When I was a kid, we listened to music in a few ways. The radio, of course. Our go-to was an AM radio and I would of COURSE record my favourite songs on the Top 8 at 8 with my white ghetto blaster and make a mix tape. I always screwed up on my mix tapes and there would always be duplicate tunes on the 30 minute mix. If you were lucky, you had a double tape recorder and could copy other’s tapes!
CD’s came out when I was about 12 or 13 and they were amazing, but so freakin’ expensive. And a teen’s tastes are often just one song out of a CD of 18 songs so it was often hard to justify spending 4+ hours of babysitting money on just one song. (I learned to love the entire disc of Vanilla Ice – so worth the $18.99 sticker price at HMV.)
Then there was the Napster/Limewire era. Oh boy. It took 12 hours to download a song but it was SO WORTH IT! Now we could go back and pick and choose any darned song we wanted. We could even uncover old gems that you barely remembered and brought back so many memories of “when you were a kid” (Anyone else love to kick back at 19 and look back at your “childhood”?!) I’d get a little rush playing an old song and remembering the associated feelings (RIP Milli Vanilli…). NOSTALGIA.
Now while I love that we can get a fix of any song we want at any time, and the fact that 90s, 2k and today are so popular, I do miss that feeling. You know the one, the first time you replayed Blackstreet’s “No Diggity” and got that “awwww, yessssss” feeling because you haven’t heard the song in so long! Now we hear the songs all the time. Still love ’em, and I’m glad that the radio world has recognized that we need our 90s rap on the daily… but there’s something to be said for nostalgia! I find myself digging down deep, trying to remember THE most obscure songs, to get a hit of it sometimes!
-Jen
#ThatSurreyMom + #90sRapJunkie
@jenxrobbins