Ain't Superstitious, But These Things I've Seen…

CONFESSIONS OF A ’90s SURVIVOR

Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories – Stay (I Missed You)
From: Tails

I’m probably the wrong person to muse about the potency of “Stay.” The ideal candidate would be some girl who was aged 16 to 22 in 1994 when the song shot an unsigned friend of Ethan Hawke to the top of the Billboard Hot 100. I was 11 when the song was popular. Beyond having a crush on a girl in my 5^th grade class, there wasn’t a lot to connect me with the song on any emotional level at the time of its strongest prevalence.

But even when I hear the song today or rewatch the simplistic video (by the way, is she moving into or out of that apartment? The bed frame gives no indication. If she’s moving out, I understand her annoyance somewhat. If she’s moving in, she needs to take more of a “I may only have a view of other building’s windows, but look at this f*cking space. This kicks ass and I’m gonna rock this city” attitude and stop whining about the ex), there is something unspeakably ‘90s about it.

Visually, Loeb singlehandedly brought the coffeeshop bookworm look to the masses. Audibly, she actually married a (relatively) disproportionate amount of cynicism (Lisa, babe, everyone has the “YOU’RE NOT LISTENING!” arguments) to a catchy melody and put it at the top of the charts (“You said you caught me ‘cause you want me and one day you’ll let me go—you try to give away a keeper or keep me ‘cause you know you’re just so scared to lose”). Anyone up for a Janeane Garofalo stand-up set next?

If I remember the ‘90s in broad brushstrokes, I remember a certain amount of dispassion. What Loeb was unwittingly (I hope) doing in this video, was giving every single or spoken-for girl with access to popular radio or music television ample ammo for entirely unnecessary arguments.

Dramatization:
We find a college couple in the dining room of a three-star restaurant. The gentleman surveys the menu while the lady bemoans a roommate who insists on having late night trysts despite the fact that finals are in two weeks and a certain amount of time must be afforded to study.

GIRL: I mean, I suppose it’s easy for Sasha, because her parents are paying her tuition and can afford to send her somewhere else if she fails, which she won’t because she’s totally smart and never even has to study, because she always manages to get a ‘B’ at worst anyway. But that’s not me! I’ve got loans! I’ve got to pay for all these books! And I need to maintain a certain average to keep my scholarship.

DUDE: (quietly deciding whether he should splurge on an 8-oz. steak or keep it thrifty by saving three bucks and going with a pulled pork sandwich) Mmm.

GIRL: I’m up! I’m actually studying! Hello! And I’ve got to listen to her get it on with David or whoever the new interest this week happens to be! Like I want to hear that! I mean don’t you think that’s totally unfair?

DUDE: (still looking at menu) Totally.

GIRL: What’s that supposed to mean?

DUDE: (slowly realizing he might have said “Totally” in a sarcastic tone) What?

GIRL: You think this is a joke?

DUDE: I never said—

GIRL: No, you didn’t have to say. I heard the way you said that. All sarcastic. Like this is not a big deal.

DUDE: No, I understand your frustration, but in the grand scheme of things, how big of a deal is it? There’s the library. There are study halls in your building.

GIRL: It’s my room!

DUDE: Well have you talked to her about it?

GIRL: Oh, right. And what am I supposed to say?

DUDE: How about, ‘Hey I need to study, could you please stop the porn rehearsals til all hours of the night?’

GIRL: Oh, yeah. I’m so sure that would fly.

DUDE: Well, something like that. Why don’t you just study at my place?

GIRL: Gross. And have Chad trying to offer me a beer every 10 minutes? You know, what is his deal anyway? I was talking with Lindsay Carpenter last week, and she was saying that Chad was over at her place last Tuesday for like no reason. Does he like Lindsay? Cos he knows she has a boyfriend right?

DUDE: What does that have to do—

GIRL: You know what, if you can’t see that, then I don’t know. What. I sit here and I explain to you this total crisis I’m having right now, and you just make all these sarcastic comments.

DUDE: I’m offering suggestions.

GIRL: Yeah. Real helpful. All of them. And I’m just not taking them because I’m an idiot, right? I only hear what I want to hear. Is that it?

Within a few more seconds, she’s shouting and he’s trying to quiet her down while simultaneously wondering how the hell he got from picking between a wimpy steak or a pork sandwich to this and she’s left the restaurant in a huff.

The thing about “Stay” is that it’s actually quite a passionate song. For women, I imagine the great thing about “Stay” is that they can find a great deal of comfort in it. It’s a breakup song, but it also carries a certain sense of defiance in that “I know it hurts, but this is for the best because things really weren’t going anywhere with you” sort of way. But it also undermines its whole argument—and gives credence to those using it as consolation after an argument or split with the “I missed you, yeah, I missed you” refrain. Can a pop song cut both ways like that? Of course. Human personalities are complex and certainly the range of emotions one goes through after a breakup/argument/fight range from “Dear God, what have I done?” to “I’m glad I will never see that (insert expletive-enhanced adjective of choice here) again.” The problem is it immediately establishes Lisa (and the countless women who adhere to the song) as unpredictable.

Is she simply a shy coffeehouse girl who got tied up with the wrong guy, thus having to leave (or move into?) a boss apartment following their split? Or is she a coquette using the coffeehouse chic as a front to eat shy coffeehouse boys up and spit them out? Is she a strong, proud woman standing up for fellow sisters (in the introductory Lilith Fair lineup), or an attention hound who’s going to bring cameras along when you and she try out a new restaurant?

Again, multi-faceted personalities are not a bad thing, but a certain level of unpredictability can be damning. I’m sure there were a lot of men who were turned on by the “Stay” video—likely owing to library-related fantasies stemming from Lisa’s signature cat-like eyeglasses, but I never bought into it, even in the following years when “Stay” remained somewhat popular and puberty hit me like a ton of bricks. There was something I couldn’t quite figure out about Lisa. It wasn’t the look—that’s a surface thing, and an attractive one at that. In recent years I’ve had dating experience with similarly studious-looking girls that inevitably lead to me shaking my head over a pint of beer and relaying stories to friends in the vain hope that they can make sense of what the hell had transpired. It’s more that she carries a little too much mystery with her. I have no problem with intelligent women. I have no problem with women who harbor strong feminist views. I’d rather never discuss politics in the context of a relationship, but I don’t have a problem with those who have deep-seated right- or left-wing beliefs, so long as they’re not trying to convert me.

After seeing the 10,000 Maniacs “Unplugged” appearance, I’d developed a bit of a crush on Natalie Merchant. Years later, I relayed this to my college roommate who said, “No, you don’t want a girl like that. You’ll come home one day and there’ll just be a note that says ‘I had to go to Africa to find myself.’” It was an obtuse point, but it made sense. Still, it was a character trait that you could expect, even if you hoped no such thing would occur. With Lisa, you could get a woman who coddles you one day and leaves you flummoxed at a 3-star restaurant the next. You don’t know. It’s there in the lyrics of “Stay.” It’s just a bit too much of a dichotomy. It’s as fiercely independent as it is dependent.

So I still don’t know whether it was heartbreaking or wholly appropriate that more than 10 years after she wrote a song that so many women identified with, she was the star of her own E! network reality series about her continued difficulty in finding a man. Do a Google search on “Number 1 Single” and you’ll find out that no one cares nearly as much about whether real love was found on the show (…was it?) as they do that the show afforded them screencaps of a 37-year-old former charttopper in panties.

But the power of “Stay” goes far beyond the reach of jilted girlfriends who feel like their current or former boyfriends treat(ed) them like puppets. The power of “Stay” is (for lack of a better term) its staying power.

I worked out the song on guitar during my junior year of college. My roommate burst into my room as I was faking my way through it and started singing along at the top of his lungs. Part of it was light-hearted comedy, but there was an underlying sense that he really enjoyed singing the song. I’ve used it as a party trick at different get-togethers when the guitars come out. It always, always, always starts a gusto-packed singalong.

Duplicitous though it may be, “Stay” still manages to get people right to the core, whether “this woman was singing my song” in 1994 and 1995 or they found it in later years after their own I love him/I hate him existential dilemma.

And for what it’s worth, Lisa got married in 2009. I knew I should’ve put this post up in 2008 …

CONFESSIONS OF A ’90s SURVIVOR

The Wallflowers – One Headlight
From: Bringing Down the Horse

I recently read an interview with Keith Richards that Rolling Stone magazine did in 1988 prior to the release of his debut solo album, Talk is Cheap. In it, the interviewer finagled Keith’s opinions on a wide variety of musicians. Keith mentions he likes Ziggy Marley, and describes one of many of Bob’s offspring thusly: “Ziggy Marley I find very interesting because he’s not just ‘the son of,’ He’s avoided being, I hate to say this, Julian.”

Immediately my mind turned to 1996, Bringing Down the Horse, and the Wallflowers, or as you might remember them, Bob Dylan’s son and some other dudes.

OK, I feel a little guilty for writing that. I have a very dear friend who rates the Wallflowers highly and citing someone as the “son of” immediately belittles their own contribution to the musical landscape, suggesting that the only reason they made any dent whatsoever is because of the weight behind their surname.

But if I were to ask you how many Wallflowers songs you could name, how many could you give me? Now if I pared that down further to “How many Wallflowers songs can you name NOT on Bringing Down the Horse, but on one of their four other studio albums?” how many could you give me?

I’m guessing the answer is slim to none. And that’s not me trying to pick a fight, Ben, I know you can probably name ‘em all.

But in the months that covered 1996 and 1997, the fact of the matter is that every biographical clip I saw on the band contained the fact that Jakob is Bob’s son, as if it was the biggest slice of “here’s something you might not know” cool information that year. Even the cover story that Rolling Stone did on Jakob in 1997 carried a picture of the young boy with his father.

Now, sure. The counterargument is, “Hey, the Wallflowers put out an album in 1992—Jakob was Bob’s son then and no one cared a bit.” Fair point. If the boys didn’t have some solid tunes to stand on, would the Dylan name mean anything at all? Probably not. Maybe it would give you some better club gigs than the average Joes trying to get bar gigs any night of the week, but you’ve got to have a cracking tune to top three different Billboard charts for a combined total of 15 weeks, don’t you?

I say this. You’ve got to have a cracking tune to top the charts for two to three weeks. Anything extra is driven by extracurricular interest in the band, and let’s face it, Jakob being Bob’s son and carrying his own set of gravelly, talk/sing pipes added an interesting element for sustained interest.

Interscope Records, for their part, put up a lot of cash for Bringing Down the Horse to reach the heights that it did, too. Heartbreaker Mike Campbell and Counting Crow Adam Duritz both feature on “6^th Avenue Heartache” (which, for my money was always the Wallflowers’ best tune), Michael Penn drops in on “Angel on My Bike” and the solo on “One Headlight” is played by none other than Jon Brion.

I’ve talked before about the “this is all up for grabs” aspect of the top of the charts in the 1990s, and so for “One Headlight” to be popular, you must remember it was sharing equal air time on MTV in that stretch with the likes of Hanson, the Spice Girls, Savage Garden and U2. Maybe it was the working man’s rock preference to the other popular music of the era, and certainly a lot of people bought into it (I remember buying my copy of Bringing Down the Horse at a shopping mall during our 8^th grade trip to Washington D.C. – who needs souvenirs from the National Treasury?), but there always seemed to be a reticence by the general public to buy into the Wallflowers full stop. After all, we all had bought into Hootie two years prior, and look how that ended up. But even with as much as “One Headlight” incessantly played on radio, MTV and VH1, I was always surprised at how few people really seemed to be actual fans of the song, much less the band.

For example:

Classmate when I made my purchase at the D.C. shopping mall: “Oh is that the one with the song about the engine turning, but the engine doesn’t turn? I like that song.”

Friend at a fast food place when ‘One Headlight’ comes on over the sound system: “Oh, I like this one. This is the “Me ‘n’ Cinderella” song, right?”

A two-word title, a chart-topper on 3 different charts for 15 total weeks and you don’t know it’s called “One Headlight” … Really?

I also think “One Headlight” shirked complete audience buy-in because of the ambiguity in its lyrics. Undoubtedly a trait that had been passed on from father to son, there are a few things you can surmise from “One Headlight,” but a lot you can’t. Someone’s dead, is it a lover or the mother? The town the singer resides in apparently sucks, but he only thinks of leaving without actually doing it, and the chorus well, how does that fit in? There are plenty of people who’ll argue it shouldn’t matter, and the message is what you make of it, maaaaan, but for single geeks trying to deduce whether or not this was an appropriate inclusion on the mixtape for the girl they fancied, well… this was a dilemma.

Eventually the inescapability of the song wore everybody down, and the follow up singles, “Three Marlenas” and “The Difference” hung around for about two weeks apiece before bowing out. And once the Bringing Down the Horse wave ended, so too did the Wallflowers’ reign on mainstream America. Sure, they put out three albums in the ensuing years, and Jakob’s doing solo work now, but most people stopped paying attention. And I have a little theory about why.

Between 1988 and 1993, Bob Dylan released an album each year (with the exception of 1991), and in addition to both Traveling Wilburys records. After 1993, he went quiet for four years until 1997, when he put out “Time Out of Mind” and got himself a Grammy and all sorts of critical acclaim that he’s been riding ever since. In the gap between 1993 and 1997, “The Beatles Anthology” came out and stirred a nation’s collective hardcore reminiscence for the past. If you don’t think Oasis’ popularity stateside was helped by the timing of the Anthology, you’re delusional. So for Dylan to come back in fine form in 1997, well, all the sudden people remembered what a genius he’d been all along too. Sure Jakob was fine and all, but hey, Dad’s still making good music, so we’ll talk later, kid. And when did Time Out of Mind crop up? Right when Bringing Down the Horse receded.

A couple years ago I was at a friend’s house in Madison and we had some satellite music station on that was playing a solo cut by Jakob Dylan. When it came on, my friend identified the voice, but he was caught between trying to finish his sentence and minding a nacho platter he had in the oven. “Didn’t he used to be …” he started, trying to tie “in the Wallflowers” to the fact that he knew it was “Bob Dylan’s son.”

What came out was: “Didn’t he used to be Bob Dylan’s son?”

I just laughed.

CONFESSIONS OF A ’90s SURVIVOR

Spice Girls – Say You’ll Be There
From: Spice

I distinctly remember my introduction to the Spice Girls. I was an 8th grader who was chasing after a particular girl in my class. Utilizing a tactic that I still (sometimes stupidly) employ to this day, I decided the most direct route to get my “in” with said girl would be to charm her best friend, who could then put in a good word for me. The plan was going along swimmingly. I had befriended the best friend, found ways to make the crush in question laugh, and it was all building up to a nice conclusion when best friend dropped an unexpected bomb: another girl in my class had developed an interest in me.

This was an intriguing twist, because I’d always thought highly of the girl who now seemed to like me, but never in the sense of, “Oh, I’d like to be with her.” But here’s the classic shy-boy conundrum. Do you pursue your original target, who may or may not feel the same way you do? Or, do you shift interest to a sure-fire alternative that you know will agree to being a girlfriend? At only 14 years old and a dating novice by all measures (oh, who am I kidding, I’d probably do the same now), I chose the latter.

For whatever reason, the ubiquitous best friend that was supposed to snare me the original girl stayed in the picture for the new girl. This meant “group” dates and so forth, and it was during those original 7- or 8-person outings that the ubiquitous best friend started talking about this “amazing” new group called the Spice Girls.

She’d snagged an advance single of “Wannabe” before Spice was unleashed on the American masses, but because we were all still below driving age and our get-togethers didn’t consist of sitting in someone’s front room playing all of our latest CD acquisitions, no one else in the group managed to hear it. Then, one fateful Friday night at my parents house, the group was all over, MTV was on in the background, and the ubiquitous best friend shrilly announced the news to all of us:

“OHMYGOD, YOU GUYS! IT’S ON! THIS IS IT! THIS IS THE SPICE GIRLS! WATCH! WATCH!“

I watched that video intently. I know these five British upstarts had basically offered a new religion to one of my friends, so being the courteous fellow that I was, I decided to pay attention and really try to get an informed opinion by the video’s end. I didn’t.

Here’s the thing about the “Wannabe” video: it’s completely amorphous for a group that staked so much on each girl’s individual identity. It’s five girls crashing a high-society party, dancing a bit on a staircase and then being quickly identified in a mundane roll-call that does nothing to clue you in to who’s who. That’s because the only question on your mind when the roll-call rap ends is: “Slam your body down and zig-a-zig ah?”

Now, I could see the appeal for girls. The whole point of the song is friends are more important than lovers, and any real man should be able to realize that and include others in the fun of being in a romance. Hell, it was “group date” night at my house … who could miss that point? But for boys? “Wannabe” was just the butt of zig-a-zig jokes and an annoying blip that would now sound itself with high frequency on MTV and VH1.

But for as popular as “girl power” became in 1997, the machine that ran the Spice Girls quickly realized they weren’t going to sustain world domination if they appealed to only one sex. And so, “Say You’ll Be There” was selected as the follow-up single, and the video was essentially “something for the boys.”

The video does a much better job at individualizing each girl, although it also makes her character all the more convoluted. Melanie C is not only Sporty Spice, she is also Katrina Highkick. Geri is not only Sexy Spice, she is Trixie Firecracker. In addition to being Baby Spice, Emma is also Kung Fu Candy. Although you might better know Victoria as Posh Spice, did you also know she moonlights as Midnight Miss Suki? Ah yes, and good old Melanie B — talented enough to be both Scary Spice and Blazin’ Bad Zula.

Of course, 14 and 15 year-old boys didn’t see that. They saw five attractive women wearing leather bustiers, little black dresses, vinyl body suits and leopard print bustiers out in a desert. They saw cleavage. They started seeing this on magazine shelves. And this.

Soon, guys were having legitimate lunchroom conversations about their favorite Spice Girl. I remember having a heated debate one afternoon with a friend who staunchly defended his love for Baby Spice while I doggedly worked to make him admit Posh was the most attractive of the bunch. Alas, it was to no avail and our friendship vaporized soon thereafter.

And that’s all you need to dominate the male market, sadly. Once you’ve got two lifelong friends annihilating their friendship over two girls in a group with one album that NEITHER OF US OWNS, you might as well throw a rally in Neuremberg, ‘cos now we are all one nation under Spice. Of course we knew “Wannabe,” “Say You’ll Be There,” and “2 Become 1″ (which, by the way — total video let down. A song completely about sexual intercourse, and you wrap up these five attractive women in heavy overcoats and send them out into a New York City winter night? F*ck you, video director). But we knew the songs because they soundtracked eye candy. Girls, have you ever put a Spice Girls CD on in the car or on a bus with men present? The guys are completely disinterested. Because with audio only, it just doesn’t work.

Ah, but with visuals, you can make anything work. Who cares if they can’t act worth a damn? You’re telling me girls can go see a feature movie with them and guys can come along to just watch these five girls and let their mind wander into weird little personal caves for two hours? Ladies and gentlemen, I think we might have a flick that can gross $75 million worldwide! And what the hell, let’s put Mark McKinney and Elvis Costello in it too!

Still, the inherent problem of going the “attack-on-all-fronts” route on the pop culture landscape is that you’re exposing yourself to an incredibly short shelf life. It’s totally unfair to call the Spice Girls a one-hit wonder, but completely justified to call them a flash in a pan sensation. By 1998, the party was pretty much over (which was too bad, because the follow up album, Spice World, actually contained a great song in “Stop” and probably their sexiest ever vocals in “Too Much,” but no one was paying much attention by that point), and each went their own weird way. Mel C (a/k/a Sporty, a/k/a Katrina Highkick) made a deservedly-maligned attempt to become a punk rocker (at least in looks), Melanie B (a/k/a Scary, a/k/a Blazin’ Bad Zula) tricked Eddie Murphy into getting her pregnant, Geri (a/k/a Sexy, a/k/a Trixie Firecracker) made a bunch of songs for gay clubs, and somehow secured herself the distinction of being a U.N. ambassador, and Victoria (a/k/a Posh, a/k/a Midnight Miss Suki) became world famous for shopping and being somebody’s wife.

Nevertheless, if you still don’t believe the power of the “Say You’ll Be There” video, know this. It was this video that David Beckham saw and said “That’s the girl for me. I’m going to get that girl.”

The sad thing is, I said the exact same thing. He just had the means to get to her more expediently. Of course, it wouldn’t have worked between us anyway. I have a feeling she’d get sick of me asking “You spent HOW MUCH?!” really quickly.

Like the Spice Girls, my relationships with the girl who showed an interest in me and the ubiquitous best friend also faded away as quickly as the Spice Girls phenomenon. So it goes.

But here’s the cruelest twist. I wasn’t lying when I said I never spoke again to that friend who’d argued with me over the “Baby or Posh — who’s hotter?” debate. That wasn’t the sole reason we ended our friendship, but it certainly was a contributing factor. Anyway, in March of 2005, I found myself in Arizona for two weeks to take in some Spring Training games and explore the southwest that I love so dearly. One afternoon in Tempe, I found myself in an amazing local record store and gazing at an album that had a ’60′s styled cover, down to the Mod looking girl adorning it. The album was attributed simply to “Emma” and called “Free Me.” I decided to listen to it at one of the listening stations and found myself quickly wowed by the Burt Bacharach-meets-Verve Records bossa nova-style production. I decided to buy it and then saw the record store’s description of the album on the shelf, which said simply, “She’s not Baby Spice anymore!”

“Oh sh*t,” I thought to myself. I bought the album, but I’ve had to justify it to a lot of people (especially girlfriends) since.

And yes, musically, “Free Me” is a fantastic album. But looking at the title track’s video, I wonder if I’m still susceptible to the tricks that the “Say You’ll Be There” video pulled on me 13 years ago … Jason, if you’re reading this, I apologize.

But that doesn’t mean I’ve got anything else to say to you.

CONFESSIONS OF A ’90s SURVIVOR

Everclear – Everything To Everyone
From: So Much For the Afterglow

I never researched Everclear enough to figure out whether they were much different from that late-1990s batch of alt-rockers who wanted to sing some ballads about love and messed up relationships with a bit of guitar overdrive (you know, your Lifehouses or Eve 6s or all those other bands that high school girls got a little too obsessed with because of one song). I know Everclear had a few hits in their repertoire, but after “Father of Mine,” I really stopped caring.

And it wasn’t entirely because “Father of Mine” seemed like a sleazy cash-in attempt on a crappy childhood over a more-than-similar-to-”Everything to Everyone” backing track… it was because “Father of Mine” seemed to trigger Art Alexakis into thinking “songs about crappy family situations… GOLD!” Wasn’t the first single off their next album “Wonderful?” Thoroughly depressing stuff over a poppy beat…

Now, crappy fathers aren’t anything particularly unique in rock and roll — Joseph Jackson, Freddie Lennon, Thomas Gallagher, the dad in that Twisted Sister video, the dad in that Cyndi Lauper video… there are lots of songs that could and have been written. And maybe when divorce rates were skyrocketing in the 1990s, songs about broken homes and bad dads eased a considerable amount of teenage souls. Maybe I’m just cynical about it because I’m fortunate to still have two married parents, with both of whom I have a good relationship. So what would I know?

What’s bothersome about it is that of all the cliched songwriting routes to take — and Everclear touched a few of them in their singles — to focus on the “crummy upbringing” one seems the most self-serving. And if it’s really the label asking for that, well then, at what point does a songwriter go, “But I’ve got a poppy one about breaking up with a girl that has a better chorus”?

Look at “I Will Buy You a New Life.” How many songs have been written about having no cash but still wanting to provide a garden, car, house and life for the girl of your desire? Tons. And despite a pretty deplorable set of lyrics that mention “a welfare Christmas” (let it go, dude, you’re on a major label) and describe a “new car” as “perfect, shiny and new” (only two adjectives to describe a new car? You couldn’t have gone for “blue” or “cool” or “true” to avoid obvious redundancy?), you probably still remember the chorus and thought the sentiment was fair enough.

And then there’s “Everything to Everyone” which is really what launched Everclear into the mainstream stratosphere and announced So Much For the Afterglow to America. Perfect 1990s pop song — critical of posers, strong if simple little bassline and an open invitation to “come on, dance with me” which apparently rectifies the problem of trying to please everyone, stumbling and falling (and doing it again). Oh and it had a cool spinning room video that ends with all the song’s perceived targets joining the Everclear boys for a soul-cleansing pogo.

The fact that “Everything to Everyone” was popular amongst so many of my friends at Willowbrook High School wasn’t at all surprising. It’s a song that any indifferent teenager can probably relate to — if not seeing their own problems in the lyrics, then most certainly picking out a friend or ex-friend the song perfectly describes. Although can I say, at 27 years of age, that I envy the people who know all the right people and play all the right games? They have it dead easy right now.

And honestly, Mr. Alexakis could have mulled on that theme for five more hit singles before 1999 turned into 2000 and bought whatever woman he was talking a damn fine new life. So why instead muse about f*cked up childhoods?

And for what it’s worth, isn’t it interesting that in all three of the Afterglow hit singles, Alexakis is attacking someone? Dad, or the one who tries to be everything to everyone or the people who try to tell you money is the root of all that kills. When exactly did he become so enlightened and the authoritative voice on who must be judged? ‘Cos frankly, I’d have enjoyed an Everclear single where he meditated on his own issues over another recycled “Everything to Everyone” sounding backing track.

I hear “Everything to Everyone” these days and I’m likely to do a bit of head-nodding, and think it’s a decent enough song. But part of me still remembers a conversation I had with a co-worker at the bookstore where I had my first job. We were discussing “Father of Mine” and theorized if Alexakis was just making things up to try to move records. As if his dad was sitting at home listening to the song going, “What the… I’M RIGHT HERE!” I know it wasn’t that way — look, I saw the “Behind the Music.” But once “Wonderful” came out, I also thought it wouldn’t be surprising if that hypothetical situation really was the case.

CONFESSIONS OF A ’90s SURVIVOR

The Verve – Bitter Sweet Symphony
From: Urban Hymns

This is probably the hardest “Confessions” post I’ve had to write yet in that I’m a huge Verve fan, the proud owner of each of Richard Ashcroft’s solo albums and I rate Urban Hymns as one of the five greatest albums of all time. Trying to put what I consider to be one of the finest songs of the decade in the same category as I did with songs by the Backstreet Boys and Barenaked Ladies seems to tread a bit too close to sacrilege, but hey, my whole appreciation of the Verve started the first time I heard “Bitter Sweet Symphony.”

As a rabid Anglophile in 1997, it didn’t take much to tip me headlong into the Verve’s back catalogue, and the fact that the band was Oasis-approved only made my investigation of earlier albums such as A Northern Soul that much more enjoyable.

But not everyone was as obsessive as I was in the latter half of the ’90s. For a lot of people, “Bitter Sweet Symphony” was simply a great slice of fist-in-the-air bravado that seemed nicely tailored to temporarily serve as a personal creed, whether you were working out, stuck in traffic or watching the end of a melodramatic teen movie.

And don’t tell me the song’s testosterone-laced video didn’t give you a bit of inspiration as you trudged down your own neighborhood sidewalks or high school hallways. Ramming your shoulders into those of a passerby, hopping on the hood of a car and/or completely ignoring a woman giving you a face-to-face verbal undressing didn’t make you any less of an as*hole in 1997, but at the very least it put things into context. Didn’t matter where you were headed, the point was to not let anyone get in your way or intimidate you (and yes, Chumbawamba will also address this topic at a later point in this series).

To describe exactly why or how the sampled strings combined with Pete Salisbury’s militant drumming stirred up triumphant emotions in people is beyond me. The simple answer, I suppose, is that’s the power of a good song. Some tunes makes you want to nod your head, others make you want to sing along. Songs like “Bitter Sweet Symphony” are enough to make you want to take over the world for the few minutes it’s on. And if you think that’s hyperbole, I might ask you why Nike incorporated it for seemingly that very reason.

You also had to give the band credit for building a monster out of such an obscure sample. While Puff Daddy was establishing himself as alpha male by rhyming over 1980s hits and identifying samples had become the dominant theme in hip-hop culture, the Verve decided to transpose the formula on rock and roll. Instead of taking the Noel Gallagher-like easy road of lifting an identifiable riff for your own purposes however, the Verve raided the vinyl shops and  uncovered an album of early 1960s Rolling Stones hits symphonically arranged under the moniker of the Andrew Loog Oldham orchestra.

Apparently this is how said orchestra hears “The Last Time.” I’m still not completely sure I follow.

But while Marc Bolan’s estate never phoned up Noel Gallagher to inquire about “Cigarettes & Alcohol,” Mick and Keef got a bit pissy that six notes from an orchestrational interpretation of their hit had been pinched for one of the biggest songs of 1997. As a result, Richard Ashcroft shared co-writing credits with Jagger and Richards and all the royalties from the Verve’s biggest song had to go to the Stones’ former publishing company, ABKCO. Oldham also sued the Verve in 1999 to try to get a cut of the profits the song continued to turn in.

Pushing the injustice a little further still, Mick and Keef really had no standing whatsoever to get so protective in the first place.

But of course all that lawyer business was only interesting to the people that were wound up enough by the song in the first place to wrap themselves up in the Verve’s musical output. Urban Hymns shifted a lot of copies, and I’m sure 75 percent of the people in the world that own A Northern Soul or A Storm in Heaven only made the purchase because they believed Urban Hymns was so powerful.

For a major sect of society, though, “Bitter Sweet Symphony” was enough. The single would do, or the video… or the edited version that continually popped up on radio throughout 1997 and 1998. As all popular songs in the 1990s did, its time came and went and relegated a band capable of producing one of the greatest albums of all time to “one-hit wonder” status.

Of course, the song’s sheer musical force also gave it a better degree of staying power than, say, “I Want it That Way” or “Tha Crossroads.” The Verve coasted through a decent-enough reunion run in 2008 that produced an album of entirely new material but still was  powered by the public’s lasting reverence for “Bitter Sweet Symphony.” The song is now a touchstone for any 1990s montage sequences and even found itself at the center of the most heated debate about 2005′s Live8 benefit.

2000s survivors love it. 1990s survivors that remember the video and what that song first meant detest it.

Did Richard Ashcroft sell out? Did Coldplay just unapologetically jump on the coattails of a song far better than anything in their own catalogue? F*ck all the lawsuits surrounding the song — this still seems like its gravest injustice.

But it’s a bitter sweet symphony. That’s life.

CONFESSIONS OF A ’90s SURVIVOR

Bone Thugs-N-Harmony – Tha Crossroads
From: E. 1999 Eternal

I’m not so ignorant that I’m going to dismiss all hip hop music right out of hand, but I think there are a lot of songs I liked, or at least tolerated in my teenage years that I probably wouldn’t even give a second thought to if they were released today. It goes with the territory when you’re a teenager and has already been explained time and again in this series — a large part of social acceptance when you’re a teenager is what pop culture nuggets you’re aware of. You don’t have to like them, but you know them well enough to fake it.

When I go back and listen to “Tha Crossroads,” it strikes me as a really f*cking weird single. I honestly have no idea what else Bone Thugs-N-Harmony ever did besides this and backing up Mariah Carey in one of those first “Hey, look I have cleavage” videos she made. I wouldn’t be surprised if anyone didn’t remember the guys in that video, though. They’d have good reason not to.

But with gangsta rapper casualties happening with surprising (or maybe unsurprising) frequency in the 1990s — especially considering the genre had also been born that decade — elegies became the new chart-toppers. Puff missed Biggie. Tupac missed himself.

And Bone Thugs-N-Harmony missed Eazy-E. Well, they missed Eazy and a lot of other people (including Uncle Charles, y’all). Eazy gets name dropped in the song and makes a couple of cameos in the video. It makes sense – he founded Ruthless Records, signed this group and this was the first Ruthless release following his death. But “Tha Crossroads” is really more of a bit of hip-hop/gospel meditation on death in general. And it’s not a really uplifting one at that.

If I’d had the need or desire to actually check out the lyrics to this song during the height of it’s popularity, I might have found it a bit less bleak (“Now follow me roll, stroll whether it’s hell or it’s heaven”), but to be honest the song scared the sh*t out of me when I was 13 — particularly because of that overproduced video with a somewhat Samuel L. Jackson Shaft-looking Death sulking around the ‘hood and taking souls at will. I think most people remember the bit when Death shows up on the front porch and offs the old man — when the eyes gloss over in black. It’s not like it gave me nightmares, but somehow in my early-teenage mind I figured that’s what death was going to be like. Some ominous looking dude showing up on my doorstep and touching my forehead. And freaking out whoever might be playing cards with me.

Silly, right? Then again, how do I know that’s how it won’t go down? Crap.

Anyway, since there weren’t many other mainstream Eazy-E tributes to be heard and the video was flash enough to get a lot of attention, MTV put the song into heavy rotation in 1995 and 1996. The song actually made it to the top of the Billboard charts and somehow got a lot of white suburban teenagers to start discussing the crossroads and who they might hope to see there.

I’m not going to dispute the fact that death sells and in that everybody’s lost someone in their life, it’s a pretty easy topic to make applicable to any listener. But the cynic in me also winces every time an elegy goes to #1. I’m not impugning the motives of the group for writing the song, but I cast a wary eye to the A&R man who listened to this and thought, “Jackpot.” If someone — particularly a fellow artist — dies, isn’t it a better tribute to revisit that person’s catalog? I kind of enjoyed seeing Michael Jackson’s records resurface last year. But when that cheap cash-in attempt was made by pushing Jermaine’s version of “Smile” as a single? Well, just look at the iTunes reviews. I don’t think I’m alone in my cynicism.

Maybe that’s not the point of “Tha Crossroads” — maybe the point was to make everyone reflect a little bit on their own mortality and the lives of family and friends lost, but it has ALWAYS sounded weird coming up on the radio in between other hip hop or popular songs encouraging promiscuity and, if need be, murder. How do you dance to this? Certainly it’s got a nice slow groove to it (lifted from the Isley Brothers, if anyone’s taking notes), but I can’t imagine a slow jam with a pretty girl to this would be as romantic as a slow jam to the Isley Brothers. Are we supposed to mimic the moves of the group in the video? Again… it just seems off.

Nevertheless, I knew the song well when I was 13 and when I unearthed the sucker for this series, I was surprised by how many of the words I remembered (if I ever really knew exactly what they were saying). It’s a weird song to be a #1 and it’s still a weird video, but hey, how many 1990s hits can you say that about? Probably every one I’ve featured thus far. Out of place as it may sound on any mix or radio station outside of a funeral home, I’ll probably still be singing along should it come on.

But if a Samuel L. Jackson Shaft-looking dude shows up at my door and raises his fingers to my forehead, I’m gonna be pissed.

So as you may have noticed, during the month of December, all monthly series were suspended for the best tracks of the year countdown and Christmas mix madness, but one of my friends I happened to grab a drink with during my Holiday break gave me a bit of guff for not doing a “Confessions of a ’90s Survivor” during November. Since the Christmas mix went up right after Thanksgiving, I remembered he was right and decided to make that up as quickly as possible.

The “Confessions of a ’90s Survivor” is one of this blog’s most consistently popular sections, so the good news is to all you readers that there will be two this month.

And since I got reprimanded to make things right from November, here’s my answer.

CONFESSIONS OF A ’90s SURVIVOR

Backstreet Boys – I Want it That Way
From: Millennium

Pop music, and the way it constantly moves in cycles, always fascinates me. Certainly there was no real inkling throughout the 1990s that any boy band would have the opportunity to reach the same kind of popularity that the New Kids on the Block had in the late 1980s and the very early part of the 1990s. Nevermind the age-defined audience that you’re only going to be able to tap into for a precious few years, the fact of the matter is that the grunge movement of the early 1990s seemed tailor-made to blow out the pop fluff that had gotten a little too comfortable in the mainstream.

The advent of gangsta rap, Britpop, industrial and goth seemed like strong reinforcements to keep boy bands at bay, but alas, you look through the charts and there was always a Take That, Soul For Real or Westlife hovering and ready to pounce. Because there are always going to be 15-year-old girls, this is the cross music aficionados have to bear.

I distinctly remember “Rolling Stone”s first review of the Spice Girls’ debut. It was before “Wannabe” went radioactive and when it was reasonable to believe that five British girls singing about friendship and sex — well, sex if you’re decent enough to also respect a girl’s need to hang with her friends — probably wasn’t going to generate more American interest in London than Bush, Oasis, the Prodigy and Elastica combined, much less a major motion picture. In fact the review made a point of comparing the Spice Girls to little more than a female New Kids on the Block. Ouch.

But for whatever reason, manufactured pop found it’s way back out of the containment zone in 1996 and 1997 and not only did we have to worry about five (admittedly attractive) limey women, but a whole rash of bottled-blonde teenage boys out of Florida.

Could any of us take the Backstreet Boys seriously? Well as a high school male at the time of their rabid popularity, no, certainly not. At least not if I wanted to live another 10 years to blog about how stupid it all was. But it’s not like they were that great of a group, anyway. The way Max Martin was writing pop hits in the late 1990s, I could have been an international superstar — gawky frame draped in oversized T-shirts and all. That doesn’t mean I would’ve been a particularly good showman. I like to dance, but I’d say I’m average at best. I like to sing, but I would never say I’m particularly good at it. And neither were any of these five chuckleheads. I’m supposed to be impressed because you can spin a folding chair around and sit down backwards on it? F*ck off.

But before old Papa Lou got himself in trouble for ponzi schemes and kiddy-fiddling, he damn well knew how to capitalize on the hormonal freak-out ability of teenage girls. The Backstreet Boys’ and NSYNC’s first albums were simply dangerous forewarnings of what was to come. Britney Spears got all popular in 1998 to get everyone crazy for the boys’ return in 1999.

And “I Want it That Way” represented the horrible realization that popular music might never again be about being able to play a guitar. It would just be about peroxide, a rudimentary ability to dance, shady, overweight, middle-aged balding managers and a Swedish songwriter in the frightening habit of being able to finance castles with 3-minute songs.

You look back at the song’s video now, and it’s easy to laugh. Private jet! Hangar full of girls! Stupid dancing in white outfits in an airport check-in area! Of course it’s funny. Now we have the hindsight of “House of Carters” and the blonde one’s abnormal desire to be black at 30-odd years of age. What about the little red headed one… he found Jesus, right? The purported “bad boy” of the group looks like those self-absorbed dudes in my college philosophy classes that wanted to tell you why they appreciated Kierkegaard on a much greater level than you. And the other two… well who cared about the pony tail one and as for the tall one, wasn’t he about 40 when this video was filmed? Hilarious.

Ah, but now think back to 1999 and how often this video was on MTV and VH1 and how frighteningly often it was on both simultaneously. Guys like myself decried it at every opportunity and made mental notes of all the stupid little features (e.g., the “bad boy” holding up two fingers and a thumb when he asks if he’s your “one” desire), but frankly, the amount of airplay this crap got seemed to be some kind of sign of the apocalypse. When NSYNC followed with that one-two punch of “Bye, Bye, Bye” and “It’s Gonna Be Me,” well… mankind looked decidedly screwed.

And what kind of message did it send to high school boys anyway? If all the girls we were after were interested in stupidly-dressed dudes with $300 haircuts you could probably fake for the cost of a bottle of gel, we could probably get creative. But access to private jets and dance routines in airport terminals? I guess in that economy anything was possible, but if we couldn’t do that, maybe the best we could do was tolerate the girls we liked obsessing over one of them and putting their CDs on in our cars. Sometimes accepting defeat is what you have to do to win a girl’s heart.

I distinctly remember walking out of Willowbrook High School one day in the fall of 1999. A school bus was sitting outside with members of the cross country team awaiting to depart to some meet in some other Chicago suburb. As I walked to my car I saw a senior lower a window toward the rear of the bus and negotiate his upper torso through the small opening. Provoked by I don’t know what, he started making a raise the roof motion with his hands and screaming at the top of his lungs:

“TELL ME WHY-EE!!! TELL ME WHY-EE!!!!”

Was he mocking the song? Entirely possible. Was he doing it to get the attention of a female teammate? Entirely possible.

A big part of me is glad bands like the White Stripes and Strokes came along shortly thereafter to put this kind of music back into its corner.

Another part of me wonders how many more years the Jonas Brothers have. And I don’t care that two of ‘em play guitar.

CONFESSIONS OF A ’90s SURVIVOR

Skee-Lo – I Wish
From: I Wish

Kids today won’t remember (kids today… don’t get me started), but there was a time when it was OK to release a rap single that didn’t need editing to flub over a curse word, ethnic slur or questionable description of a sexual act. While it’s true that most of these singles were released by Will Smith, not all of them were.

Skee-Lo probably had the last great rap single that required no on-the-fly edits, with 1995′s “I Wish,” one of the catchiest laments to height impairment ever to hit MTV and popular radio. The uniqueness of the song and the easy hook guaranteed a popular single, but it also (perhaps unfortunately) pushed the single and artist into novelty territory. Go ahead, name me another Skee-Lo song. The only other one I can remember is a rap version of that old “Schoolhouse Rock” song, “Mr. Morton is the Subject of the Sentence.”

The tragedy of it is that in the 1990s, the height of celebrating irony and “anti-” everything, Skee-Lo actually delivered the most pristine anti-rap rap song of a generation. You think about every other massively popular rap song of the era, and you think of necessary radio edits and over-the-top boasts about genital size (or, in the case of your Lil’ Kims and Foxy Browns, how fabulously skanky you were) or how incredibly awesome your hometown is compared to your rival’s hometown… despite the fact that the subject in question likely had never even met the aforementioned rival.

“I Wish” is all about how much the reality of it all sucks. Sure, Ice Cube did that a bit more poignantly with “It Was a Good Day,” but Skee-Lo made you get out on the dancefloor and celebrate the fact that life sucked, no one was going to pick you for the pick up basketball game and no way in hell were you gonna get the girl you wanted.

What’s more, Skee-Lo did it hilariously. Everybody knows the chorus to the song, but listen to the verses — there’s some observational humor at its finest within the rhymes. It’s hard to pick one particular favorite, but if pressed, I’d have to go with:

‘Cause when it comes to playin’ basketball, I’m always last to be picked and in some cases, never picked at all. So I just lean up on the wall or sit up in the bleachers with the rest of the girls who came to watch their man ball. Dag, y’all, I never understood, black, why the docs get the fly girls and me, I get the hoodrats. I tell ‘em, “Scat, skiddle, skabobble,” got hit with a bottle and was in the hospital for talkin’ that mess.

Now tell me, what other chart-topping rap song of the day contained a boast about being laid up in a hospital for talking sh*t? What other rap song employed the word “overcometh”? If you listen to this, it’s actually quite intelligent as opposed to just the brainless boasts about sex, money and booze.

Of course NWA at the start of the 1990s and the surging popularity of West Coast gangsta rap shortly thereafter soon quickly defined the genre as a place for MCs to speak to the size of their weapons, egos, girlfriends’ breasts, junk (of course) and the importance of respecting them and their hometowns for it. Was all of it brainless? No, of course not — anyone who dismisses the genre as a whole is categorically ignorant, but the popularity of “thug life” meant that “I Wish” was the death rattle for the kind of rap that had flourished in the late 1980s — somewhat tongue in cheek and still rather clean.

Not that music should be judged by the inclusion of a “parental advisory” warning on the album artwork, but right around the time “I Wish” was dominating MTV airwaves (thanks to a Forrest Gump-referencing video), people seemed to stop taking rap seriously unless it did have that sticker attached.

And honestly, maybe that’s because it was the suburban white boys like me that thought “I Wish” was so funny. I imagine seasoned rap fans would probably view my reaction to “I Wish” the same way I would some popular teenage girl’s admission to liking the Jam because “That one song in ‘Billy Elliot’ is sooooo good!” I shudder to think.

But with a heavy-enough-to-be-credible backing track and a killer hook, “I Wish” still will get a lot of people jumping around if you put it on at a party in or a club now. And for better or worse, a lot of them will be whites that can’t dance.

Ah well, perhaps it’s just part of the song’s in-built irony.

CONFESSIONS OF A ’90s SURVIVOR

Ben Folds Five – Brick
From: Whatever and Ever Amen

Major labels have a funny way of annihilating a band’s essence for the purpose of a hit single. I don’t think this was more prevalent in the 1990s than it ever was or has been in the annals of music history, I just think that I tended to hear a lot more about it during that particular decade. Think of how many bands you remember hearing on the radio or MTV, thinking, “I kind of like that,” and then talking one of the band’s “real” fans who curtly informed you, “They’re not really like that.” And it’s kind of a disappointing thing for a possible new fan to hear because, well, whatever the song in question was that the band may or may not really be prone to writing is the damn thing that got you interested in the first place.

Trust me, I’ve been on both sides of the fence, from wondering why the Cardigans couldn’t write more “Lovefool”-type songs to bemoaning people who only knew Oasis for “Wonderwall.”

But the case of Ben Folds and “Brick” has always kind of made me feel bad for the guy’s introduction into the strongest current of the mainstream. Pretty much before and since, Folds had/has made a name for himself as a smartass singer songwriter with miles of talent and an ear for a hook, but never to take himself so seriously as not to, I don’t know, do a Madman Across the Water-styled cover of Dr. Dre’s “Bitches Ain’t Sh*t.”

But “Brick” never had a light hearted air about it. The chorus is vague enough to suggest to the listener in passing that this is just a pretty little song to cry over after meaningless break-up, but for anyone who actually dove into lyrics booklets in the 1990s (and come on, who among us didn’t?), it didn’t take long to suss out that this was about an abortion.

And maybe 1997 was the perfect year to have a hit song based on a topic that even four years earlier might have been considered a bit taboo. Not because 1997 was a record year for abortions (I have no way of knowing that, and I have no real desire whatsoever to check into such stats), but because by the second half of the decade, the general young American mindset had gone into an alarmingly apathetic field.

Sure, there were kids like me that got in tune with the Britpop movement, but you must remember America never really latched onto the bubbly sarcasm of “Parklife.” America, frankly, didn’t care about Blur until Damon started singing lyrics like “It wasn’t easy, but nothing is — woo hoo.” Was it to say we were totally devoid of happiness? Of course not. The Spice Girls were popular, as were songs like “Steal My Sunshine,” but that was the kind of stuff you didn’t really fess up to liking in a public high school if you wanted to get through the day without a beat down or some godawful form of public ridicule.

So… midtempo piano dirge about an abortion? Bring it on! It always was a beautiful song, and it still is of course, but it’s the kind of track that poses a challenge to your loyal fanbase. Had Folds and Co. tucked this song away on a B-side or even as a deep cut on Whatever and Ever Amen (which, by the way, can non-fans remember any other songs from?), the band would’ve been revered as all-encompassing geniuses by their loyal minions. Instead, Epic’s decision to make it a monster single (to say nothing of the accompanying video where it looks like every band member might break down in tears simply by playing the song) pushed the song into every Lite FM listener’s consciousness, and gave the three in Ben Folds Five a spot on “Saturday Night Live” and more popularity than maybe they ever wanted.

Thankfully (for the fans), everyone lost interest by 1999′s The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner (which Old 97′s guitarist Ken Bethea once described to me as “a songwriter performing at his absolute zenith”), and things returned to normal. Folds then deconstructed things further by breaking the band up and going the DIY route with Rockin’ the Suburbs before essentially becoming a college tour mainstay and releasing a new song every other week on iTunes. In the time since, a lot of people have wondered aloud why Folds couldn’t just write more songs like “Brick,” and while I might point them in the direction of “Landed,” you gotta figure it must be taxing to do just one song about a personal abortion experience.

And besides, in this kind of economy, who would listen to it? I mean in 1997, when things were going great, and the economy was as fat as your unmarried uncle after Thanksgiving dinner, it was cool to be engaged by such depressing subject matter. Look at the Top 10 right now. It’s all optimistic, party music.

Maybe we all are drowning slowly. It’s just… you don’t need to remind us.

CONFESSIONS OF A ’90s SURVIVOR

Joan Osborne – One of Us
From: Relish

I was raised as a Catholic. I never had to do time as an altar boy growing up, but church was pretty much an unspoken requirement on Sunday mornings throughout my adolescence. Of course, my attitude toward Mass today isn’t very much different from what it was when I was about 8 years old — kind of a waste of my Sunday morning.

I know that’s not a nice thing to say, and I’m almost certain my mother will read that and the next time we talk on the phone it’ll be a topic of discussion, but I’ve never really gotten the religious charge I’m apparently supposed to get by going on Sunday mornings. Or Saturday nights.

And it’s not just Catholicism — I’ve been to Vineyard masses, those great big Christian super mall places, I’ve been to a Buddhist mass and a Lutheran one. I’m still not too sure about the idea of the big man upstairs, but it’s not out of any need to be different or controversial — I honestly believe religion is one of the most divisive things ever put upon mankind and we’d all be best not to judge or question the next guy over. Belief is a pretty strong thing, and it’s something people don’t take being questioned about lightly. You look at most major wars throughout history, and religion has a pretty big hand in most of ‘em.

Of course, having passed through the sacraments one does when one is young and being brought up in the Catholic tradition, my mother especially didn’t take my ambivalence toward God and the Church too well. One year as a Christmas gift from an aunt and uncle I received a subscriptions to a teen Christian magazine, that — like youth fests and WWJD? wristbands — was designed to make Christianity seem like the coolest thing since sliced bread.

Suffice to say, it didn’t really sell me, but every month they had a music review segment in the magazine where they’d basically say that all the popular music out there was pretty evil and they’d also let readers write in and ask writers’ opinions on popular artists, songs or albums that didn’t fall in the review’s pages. At 13 years of age and already grossly obsessed with music, I found this fascinating. Someone could wax a bit with me about tunes I was digging. I remember sending in letters requesting thoughts on Beatles and Oasis records. The letters or responses never made it to print, but the writer was always nice enough to send me a letter back telling me that while there was worse music out there than the Beatles and Oasis, there were also plenty of evil messages lurking in their lyrics and I might be better off getting the new DC Talk album.

When Joan Osborne released Relish in 1995, and “One of Us” became an almost hourly fix on MTV and VH1, obviously I had to write this Christian magazine to garner its thoughts on the record — something with a significant amount of religious heft that was also dominating popular radio and music television. Not an often occurrence at any time, but certainly not in the liberal and decadent 1990s.

That letter never got published either, but it elicited the longest reply ever from the music writer, who basically said the song was deceiving, because while it says things like, “Yeah, yeah, God is good, yeah, yeah, God is great” it also posits Him as a slob.

The general idea was that this song was bad news — one should never question God for a start, but if we were all so lucky to experience His presence on Earth, why the devil would we think he’d be as horrible as the everyday people that ride the bus?

See, the idea is that questioning simply doesn’t jive with believing. Believing is about having faith. Questioning is about being skeptical. Faith and skepticism are a bit like oil and water… as your suspicious ex-lover can attest.

The fact that kids are simultaneously taught to learn as much as they can and the human mind has an unquenchable desire to know why things are the way they are is going to present problems with religious beliefs at some point. Are all the animals walking the Earth today really here because some old dude managed to get a male and female each of ‘em on board a wooden boat thousands of years ago? It seems to me to beg a little more questioning.

But when it comes to Christianity, a lot of Christians have big problems with that kind of questioning. While it seems fair enough to me to ask what would it be like if God actually hopped on the #30 in downtown Milwaukee (and may I say I think the comedic possibilities are endless), you might want to ask Joan Osborne how far that question got her.

A lot of airplay? Yeah. A lot of tickets sold? Yeah. An audience with Pope John Paul II? Yep, that too.

Also got her a few death threats, the ire of the Catholic league president (who termed it “awfully close to the line of Catholic baiting”) and general resentment from a whole league of church-goin’ Americans that didn’t like the fact that the Big Guy was being theoretically brought down to their crummy level — much less by a blonde with a nose-ring whose album also included song titles ranging from “St. Teresa” to “Let’s Just Get Naked.”

Of course, if you make the catchiest song on your album about God, it’s also kind of asking for a bit of flak. I suppose Osborne shouldn’t have been singled out the way she was — lord knows her guitarist Erik Bazilian (who actually wrote the song) probably didn’t get the same heat in the spotlight that Joan did, but my problem with the song was it seemed like a very open call for a stir of holy furor.

One Sunday during my teenage years, I got particularly annoyed by having to accompany my mother to church — my resistance toward something she’s always viewed as one of life’s necessities immediately raised tempers between the two of us that morning, and while I’ve very seldom sang Catholic hymns, I kind of decided to air my displeasure at being at church by making it obvious to Mom that I would not sing and also sulking about like a typical teenage idiot.

Mom grew increasingly agitated, and turned to me and said, “If you don’t want to be here, then you shouldn’t be here.”

All I needed to hear — stood up and walked right out of church. My mom gave chase — we had a big screaming match in the parking lot and I ended up getting grounded for a week or two.

I knew I was risking some trouble when I did what I did. And surely Joan and Erik knew what they were doing with “One of Us.” Sure, it’s always a laugh to point out the hypocrisy of Christians that preach about brotherhood and loving all as God would until one of ‘em questions whether, if in human form, God would be a slob, and they come at you with some fire and brimstone.

But the thing is, “St. Teresa” was the other big single from that album, and I’ll bet you don’t even really remember how that one goes, do you? And what has Joan done since? Rerecord “One of Us” for a television series? OK.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d almost think someone might’ve sold their soul for a popular song in 1995…