Sunday, August 25, 2019
Hit Parade
We've discovered something wonderful on YouTube. True, I start a surprising number of paragraphs with that sentence, but this time I think it just might be true. There's a channel called "Younger Days," which is not in fact round-the-clock coverage of the Sutton Foster vehicle, but rather a collection of videos compiling hit singles by year. It is amazing for a variety of reasons, not least of which is that it appears to have been compiled by a European, so occasionally there are "hits" that I have literally never heard in my entire life. Lots of Westlife and S Club 7, for example. But it's also fun just to take a trip down memory lane and remember the collective insanity that led the Macarena to be the top song in the land for weeks on end or Dido to kind of be a thing. And it's always worthwhile to be reminded of how my friend used a singalong to "I Want It That Way" to create a diversion so I wouldn't see my other friend making out with a super sketchy dude in a Champaign dive bar, or how "Blue (Da Ba Dee)" followed me and my sister all the way through our first trip to Europe. Also, it's shocking how long some songs were number one and how quickly other songs stopped being number one. "My Heart Will Go On" was only number one for two weeks? My shock will go on. The Black Eyed Peas held number one for like 26 weeks straight in the mid zeros? More like a black eye to American culture. But regardless, now I have the tools to KNOW which crappy songs were hits at what time, and that's an intensely powerful thing.
We've discovered something wonderful on YouTube. True, I start a surprising number of paragraphs with that sentence, but this time I think it just might be true. There's a channel called "Younger Days," which is not in fact round-the-clock coverage of the Sutton Foster vehicle, but rather a collection of videos compiling hit singles by year. It is amazing for a variety of reasons, not least of which is that it appears to have been compiled by a European, so occasionally there are "hits" that I have literally never heard in my entire life. Lots of Westlife and S Club 7, for example. But it's also fun just to take a trip down memory lane and remember the collective insanity that led the Macarena to be the top song in the land for weeks on end or Dido to kind of be a thing. And it's always worthwhile to be reminded of how my friend used a singalong to "I Want It That Way" to create a diversion so I wouldn't see my other friend making out with a super sketchy dude in a Champaign dive bar, or how "Blue (Da Ba Dee)" followed me and my sister all the way through our first trip to Europe. Also, it's shocking how long some songs were number one and how quickly other songs stopped being number one. "My Heart Will Go On" was only number one for two weeks? My shock will go on. The Black Eyed Peas held number one for like 26 weeks straight in the mid zeros? More like a black eye to American culture. But regardless, now I have the tools to KNOW which crappy songs were hits at what time, and that's an intensely powerful thing.
