LOL, “Gangsta’s Paradise” in Marysville, Kansas?

Do you plan on doing the Billboard Modern Rock charts as well? You’d enjoy it a lot more, and we’d have more to say about it. Extend this run to 2000 if Sisqo’s “Tha Thong Song” made it – now that’s a video (“daddy, what’s this?”). BSB’s Millennium and “I Want It That Way” came out in 1999.

I looked it up, and “The Memory Remains” was actually the first single off of ReLoad; “Fuel” waa the second, in June 1998. I remember “Turn the Page” (I never liked the Metallica version but the original is quite good – Musicman’s Bob Seger fandom vindicated) coming out that fall so summer 1998 (between sixth and seventh grade) was both when (a) I switched to the modern rock station, and (b) bought my first album with my own money: the same used record store I frequent now got a box of Ride the Lightning cutouts and I picked one up liking their radio hits. Needless to say I never looked back at ’90s Metallica (I’ve still never heard the black album) alrhough apparently the Load albums have undergone a critical re-evaluation in the last 30 years and are regarded as quite good, a legitimately daring departure (remember the fuss about them cutting their hair?) though they really didn’t need to release everything they recorded those sessions.

The Super Bowl – that’s right. You know, I’ve thought about it and although the hue and cry over Jackson was ludicrous, I really can’t get behind the toplessness-acceptance movement. I’m a big believer that ALL boobs matter. It’s the reason Sydney Sweeney passes for a bombshell, and it extended Chappell Roan’s relevance when she did that attention-seeking thing with her nipples on the red carpet a few months ago. Since activists are never satisfied, the same feminists crying to desexualize breasts will be complaining when no one wants to see their mosquito bites or Roan’s pancake tits. The notion of a paradise of bare breasts as far as the eye can see crumbles under the thought that they’d become just another body part. I had a Muslim friend who posted an exchange between a young man asking why they kept their women covered up and a wise man who threw two candies in the dirt, one in a wrapper and one without, and asking the young man which he’d rather eat. That’s boobs. I dunno, do African tribesmen like tits? Also desexualizing breasts would increase sexualization of teenagers since shape and lift would matter more. (Going braless is more than fine though.)

This is probably the most anyone has discussed Third Eye Blind in 2026. To think, if those guys were in their mid 20s in 1998 they’re in their fifties now. Usually I don’t feel forty but damn that makes me feel old.