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One Headlight
Artist: The Wallfowers
Album: Bringing Down the Horse
Year: 1996
♥: Two trains of thought.

Train #1:
In looking for the perfect 90s rock song, I had to revisit a lot of songs, albums, artists, that have fallen at the wayside -- as influential as they were in their time, embarrassingly or not, they've graciously stepped to the side as I voraciously ate my way through things newer and more synthesized. I listened to music differently when I was younger (though, to be fair,I was twelve in 1998 and only really started listening to music then, so most of my '90s discoveries occurred in the 2000s), with my hands clasped around plastic cases, reading every word of the liner notes, listening to every single song because, after all, there were only so many CDs I could buy in a week. Every song on an album meant something then, even if -- if I heard it today -- I'd skip over it without a thought. Each album was a little shred of magic, some more than others, and each album is a memory.

I miss that very much.
I miss the intensity with which I connected with myself through music. It seems like it's only been changing in the past few years, but when I listen to these songs from the '90s, as I am slammed back into various versions of my younger self, I can't help but think it's been happening since I got high-speed internet.


Train #2:
In looking for the perfect 90s rock song, I was struck at how profoundly music has changed. Rock just isn't really a genre anymore -- a quick scan of NAR should be convincing enough -- and it's not that it's been replaced, more that it's "evolved." Yeah, "evolved," sure, great. Indie rock, which if anyone is actually being honest is more often than not pretty irritating, is not an evolution. Pop rock, either. Nor alternative metal, nor country-rock, nor any of the plethora of genres which've pilfered "alternative" or "rock" as a label and stuck 'er on there, maybe with a guitar and drumset to back up the claim. 90s alternative rock was a mini-golden age, of Placebo and Dishwalla and Tonic and Nirvana; the Verve and Veruca Salt and Third Eye Blind and even Eve 6. I don't like lyric comparisons across the ages, generally, because they leave out the amazing artists doing amazing work in both times ------ but seriously, even Top 40 rock songs back in the 90s had stomach-clenchers like this:
"I would swallow my pride, I would choke on the rinds
But the lack thereof would leave me empty inside"

How rare to find four guys/girls who don't use a keyboard, or a synthesizer, or wear feathers in their hair and neon tights. The days of jeans and t-shirts and solid hooks have passed in favour of strangeness, experimentation. I don't lament "the good old days" on a daily basis; I love the experimentation, but something is missing. And maybe it's just that I'm listening differently, maybe the genre overstayed its welcome, maybe it really did "evolve," but something really seems to be missing, at least from the larger musical picture. We pick and choose what we like, and we don't listen to the radio, and we don't have these musicultural common standpoints, anymore ---- no longer the generation that will burst into the full chorus of "Inside Out" or "Teenage Dirtbag" at the opening line. Songs cycle out, cycle through, and get old and boring and tossed. Immediacy, newness, earworms, in place of a hook that lasts, in the back of your mind, forever.


Ultimately:
I wanted a song that reflects how I feel about 90s rock -- what I miss about the genre, what I miss about listening to music, a generation's common ground, and something to which I connect, deeply. And love or hate it, everyone my age knows "One Headlight." Will grin when it, after yet another Mumford & Sons same-as-the-rest-of-the-album  track, miraculously appears on the radio. Shout out "YEAAAAH!" when it shuffles up on the roadtrip mix. Pump their fists and sing the chorus to each other, loudly, blissfully, because it's something of its time, and it's something of our time -- when music was a little more lasting, when a hook really hooked you, when everyone had their own interpretation of the same song, and it meant something different to every single person ---- but when it came on the radio, guitars and drums and gravelly male voice and pure 90's rock -- everyone turned it up.