I stumbled across a thing on the Interwebitubes last week - an attempt to define “the ‘90s music canon” by mining some data to figure out which hit songs from the ‘90s are standing the test of time and which are fading into obscurity. Having been a teenager for most of that decade this had me feelin’ emotions (heh - see what I did there?):
Joy: Oh man, I haven’t heard this tune in a minute*! Imma go listen to it right now.* Melancholy: Aww, it’s Whitney. Disgust: Ah. It’s the Macarena. Perplexity: Okay, this list is super pop-y so I can understand the lack of any kind of rock or grunge influence, but like…no Counting Crows in here? Anger: …and seriously, where the fuck is Hootie? Acceptance: (after a bit more research) Ah, okay, so the Billboard Hot 100 just sucks. So be it.
After at least an hour of scrolling through the infographics I had to get off of this data-fueled emotional rollercoaster. I’d never heard of The Pudding before seeing this post, but I feel a little like I was ambushed - like they took a Venn diagram of things I care about, found a good intersection point, and said “Coolcoolcool, so let’s do a data-viz post about 90s music and frame it in the context of people Cliff’s age vs. people Cliff’s little sister’s age. That should get ‘im.”
Anyhow, one last interesting tidbit: there are a handful of songs for which the recognition factor is actually higher among the younger generation:
So I guess as a parting thought: Who on Earth is Glenn Medeiros?