Time: It's Not Just For Fun Anymore.

1997: The first time Green Day actually belongs in Potterverse

The time has come for another installment in my “Time: It’s Not Just For Fun Anymore” series. Yes, with the release of the new book, fan fiction has moved on to the Seventh Year Fic. We never thought we’d get here; we never thought we’d survive, but we have. Battle scenes abound. It’s finally almost legal to get the characters sloshed. At no point in the course of your prose will it occur to you that your Harlequin content might just be a little bit age-inappropriate.

You-Have-Arrived. (…and so has your handy-dandy reference guide…)

Music
1997 marks a lot of things good, bad and ugly…but mostly just bad and ugly.

The Wallflowers topped the charts that year with their hit “One Headlight.” Mellow and moody, just like the rest of their releases; pretty-boy, quasi-rockers were having a great year. I was not.

Quickly followed by what is possibly one of my favorite ringtones, Aqua released “Barbie Girl” and many a demoralized mother was lost in its wake of double-entendre.

It’s the darker side of 1997 that really captured the hearts of many. Yup, you guessed it, 1997 was the year of the Boy Band. The Backstreet Boys, playing off of the New Kids on the Block formula, released ‘Quit Playing Games With My Heart’ and sent gazillions of teenage girls into high-pitched vocal seizures that were only slightly more deafening than the song itself. And then there was ‘MmmBop.’ I…this song…it just…This song got more radio play than Enter Sandman with remarkably less talent. *wanders off humming ‘mmmbobbidippydadadooopbadipidadadoooooooooooo….’*

This year also marked the end for Sugar Ray. Formerly a pretty heavy metal-esque band, they released ‘Fly’ which, while destroying Mark McGrath’s singing career, landed him a job with TV Tabloid, Extra

Smash Mouth, ex-Ska band, released ‘Walkin’ on the Sun,’ loosing their entire true-fan base in the sum and total of 3 minutes and 25 harrowing seconds.

Debbie Gibson released “Lost in Your Eyes;” a song so bad that I have absolutely no recollection of it. A similar fate to Sophie B. Hawkins release of ‘As I Lay Me Down To Sleep’ except I remember this one.

‘Push,’ brought to you by the boyish looks of Matchbox 20, dropped us smack into the realms of chick-rock and is solely responsible for Rob Thomas’s resurgence as a pop-artist today. Sad.

It what is one of the few releases of 1997 that I still admit to listening to, ‘Hell’ by the Squirrel Nut Zippers brought big-band swing back to the mainstream for all of 5 minutes.

Did I mention that ’97 was a big year for chick rock? Third-Eye Blind brought us ‘Semi-Charmed Life’ that year while The Verve released ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ and another Wallflowers hit (6^th Avenue Heartache) topped the charts.

For more highly-mockable Karaoke class, Chumbawumba brought us ‘Tubthumping’ and Aqua gave us ‘Dr. Jones.’

Sarah McLachlen brought girl-power music together with Lillth Fair and ‘Building a Mystery’ and Jewel gave us ‘You Were Meant For Me.’

Now, for the moment you’ve all been waiting for. 1997 marked Green Day v.2.1 ‘Good Riddance (Time of your Life),’ a song played at every prom, graduation, and other pseudo-sad occasion for the rest of time.

1998: And The Hits Just Keep On Coming

When I realized that I needed to include this, I was fearful because if 1997 was bad, ’98 was nothing if not worse. Much, much, much worse.

'98 was a mixed bag. There were a few releases that I enjoyed then and still enjoy now...and then there were,,...the others.

Music
As more a continuum than a new year, Semisonic released “Closing Time” bring the total ‘soft-rockish song’ count to 4,579 for the fiscal year if you include Eve 6’s “Inside Out” and the Goo Goo Dolls…(don’t even get me started)…drop of “Iris.”

This year had it’s share of quirky songs I still keep for laughs, though. Harvey Danger’s “Flagpole Sitta,’ Marcy Playground’s “Sex and Candy,” and the two big-band swing hits of the year; Cherry Poppin’ Dadies “Zoot Suit Riot” and Brian Zetzer’s “Jump, Jive and Wail.”

The girl-power revolution continued with Sheryl Crow’s “Run Baby Run’ and Shawn Colvin’s “Sunny Came Home.”

Meanwhile, I was busy trying to find a device that was appropriate skinny and sharp to puncture my own eardrums before I heard Fastball’s “The Way” ever again. This was a tragedy of radio and music that I had, until this moment, forgotten, emphasized by the confused look on my face while I opened iTunes to figure out what on earth this song was.

Then there was Billy Myers. I…well…I just have no idea where to group “Kiss the Rain” so I guess it gets it’s own paragraph because…well…ugh. I suppose I could put it in the “contemplated moving to Germany because Death Metal is better than this” pile.

On the sunny side, Garbage had a release this year as well. No matter what anyone says, I still like Garbage.

But, after 1997, there was only one thing that could really shock the world and that thing came wrapped in a big wrinkly package. Aerosmith released “Pink.” In retrospect, I think that this is the quintessential moment in which we all knew music was dead.