, so much so that two years later Thomas would paste this inoffensively rockabilly style onto Carlos Santana’s smooth guitar pickings, to massive commercial success. Convincing a guitar legend to adopt your musical style? If that’s not a sign of cultural influence, I don’t know what is.
Tracy Bonham – “Mother Mother” (1996)
“Yeah, I’m working, making money / I’m just starting to build a name,” Bonham spits, voicing the post-collegiate frustrations of a generation of slackers who constantly claimed they were “really trying, man, but it’s tough” as they headed to Western Union to get their parents’ latest money wiring. The screaming chorus might suggest some kind of emocore, but really, this song transcends that Hot Topic genre; this ain’t the sort of single you listen to at the mall. No, this was the song your older sister would play on her shitty sedan’s cassette deck as she dropped you off at soccer practice before her weekly poetry session (or whatever it was that she did on Tuesday afternoons). Yes, Tracy, you’re “freezing,” “starving,” “bleeding to death,” but tell us how you really feel. If brevity is the soul of wit, then it’s also the soul of twenty-something angst, a rallying cry against the placating soma of Mad About You and Miller Lite. During the second verse, the video for this song shows Tracy playing a violin, but I always thought it was an oboe. I don’t know, there’s just something quirky and fascinating about reed instruments in rock songs; a violin just seems so easy, doesn’t it? Come on, Tracy, what would your creative writing teacher say about turning to such a cliched melodramatic instrument? Give us our oboe, and everything will indeed be “fiiiiiiiiiine.”
Alanis Morissette – “Thank U” (1998)
Yes, yes, the nude video. I couldn’t find a version of the official video that allowed embedding, so you’ll just have to recall the sight of Alanis’s digitally censored vagina hangin’ out in the supermarket in your head. Or Google it, whatever.
So yes, as I mentioned earlier, I will stand by Jagged Little Pill as one of the nineties’ crowning artistic achievements. But the followup album, Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie? Eh, not so much. Even the title is pretentious, the kind of thing you might expect to see scrawled atop a high school drama nerd’s marble notebook in neon pink highlighter. And were it not for the crunchy guitars and angry guitars during the song’s climax, I’d be hard-pressed to call this a “rock song” at all. But here it is, and in weaker moments it makes me cry, and I’ll be happy to keep on crying for Alanis’s musical dangling carrots as long as she keeps on writing melodies this irresistible. New age schlock? Hardly. This is the stuff of real teenage dreams, and it’s cheesy but also tragically beautiful, like a porcelain angel figurine with one wing broken off.
