I’m always surprised to remember that Cher’s “Believe” was from 1999 (though I’m starting to internalize it) because Madonna’s “Ray of Light” came out two years earlier: massive comeback hits by aging pop divas centered on contemporary dance beats. “Ray of Light” is a much better song though. The thing I most associate with “Believe” is the South Park episode where Randy Marsh and Gerald Broflovski masturbate together in a hot tub at a party celebrating a comet that the ATF wants to raid because they tthink they’re a suicide cult. But even then, Hale-Bopp was in ‘97 – just like “Ray of Light”! But South Park at that earlier date was still more crude and embryonic.

One thing I’ve always hated about “Livin’ la Vida Loca” is how it mixes Spanish and English in the title and chorus: not in an organic, Spanglish way, but literally dropping a single Spanish phrase in the middle of what is otherwise straight English. There’s a radio commercial with a traveller in Argentina calling home to the US on whatever cellular network, and he greets them, “¡hola, familia!”. I’m not familiar with immigrant families with firm enough roots to speak English at home but recent enough that their Spanish hasn’t been lost to assimilation so I don’t know if that actually happens, but it smells like a token performative corporate attempt to be diverse and inclusive. There was a lot of pretty racist and homophobic stuff Target this song and Ricky Martin (who, let’s be honest, was flaming), of which the only one that sticks in my memory is a guy on AOL saying, “Goddammit, I was hoping the Latin Explosion meant we nuked Mexico”. Like the great swing revival of 1998 or whenever “Zoot Suit Riot” was, there was an attempt to take this song, “Mambo Number Five”, and a couple other songs from this period and spin them into a supposed movement.

(I’ve always thought that Spanish was one of the ugliest languages this side of these East Asian tonal ones but I’ve come to appreciate it a lot more having studied Latin – stuff like switching -a- and -e- in the subjunctive and -ba- in the imperfect are straight from Latin where they had been lost in French, and the vocabulary is more similar. I’d still recommend high-school students study French for practical reasons: the accent and pronunciation are much harder to pick up, you pick up the ludicrous spelling system naturally, and French includes several sounds, most notably ü, ö, and the nasal vowels, that are very useful in later language study while Spanish has only five vowels and a poverty of consonants.)

I hated Sugar Ray at the time. “Fly” was a good song, but just as Hoodoo Gurus developed into bland college rock after a stellar debut, Sugar Ray became boring alt radio-rock. I do like that they recognized their impermanence, but despite self-consciously titling their second record 14:59, they actually had a bit of staying power.

I remember “Heartbreak Hotel” existing because I was familiar with the Elvis song and I was annoyed the Whitney Houston song nicker the name. Faith Evans – now that’s a name from the past.

Britney was 17 at the time of “Baby One More Time”, in the secy schoolgirl outfit in the video (come on, what do you think of it?) A lot of these pop tarts were really young (Mandy Moore was 15) which would be a lot creepier if their fan bases were older than teenyboppers or high-school boys who bought the CDs for the pictures in the booklet (I knew some). I always thought the chorus of “Genie in a Bottle” ripped off the chorus to “The Boy Is Mine” by Brandy & Monica, but I seem to be the only one to notice the resemblance. Speaking of Monica, I remember “Angel of Mine” existing but nothing more. “Father of Mine” by Everclear plays in my head when I read the title. That’s probably a better artist, that I haven’t thought of in close to 30 years – what were their big hits again? They were a one-album wonder.

I hate the Santana/Rob Thomas song (how many times can you repeat the same “soulful” guitar lick?) – it put me off Santana for a few years until I found their first three albums at a thrift shop and realized they didn’t suck – as well aa the Sixpence None the Richer song (of whom one of the members recently died and got posted about by Burks.)

I believe Goo Goo Dolls’ “Slide” was a midtempo alt-rock somg with the singer in some kind of skyscraper rolling around in a swivel chair and looking through telescopes. Or something, it was from some movie.

I hate “All Star” with a burning passion. The only good thing it ever did was inspire the Neil Cicierega record that Ken will post about if I don’t beat him to it:

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(Relics, btw, not requiems. Sorry)