Five Songs From Twenty Odd Years Ago That Hold Up Nicely

Every day I reminded how old I am.  I'm getting past the point of caring, to be honest.

Because I've found that there's something in my DNA that has been consistent my whole life, and that is a love of music.  I'm the music nerd you turn to when it's trivia night.  It's just what I do.  And it's my job, in a way, to listen to music all day long.

But I was randomly reminded of some music I had in my college years, and I realized with a kind of unpleasant thud that this stuff was from about twenty years ago.  Twenty Years.  That's a long time! But, you know what, some of the stuff from back then holds up, and some of it doesn't.

Here are five that do.

1.  Idlewild - American English.

That's a performance from a few years back, just because the song is so old I can't find an official video for it.  You'd be forgiven for not knowing who Idlewild is.  They were a smallish band from Scotland that I found when I was studying abroad.  Back then you could buy a newspaper that was entirely devoted to music news, and once in a while they would include a CD with new music on it.  That's how I found them. I stayed with them for a few records but they lost me about 2009.  Either way, that's a beautiful song.

2.  OutKast - Ms. Jackson.

There was a golden period there of about three albums where OutKast couldn't do much wrong.  In My Opinion, that is.  Stankonia, Speakerboxxx/Love Below, and Idlewild were pretty close to perfect. I know you've heard "Hey Yah" seven thousand times and you're probably sick of it, but there's a lot more to them than that.  I always liked how different they were, but I guess that's what ended up breaking them up. 

3.  The Hives - Main Offender.

There was a time when angsty nineties grunge kids were looking for something to carry them through college.  And well, there wasn't too much to be exited about.  Sure, Blink was.. okay, and Sum 41 was fun at a party but that's not the kind of stuff you wanted to have your CD walkman as you went around campus.  No, you wanted something a step up from that.  And that, for a brief but shining period, was The Hives.  They were sharp, they were fast, and they were vaguely Swedish. They had me for a good couple of records.  This was also the time that The White Stripes were starting to become a thing, along with The Dandy Warhols and Snow Patrol, so there was almost a movement there, but it never really happened.

4.  Daft Punk - One More Time.

I remember a somewhat stoned safety major at UCM telling me that I should totally check out Daft Punk at a theater department party.  He was a little smelly but had good tastes in other music so I did that the next day.  Discovery was a great album, and actually, every Daft Punk record that I've heard (haven't heard the Tron soundtrack) was pretty darn good.  Weird, but good. Maybe it's the French thing.  Who knows. They've been quiet for a few years, I almost expect for them to just pop out of nowhere and smack us all back into submission.

5.  The Strokes - Last Nite.

I remember seeing this on MTV (or really, MTV2, which we had on most of the time at my college shared house) and thinking that they reminded me of an American version of the scruffiest Rolling Stones era.  This was peak Julian Casablancas, but they didn't have bad records after this.  I can still hear an odd Strokes song every now and then and enjoy it. I don't go for full albums from them anymore, but it can happen.

I was surprised at how well some of these stood the test of time.  What are some of your "this one's still good" songs?

Youtubingly yours,

Behka