I’m really glad I was born at a time that allowed my life to span two millennia. I sometimes think about my historical counterpart 1000 years ago. She would have been born in the latter part of the 10th century, when the world was dim and dark and governed entirely by authoritarian power. She would have lived almost 500 years before the invention of the printing press, 700 years before the discovery of electricity, 900 years before she could’ve even imagined anything like suffrage. Most likely, she wouldn’t have been able to read or write. She would have lived hard, died young, bathed infrequently and probably done all of her lady-business outdoors. If she were living anywhere near where I live now, she would have witnessed the very first years of the development of early Mississippian culture, building mounds and cultivating maize crops and, in general, going about a life that couldn’t be more alien to me than if she had lived on Mars.
Now more than a decade into the 21st century, my memories of the fin de siècle are beginning to fade, but I do recall the Y2K phenomenon being a pretty big deal. OMG, ALL THE COMPUTERS ARE GOING TO CRASH BECAUSE THEY CAN’T CHANGE DATES!! Thankfully, it pretty much went off without a hitch. Little did we know then, though, that the Day That Would Change Everything was still a year away. It’s still hard for me to believe how different the world is now than it was before 9/11.
Anyway, as I mentioned in the previous posts, I’m a huge fan of 50’s-70’s music, but far less so of the music of the 80’s and 90’s. The Aughts, however, marked a return to good music for me– and, for the record, I love the music of the twenty-teens as well. There were a lot of good things to choose from in the 00’s, but when I was deciding, I tried to pick something that I think I’ll still be playing 20 years from now to remind me of the Aughts. And so, here it is, “Hey Ya” by the incredibly entertaining duo Outkast:
It’s funny, and more than a little anachronistic, that the song I will most remember from the 00’s has a hook that instructs you to shake it, shake it like a Polaroid picture. Many, if not most, of the folks who were shaking it to Outkast’s 2003 hit probably didn’t really know what a Polaroid was, though they quickly made up for that with the insta-spread of the ubiquitous Instagram app. Hipsters are a strange breed that way, all nostalgic for nostalgia as they tend to be. Even the video is an homage, partly to the era it’s throwing-back to and partly to the throwback itself.
“Hey Ya” is one of those songs, like the Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back” or Rufus Thomas’ “Walk the Dog,” that makes it just impossible to sit still when you hear it. And go ahead, just try not to clap-clap-clap-clap when that part comes up between verses. (You know the part.) You think you got it? Oh, you think you got it? Well got it doesn’t get it when there’s nothing at all.
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Nostalgic? Check out my entry for Day 12 from the 2011 version of the 30 Day Song Challenge.