Flush It Friday: Now That’s What I Call 1996
It’s all coming back to me now…
At some point during my drive to my hometown today—it takes a shade under 5 hours from Atlanta—I decided to turn my Subaru Crosstrek into a time machine and hurled myself back to the year 1996. How it started: I put on Sublime‘s Sublime to see what that would be like in the Year of Our Lord 2024. From there, I moved, naturally, to Evil Empire before just finding random Spotify “Top Songs of 1996” playlists to shuffle through. It also just so happens that I moved to my hometown in 1996, making it feel meaningful and poetic and obvious. So many middle school dance memories. Some loose thoughts:
Did you remember that Sublime has seventeen fucking tracks? Good lord. Honestly, “Garden Grove” through “Santeria” is kind of an excellent run of songs. But the rest of the album is really hit or miss. I also realized that I’ve been haunted for nearly 30 years by Bradley Nowell saying the phrase, “She pulled out my mushroom tip” and then rhyming it with “drip drip drip” in “Caress Me Down.” Mushroom tip, y’all. Yikes.
Evil Empire is only 11 songs but is not that easy to sit through. While Sublime has way too many songs, the tracks on Evil Empire are themselves often way too long. Did you remember that “Revolver” is 5:27 long? “Vietnow” and “Snakecharmer” are also both too long by half, and those three songs are in a row. Brutal stretch. However, the most important thing about Evil Empire: “Down Rodeo” is probably Rage Against the Machine‘s best song. Or at least I’ve decided that my favourite RATM song is the best one. That’s how facts work!
Quick hitters: “Wannabe”? Still fun. “Woo Hah!!”? Still one of the wildest beats ever made. “No Diggity” can still get it, for sure. “Give Me One Reason” is of course transcendent. Mariah Carey‘s Daydream as well as Jewel‘s fabulous Pieces of You are both totally stacked with mega hits! Jann Arden‘s “Insensitive” has absolutely incredible opening lyrics: “How do you cool your lips / After a summer’s kiss? / How do you rid the sweat / After the body bliss?” Both La Bouche hits—”Be My Lover” and “Sweet Dreams”—are molly-certified perfect. I think I should probably listen to the entirety of A Boy Named Goo ’cause “Name” is really good. (Ignore that a lot of these albums actually came out in 1995.)
But what did I really learn today? I learned that nothing and nobody really fucks with Céline Dion. “Because You Loved Me” is a slow-dance classic while “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” is as good as pop music gets. Best thing I listened to all day.
All right. Enough of my bullshit. The new Kendrick sucks. Let’s Flush!
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But when you touch me like this / And you hold me like that / I just have to admit / That it’s all coming back to me. I mean… drop those G/B/Us in the comments and go read through this prodigious amount of top-flight content. Go share your thoughts with our contributors. And make sure to thank Roldy for all the editorial work this week and every week. G/B/Us!
