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silicabeast34-blog · 6 years ago

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Four Loko, Joose, and Sparks: An Abridged History of Caffeinated Alcohol

Remembrances of Four Loko — the super-caffeinated, alcoholic energy drink available in every convenience store for a narrow window of time before intervention by the Food and Drug Administration at the end of the aughts — are their own genre of internet content.

It is, if there is such a thing, the internet’s beverage, even years after the demise of its original formula. “If you can remember your Four Loko experiences, it wasn’t a Four Loko experience,” comedian Kady Ruth recently tweeted, in response to a question from comedian Akilah Hughes asking for stories about the drink’s golden age. “Why tell, when you can show a photo series?” dancer and YouTuber Ava Gordy replied, attaching an image of herself surrounded by Four Loko cans and wearing a gas mask. Photos from Four Loko’s golden days are scattered around on Tumblr and Imgur, captured with the high-flash, red-eyed weirdness of disposable cameras and early iPhones.

In an oral history of Four Loko, published on Grub Street last summer, the team of Ohio State buddies who created it explained how the product went from a small production run in 2005 to a splashy New York City debut in 2009 to more than $100 million in revenue in 2010. In short: They made the cans tall and they gave them a neon camouflage print to make them stand out. Plus, they raised the alcohol level as high as they legally could for a malt beverage.

2010 sounds like such a long time ago that I was honestly surprised when one of the Gawker pieces about the moment mentioned the fact that Obama was president. I wasn’t old enough to drink or permitted to have more than one other person in my car at the time, but even I feel a bubbly sort of weakness in my chest reading a blog post about the founder of Ron Jon Surf Shops getting arrested for driving under the influence of Four Loko or a blog post about Chuck Schumer comparing Four Loko to “a plague” devastating the country.

Four Loko was beloved, and it is beloved in death. But why? What’s so great about caffeinated sugar-water full of booze, in a can, retailing for $2.50, other than the obvious? The drink is infamous, and maybe an important cultural moment, but it’s not unique. There were also micro-eras for the nearly identical drinks Sparks and Joose, and the vodka Red Bull got almost two decades. In fact, there’s a long history of people trying to showily ruin their nights or their lives with disgusting combinations of chemicals dreamed up for some business purpose that doesn’t especially concern them. Caffeine and alcohol shouldn’t mix, but they have always mixed.

“People are always looking for a way to get high,” William Rorabaug, a historian at the University of Washington, tells me. “Throughout history. It seems to be part of the human condition.”

The last super-boozy generation was the baby boomers, he explains, but their children got into a health kick — yoga, meditation, bicycles, running — mostly because they saw a lot of bad stuff happen to their parents and older siblings as a result of alcohol, and because they preferred marijuana. Mothers Against Drunk Driving got big in the 1980s, and heavy alcohol consumption dipped throughout the 1990s. It didn’t rise again until about 2003, he says, when “very sweet mixed drinks” that went down easy and would mess you up with sugar and alcohol at the time became more popular.

Philip Dobard, vice president of the National Food and Beverage Foundation, explains to me that the drinking age was lower when he was a teenager, which was in the 1970s, and that he really liked drinking Long Island iced teas. Though they’ve been rebranded as premium cocktails in recent years, Long Island iced teas used to be Diet Coke and the leftover dregs of various well spirits. “It was the vodka Red Bull of its day,” he reminisces. “It was high alcohol, not particularly high caffeine, but caffeine. It was a test of one’s humanity. A test of one’s mortality. You’re young and healthy and you’re not familiar with loss. Injuries, when they occur, quickly heal.”

“It was a test of one’s humanity. A test of one’s mortality. You’re young and healthy and you’re not familiar with loss. Injuries, when they occur, quickly heal.”

A current fact sheet from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about mixing caffeine and alcohol states that it makes drinkers feel too alert (when they should feel sleepy and want to stop drinking or at least sit down and not risk “alcohol-attributable harms”). It also points out that “caffeine has no effect on the metabolism of alcohol by the liver ... (it does not ‘sober you up’) or reduce impairment due to alcohol consumption,” and some studies have found people who mix caffeine and alcohol are three times more likely to leave a bar while still heavily intoxicated and four time more likely to attempt to drive home.

But caffeinated alcohol and the type of high it provides is communal, Dobard notes. It’s almost charming, to want to strip yourself of inhibitions in the presence of people you like. “I don’t think that impulse is new,” Dobard adds. “I think the commercial forces are new.”

He’s right. The vodka Red Bull was invented in the late ’90s by none other than … Red Bull, which chased athletes in ski towns and the rave scene on the West Coast by giving cases of free energy drinks to bartenders, even paying them thousands of dollars to put it on the menu. The first mainstream alcohol and fortified caffeine beverage was an industry plant.

As Haley Hamilton noted in MEL’s recent oral history of the vodka Red Bull, combining alcohol with caffeine has a two-part effect: “The alcohol can dull the effects of the caffeine (boring), or more problematically, the caffeine can dull the effects of the alcohol, meaning you can drink way more than you normally would without feeling super-hammered.” Dobard is not personally familiar with Four Loko, but sympathizes with the plight of a generation that just wants to get as drunk as everyone else got to.

“There’s nothing inherently illicit about combining caffeine and alcohol,” he points out, adding that coffee liqueurs and coffee-based cocktails have been around for hundreds of years, commonly used as post-dinner digestifs. “The problem occurs when there’s so much of one or the other and it’s so available that it becomes easily and widely abused as a substance. That’s typically when government agencies step in and recognize it as a public health risk.”

(In 2010, the New York Times offered the following very funny, very ahistoric thought on the demand for Four Loko: “It has long vexed club-hoppers and partygoers: how do you stay awake while drinking alcohol late into the night? For years, alcohol and soda sufficed.” Imagine if we’d just cool-mom-blind-eyed everyone for choosing to drink gas station cocktails instead of doing cocaine!)

Gawker’s Hamilton Nolan commented on the persecution of Four Loko in 2010, writing that it was part of a “full-blown scapegoating operation,” and pointing out the obvious: “Isn’t the real issue here that kids are stupid?”

Caffeinated alcohol is a distinctly American flavor of stupid. We do it over and over.

That’s a fair question. Budweiser’s alcohol-and-caffeine drink BE was a hit in the United States in the early to mid-aughts but flopped immediately when tested overseas in 2006. Caffeinated alcohol is a distinctly American flavor of stupid. We do it over and over.

A can of Joose, which is 23.5 ounces, contains approximately 380 calories. (Compared to modern Four Loko, which is 660.) While both had 12 percent alcohol by volume and were fortified with caffeine, Joose had a few differentiating features, beyond the fact it was 40 cents cheaper and covered in skulls.

Sparks actually preceded both, and MillerCoors voluntarily removed the caffeine in 2008, before Four Loko even hit its stride. In the two years between its $215 million acquisition from the McKenzie River Corporation and this quiet surrender, Sparks had a 90 percent share of the “alcopop” market, which meant that with its death, Four Loko was primed to become an easy hit.

Today, even in the midst of the “wellness” boom, young people still post exuberantly about knocking back cans of Four Loko and making bad decisions, even though the caffeine has been removed and the current drink is no more dangerous than a wine cooler. In June 2016, long after Four Loko had been rereleased sans caffeine, the strange college journalism platform Odyssey Online published a guide to matching Four Loko flavors with your personality. “Gold Loko is a VERY IMPORTANT new flavor,” the possibly underage author wrote. “The people who drink these LOVE to live on the edge. They aren’t afraid of the challenge (of the added 2 percent alcohol volume).”

But it’s not special. None of it is special. I was a straitlaced high school soccer player during the Four Loko years, but I do remember, with a warm sort of disgust, the acrid taste of college ingenuity — tequila and blue Gatorade, whiskey and strawberry-kiwi Snapple, etc. There was no reason we couldn’t have chosen slightly less revolting combinations, except for the fact that it was kind of romantic not to. In 20 years, are you going to post throwback pics of a rum and Coke? It’s not shorthand for anything, and you would probably drink one now.

In November 2010, one of Four Loko’s creators, Chris Hunter, defended the drink vehemently to Fast Company, arguing that it had the same amount of caffeine as a Starbucks coffee, less alcohol than most craft beers, and less seductive packaging than a Bud Light Lime, and that dozens of other alcoholic beverages were available in the same 24-ounce cans. Asked about a widely publicized incident at Washington State University in which nine college students ended up hospitalized, with Four Loko cited throughout the police report, Hunter got even more defensive, telling reporter Austin Carr:

The police report showed there was supposedly illegal drugs at the party. That was mentioned about 14 times in the police report. There were multiple mentions of hard liquor, but there were only a few, maybe 2 to 3, mentions of Four Loko. It’s really unfair to say our drink was the cause of this.

The same month, his company reached a voluntary agreement with the New York State Liquor Authority to stop shipping Four Loko into the state, and the FDA issued a public warning about caffeine as an “unsafe additive” to alcoholic beverages, as well as private letters to four manufacturers — including Four Loko’s Phusion Projects — that stated, “[The] FDA is not aware of any publicly available data to establish affirmatively safe conditions of use for caffeine added directly to alcoholic beverages and packaged in a combined form.”

The FDA’s letter was sent to Charge Beverages Corporation (which made drinks called Core High Gravity HG Green and Core High Gravity HG Orange), New Century Brewing Company (which made the fortified beer Moonshot), and United Brands, which made Joose.

Jonathan Howland, a community health researcher at Boston University, told Science Daily just after the ban on Four Loko, “Although several manufacturers of caffeinated beer have withdrawn their products from the market, there is no sign that young people have decreased the practice of combining alcohol and energy drinks.”

There have been other gross party beverages meant to recapture the thrill of alcoholic energy drinks without drawing the same unwanted attention. Whipped Lightning, a combination of sugar, heavy cream, grain alcohol, and artificial flavoring had a brief heyday. Forty-proof chocolate milk did not quite. The super-cheap bottled sangria brand Capriccio had a moment, which the company leaned into, saying, “Believe the hype!” MEL’s Miles Klee recently sampled every flavor of a Mark Cuban-endorsed juice-box wine cooler called BeatBox, which has hideous, brightly colored marketing materials and a low price point, but concluded that its 11.1 percent alcohol content wasn’t really enough for anything other than an “unremarkable, if quietly pleasant weekend.”

In fact, even the FDA seems to be over the whole incident. When asked whether it would involve itself in the rise of alcohol-infused cold brew — such as those offered by the California-based Cafe Agave or the forthcoming offering from Skyy Vodka, announced March 15 — a spokesperson said the agency only considers products on a case-by-case basis, when action seems called for, and would have to get back to me.

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Source: https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/3/15/18265724/four-loko-history-joose-sparks-red-bull-vodka-caffeine

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theworstbob · 8 years ago

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yellin’ at songs: 1997, part two

the songs which debuted on the billboard hot 100 between 3.15.1997 and 5.10.1997. 2/3 of the way there! i’ma try to get weeks 19-27 done by monday so we can cover weeks 28 and 29 of all three of 97/07/17 on wednesday, then resume posting as usual from there. i’m excited!

3.15.1997

9) "For You I Will," by Monica

this was ok, i guess. it's a stirring pitch to the boy, but i can also understand why the boy would still give brandy consideration after hearing this. the boy probably thinks monica doth insist too much. like, she promises to be the sun. she can't do that! monica's a star, but not a REAL star, just a famous person! the boy has reason to be dubious of monica's claims. no reason to be dubious of the key change, tho. hey remember key changes? remember when we used to like songs that were dynamic and didn't just bleep and bloop for three minutes? good times.

22) "Step by Step," by Whitney Houston

The YouTube recommendation bar just pulled up a bunch of Whitney Houston songs, and I'm not gonna lie, I'd much rather dip into that than find out what Zhane is. This is probably a second-tier Whitney song, insofar as I have any grasp of the ins-and-outs of the Whitney catalogue, but second-tier Whitney is still amazing. Like, you know how "Lose My Breath" is definitely one of the five-best songs from the expanded Beyonce universe, even though no one ever thinks about it? This is Whitney's "Lose My Breath" for me. I just wanna put this and "Return of the Mack" on repeat for a thousand years and die happy.

35) "Head Over Heels," by Allure ft./Nas

It's weird to hear Nas on a pop song. Like, Nas operated in the same space where someone like Vince Staples or Killer Mike currently operates, I always thought; clearly elite, but elite in a way not friendly with the mainstream. Illmatic didn't sound like something that'd get a dude on a pop song. Not that I'm angry Nas got that paper, it's just weird, like it'd be weird if Killer Mike suddenly collaborated with Calvin Harris. Also, girl group hype. This is a song that was playing while I was thinking about other things and I think I would've enjoyed it if I wasn't ignoring it, but at the same time, I don't believe in second impressions.

51) "Request Line," by Zhane

...Zhane, that was unfair, that thing I said about you two paragraphs ago. I am so glad to have found out about you. This song only has a peak of 39. I am comfortable declaring this the forgotten classic of 1997 so far. It references calling people over a phone line, which is so delightfuly antiquated, it references a 555 number which is a classic, and it implies that at one point you had to call a radio station to request a song rather than being able to access every song all at once on demand. All wonderful 1997 things, backed with a solid groove. This song is dope. I'm going to call into my local radio station RIGHT NOW and request that they play this!

76) "Too Late, Too Soon," by Jon Secada

imagine turning the radio on in 1997 and hearing this and keeping this song on because trying to tune the dial to a new station just to avoid this song wouldn't be worth the effort. i thought i wouldn't get michael bolton? i thought his whole thing was just an early-'90s thing, something akward between the grunge and the rap? i feel cheated, honestly. i shouldn't have had to listen to clay aiken in 1997.

79) "I Belong to You (Every Time I See Your Face)," by Rome

This dude's ad-libs are basically Young Thug mouthnoises. I'm into it. It's generic, but dude goes hard trying to sell this song, and I respect that hustle.

81) "Hip-Hopera," by Bounty Killa ft./The Fugees

LAURYN HILL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I don't even care that the rest of this song is just Bounty Killa saying things with a heavy accent that never actually justifies being called "Hip-Hopera" aside from some falsetto in the hook. Like, you wanna be a hip-hopera? Bring the drama. Can't just have the fat lady sing, you need to emote like your life depended on it, PROJECT, make something more over the top than this, but legit Lauryn Hill on the mic for even half a minute is a good thing, and this song at least had the good sense to put her at the top of this song so that, if you want to hear her verse again, you don't have to sift through a bunch of nothing.

91) "Weekend Thang," by Alfonzo Hunter

This is the second R&B slow jam about infidelity this week, and while it's superior, I wonder if people got as tired of dudes singing R&B in 1997 as I am of bro country in 2017? Like, the thing R&B dudes have over country dudes is, I can easily distinct Alfonzo Hunter from Rome. Rome was making all sorts of noises in his song, and Alfonzo Hunter is smoother, more confident. I can't tell you any meaningful difference between Chase Pickens and Ricky Graves, and you probably didn't realize those were fake names, because country dudes are interchangable. Listen, 1997 has been wonderfully bereft of country dudes, but the only thing I know how to do is complain about country dudes, SO I HAD TO SHOEHORN THIS IN SOMEWHERE, point is, R&B slow jamz all at least have some variety, and I'm not tired of them yet.

3.22.1997

22) "Ghetto Love," by Da Brat ft./T-Boz

"You laid pipe unlike any other plumber/Took me shoppin' all day and at night you kept me cummin'/Made dinner, collard greens, candied yams, and steak/Taught me how to measure grams, cook rocks, and chop weights" This song is incredible. Like, I grew up in a family adjacent to white trash; if anyone in the family smokes meth, it might not be surprising?, but it would definitely be news to me. So I don't know what it's like to settle in for a nice steak dinner, then sit down with my lover and learn how to manufacture and distribute crack cocaine. My girl and I would just play Mario Kart. This is a love unlike anything I could ever know, and I am glad to have heard tell of it. Also, "you laid pipe unlike any other plumber." That is a lyric!

34) "I Shot the Sheriff," by Warren G

...I want to applaud the social commentary? But at the same time, no, don't touch this song. This song was already very good, it didn't need you trying to muck it all up with your signature, just let it be. You can allude to this song in a better song about fighting back against the police, but don't just like do the song, it's not pleasant to listen to this song when it's not this song.

71) "Silent All These Years," by Tori Amos

One of the auto-complete results when I searched "silent all" was "silent all these years karaoke" and I want to meet the absolute fucking maniac who would ruin a karaoke night with this song and give them a stern lecture about the utility of fun. This is not a karaoke song. Even if this WERE a karaoke song, there's no way you have the verses memorized. There's too many words. You are going to stumble all over the verses and it’s going to suck for everyone in the bar to hear. You’re going to ruin five minutes of everyone’s lives, be responsible with your fucking choices. Like karaoke is not about communicating the deep inner pain with which Tori Amos helped you get in touch, what kind of horrible narcissist is singing Tori Amos songs at karaoke. I DID NOT FORCE MYSELF TO LOG OFF TUMBLR, PUT ON PANTS, AND TAKE A BUS TO THE BAR JUST TO HEAR TUMBLR: THE MUSICAL. ...Tori Amos is a quality songwriter and this song is incredibly sad and I am scared of feeling things which is why those other sentences exist.

84) "If Tomorrow Never Comes," by Joose

I found this R&B slow jam lacking because it tried to have A Moment, took some time to try to be a sweeping, epic slow jam, and while I applaud the ambition, it kinda just sounded like a worse version of the pop version of "A Whole New World."

97) "Under the Water," by Merril Bainbridge

this song is just heckin' beautiful. look at that, i'm even usin' "heck" instead of bad words because i don't want to profane this space right now. it's so soft and gentle and i don't want to do anything to ruin this moment i'm having. this i -- OH. OH, HELLO, MAN. alright well fuck all this then where the fuck did this dude come from? this was a pleasant, lovely song, and then goddamn the dude from crash test dummies or w/e shows up and goes "UNDER THE WATER" and it's so jarring. i can't even enjoy this harmonica solo, i feel so betrayed! ...okay, i'm enjoying the harmonica a little bit. the harmonica was as nice a surprise as the dude was a rude one.

3.29.1997

7) "All by Myself," by Celine Dion

These charts are based off single sales and radio plays. It's so weird to consider that people would go out of their way to listen to a Celine Dion ballad in a pre-"My Heart Will Go On" world. Like, "Let it Go" was a top 20(?) hit if I recall correctly, but that was the signature song of a movie loved by teens. What is this. This is just a diva singing dramatically over a piano. People went to stores and either specifically bought this single or said, "Oh! My favorite recording artist, Salon Dijon! I need this like I need these other staples of every day life I have come to Target to purchase!" 1997 has had two Broadway-ish songs on the chart, 2007 had one Broadway-ish song, and 2017 has had zero, if anyone needed quantifiable proof the world was getting worse. (Shout out to Pete Holmes.)

13) "Everyday Is a Winding Road," by Sheryl Crow

Because my first exposure to Sheryl Crow was "Soak Up the Sun," an over-the-top cheery song about beaches that triggers an allergic reaction in my horrible soul, I never really fucked with Sheryl Crow. This is a jam, though. There's more of an edge here than there is in her later stuff. The key is "I get a little bit closer to feeling fine." This isn't a song about someone who is happy and taking life as it comes, this is about someone who's going through shit and hopes to be happy one day. It's like a prototype of "Hard Times," '90s alt-rock chick instead of '80s throwback. This is dope.

33) "One More Time," by Real McCoy

House music! It's been a while. Oh, good, you're rapping. I was hoping to hear someone rap in their second language. God damn you. YouTube Comments Under Shitty Dance Music, Vol. II "I might have one of the largest collections of Real McCoy CD's in the world. :-)" Real McCoy released four albums. Congratulations on having bought four items. That's not a collection, unless Real McCoy has been making other horrible music over the last 20 years.

42) "Your Woman," by White Town

/someone in 1997 hears this song /they franticaly scramble to their kitchen and dial numbers on a corded phone /someone answers Twenty-One! Twenty-One, it's your cousin Marvin! Marvin Pilots! You know that incomprehensible fake-hip-hop sound you've been looking for? WELL, LISTEN TO THIS! /Marvin Pilots holds the phone as near to his bedroom as he can No but seriously this is a goddamned Twenty-One Pilots song, this is amazing, this must be what it felt like when anthropologists or whatever discovered that da Vinci invented airplanes. Like, look! This always existed! This song is more interesting than this dumb joke, but it's also important to point out the similarities. Also: this dude released an album called Don't Mention the War. I like this dude. He seems like good people.

52) "You Don't Have to Hurt No More," by Mint Condition

"This house is not a home." This song is the most unbelievable thing I've heard so far because it is set in a world where single people own houses.

56) "I Don't Want To," by Toni Braxton

Look, you probably already knew this about me, but I find it hard to believe any dramatic tension that gets built by dangling a preposition. Like, I know you're gonna finish that sentence, it would be rude to just leave that "to" hanging in the middle. Clickbait titles could be so simplistic in 1997, though, because we hadn't been inured to all the tricks. We may think we know better than this song title, but back in 1997, people were screaming at the album cover, "don't want to what? DON'T WANT TO WHAT?" People who didn't have access to the single held weekly meetings to share their fan theories about what Toni Braxton didn't want to, one of the earliest online fan forums was built by people wringing their hands over what Toni Braxton didn't want to. People need to work to rook us in 2017, but in 1997, all it took was a sentence left unfinished. (The official YAS verdict on this song is that it is boring and I was bored by it.)

65) "Sho Nuff," by Tela ft./Eightball & MJG

This strip club anthem has maybe the most evocative storytelling any strip club anthem has ever had. It's about a young man who comes back to his hometown after spending time wherever it was he spent time, and discovering girls he used to know became strippers. "I remember this ho, she used to do nails for Rochelle's" is such a delightful detail, the way he specifies not just what she used to do but where she did it being something straight out of a country song. Is it followed by "You heard me! Push these thirty dicks inside your clit?" Well, not immediately, but yes, those words do occupy the same space, but when it isn't exceedingly gross, there's a lot of homey charm in this song.

80) "For You," by Kenny Lattimore

The description for this song claims this is "the only song you should get married to." The first line of this song is "For you, I'd give a lifetime of stability." Oh, yeah, baby girl, if you're looking for a man who'll settle for an office job if this music thing doesn't work out, I'm that guy. When you're ready to accept Wednesday nights spent bickering over what to watch on Netflix while we wait for the Chinese food to get here, you have my number. I'm that man who can drive a Camry and won't talk about his fantasy football team... because he knows it bores you. I'm waiting for you to decide to want this. "For you, I'd make a promise of fidelity." It worries me you waited until your wedding day to make this promise, Ken. That should have just gone without saying! Why would you bring that up now?

92) "Bill," by Peggy Scott-Adams

OH MY FUCKING GOODNESS. I. I was expecting a lot from 1997. I don't think I could have ever expected this song to exist in the way it exists. It's a dynamo vocal performance of a deeply silly and probably slightly offensive song. I don't want to say too much because this is a song which could legitimately be spoiled, but like listen to it. You probably won't be disappointed.

94) "Insomnia," by Faithless

this song is at once the class of 1997's dark dance music, and it also features a vocal performance that's way too low-energy to be rap but is too high energy to be spoken word so i guess i have to call it rapping? but like if you're rapping, and i can reasonably state that Egoraptor is a better rapper than you, are you really rapping? anyway heck europe.

4.5.1997

67) "Precious Declaration," by Collective Soul

Sometimes in 2017, Imagine Dragons will break through the trap and release a song that charts, and I'll react to it with baffled indifference; I don't care, but at the same time, I don't get why people who ostensibly enjoy rock music would listen to Imagine Dragons. I get the same sense listening to this Collective Soul song. Like, it didn't ruin my day, but is this really the best you could do? If you like alternative rock, why on earth are you listening to Collective Soul? The Verve Pipe has other songs! They're not as good as "The Freshmen" but better than this!

81) "A Little Bit of Ecstacy," by Jocelyn Enriquez

"Tee hee! The casual observer will think I am singing about feeling happy, when I actually am singing about doing drugs and having sex! What a trickster I am!" Dance music is bad and everyone who listened to it has the wrong idea about everything. We're not even out of the third month. There is more to come, and I already blew the “this entire genre is garbage” shot. Oh, dear.

94) "One Night at a Time," by George Strait

Our first country dude of 1997! And it's not just some random country dude, it's The Possum, singing an OK song about how nice being in love is and how much effort maintaining a healthy relationship requires! Nothing special, but pleasant, especially since it's not surrounded by fifty other songs by dudes in the same hat with the same voice. This constitutes a break from the onslaught of R&B dudes, is not part of its own separate slog. I appreciate the commitment to diversity, 1997. (Diversity in genre if not in gender, I guess. Not as bad as 2017, I don't think, but, hey, we all could be doing better.)

95) "Step Into a World (Rapture's Delight)," by KRS-One

"I'm not saying I'm number one -- I'm sorry, I lied/I'm number one, two, three, four, and five" That's fucking incredible. Like, one'd be hard-pressed to disagree with KRS-One on that claim after hearing this song. KRS-One occupies the same space as The Roots did from part one, where I understood they were important but hadn't actually made the effort to check them out, and now I see I've been missing out. This dude's incredible. "I'm not run of the mill, 'cuz for the mill I don't run." This is like if Chance the Rapper was good.

98) "That's Right," by DJ Taz ft./Raheem the Dream

remember when the atl wasn't the epicenter of homogeneity and the city housed artists that sounded great without sounding like anything else. what happened. i mean, this song probably isn't the one we want to point to when complaining about the current state of atlanta, not when we got outkast comin' in a couple of songs, but like something this light and breezy and fun isn't the sort of thing atlanta traffics in anymore, and the world is worse for losing this spirt.

4.12.1997

17) "Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?" by Paula Cole

One of the best tweets of all time theorizes that "Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?" and "The Boys Are Back in Town" are two different perspectives on the same event, and this Paula Cole fan theory will be a part of me until the world burns down. It's a good song, but also it's absolutely ruined for me.

59) "Jazzy Belle," by OutKast

ATLiens is the best OutKast album and the first five tracks ("Two Dope Boys," "ATLiens," "Wheelz of Steel," "Elevators," "Jazzy Belle") might be the best five-track stretch in the whole of hip-hop history and even if I'm not into the remix they released to radio I'm so incredibly into the original that I'm fine with a Xerox. I'm fanboying, and you didn't come here for that, but gosh I do love this song.

75) "Come On," by Billy Lawrence ft./MC Lyte

This song was acceptable. You ever hit a point where you've been listening to songs for two hours and trying to think about them and then you come across two songs you already know your thoughts on so you go "Oh, cool, I can do other things while still listening to these songs so I can say I listened to them" and then you get to a song you're not familiar with but you're still in "doing other things while listening to music" mode? That's what happened. This is a feeling which I am sure is incredibly relatable, as all of us have series where we listen to every pop song ever and post our thoughts about them. I'm sure this song is better than I treated it, and I could just listen to it again but oh no what happened my fingers just typed the next song into the bar and now the music is gone from youtube forever it doesn't exist anymore i can't go back oh no oh nooooooooo

4.19.1997

24) "My Baby Daddy," by B-Rock & The Bizz

...I came into this refreshed. I watched some other videos -- this is the least embarrassing Punk Goes Pop compilation yet! -- took a shower, had some breakfast, I was ready to accept this song into my life. I mean, "My Baby's Mama" had a ridiculous title, but that was more or less acceptable, and I thought this was a response song. That's a lost art, the response song. I don't think we've had a true response song since Frankie's unforgettable classic "Fuck You Right Back," though I haven't listened to "Bodak Yellow" yet. This was... Certainly, an experience I won't forget, but not for lack of trying.

73) "Until I Find You Again," by Richard Marx

In a position where I can see the future, I see "Hypnotize" and "Bitch" dropping next week, and I can kind of understand that 1997 is in the calm before the storm. It's disappointing to endure, for sure, no one ever intends on listening to soft rock, but I'm ten minutes away from thinking about "Hypnotize." I appreciate 1997 for giving me this time to clear my mind and accept "Hypnotize" into my life.

87) "Sweet Sexy Thing," by Nu Flavor ft./Roger Troutman

It wasn't that long ago that we were letting dudes feature on boy band songs despite the fact they were calling themselves Roger Troutman. We can quibble about how good a rap name KYLE is, but at least it's not a pirate fish monster.

93) "Just the Way You Like It," by Tasha Holiday ft/Mase

This is Tasha Holiday's only song that charted on the Hot 100, and it appeared to have only spent one week on the chart, as it never got higher than 93. That has to be weird for an artist. You make a song that's popular enough that it can make the chart and people will upload it to YouTube 20 years later, but at the same time, your song wasn't popular at all and your song has significantly fewer views than "My Babby Dad," which is a song no one put effort into making. You had two celebrated songwriters on the track, and they made a song that someone who listened to an average amount of Top 40 radio might have heard once on "New Tunes Tuesday." Per Wikipedia, she was last seen doing feature spots on Soundcloud tracks, so it's at least good to hear she didn't stop believing.

97) "Don't Keep Wasting My Time," by Teddy Pendergrass

i am not going to argue against teddy pendergrass. i understand that, of all the '90s r&b slow jamz specialists, he's the one that got a shout out on "slow jamz," so i'm digging this song while assuming this is not his most iconic work. this is dope, and it's nice to hear a voice with rasp. '90s r&b isn't very husky, y'know? great voices without a lot of depth. this dude knows how to use his voice to most effectively communicate his pain, and it's dope as hell. this is the worst positive thing anyone's ever written about teddy pendergrass, like y'all know he's great and i'm late to the party.

4.26.1997

2) "Hypnotize," by The Notorious B.I.G.

i wonder if the people who made "rise" knew that they would be playing an integral role in one of the greatest songs of all time, if they knew that the song they were making wasn't the song they would be remembered for. that intro, those three guitar blasts (music term) and biggie going "oh," is this miracle, and i wonder if anyone who made "rise" knew their song was going to be used to bring a miracle into this world. "we got so close!" the bassist might have cried upon hearing biggie's tone over the track he laid down. "if we had replaced the trumpet with talking..."

30) "Staring at the Sun," by U2

Like, even if it weren't one of the last songs Biggie ever released, we'd still remember "Hypnotize" as fondly as we do, because it's just this incredible perfect thing. Biggie just has this phenomenal, laid-back flow. You're not blown away by any lyrical twist or vocal trick, Biggie just lumbers along in time, and it's just fun to hear someone rap like that, and this track is the perfect complement to his voice, this groovy thing he can really sink into and flow with. P. Diddy isn't the greatest musician, but he has a great ear for what other people can do. He and Biggie could have made more songs like this. That song, man.

57) "Bitch," by Meredith Brooks

It remains to be seen if the music of 1997 is better than the music of 2007 or 2017 -- even in a week with "Hypnotize" and "Bitch," 1997 is going to lose the weekly competition because "Umbrella" is as good as "Hypnotize" and "Thnks fr th Mmrs" is better than "Bitch" and 1997 won't have anything better than "The Story" -- but we can definitively state that "Blank Space" was better in 1997. I was struck by how similar this song was to "Blank Space," mostly because I forgot "Bitch" had verses. The thematic concepts in "Bitch" and "Blank Space" are similar, both songs stating "You should have known I was complicated, and now I am presenting these complications and you will not enjoy it," but while Tay Tay's is rooted in the personal mythos of Tay Tay, one needing to understand Tay Tay's relationship with her #brand to fully understand the song, Meredith Brooks' is accessible to all, more generalized and less personal, not needing to make some grand statement about who Meredith Brooks is as a person and what being in a relationship with her is like. There's less baggage to "Bitch," so to answer the question HOT ON EVERYONE'S MIND, "Bitch" is a better version of "Blank Space" than "Blank Space."

88) "Full of Smoke," by Christion

This song has the singular misfortune of being the R&B slow jamz to follow Teddy Pendergrass. It is the victim of higher expectations and will not benefit from the expectational adjustment being performed as a result of hearing a dude sing exclusively in falsetto. I'm sure, out of the context of this deeply silly project, this would be a much more fun song to hear, but like no thank you. Now that I know what else slow jamz can do, I need more than overdramatic sings and this dude squeaking.

89) "Stop the Gunfight," by Trapp ft./2pac & Notorious B.I.G.

Fun fact! If you listen to this song, you will have done significantly more to prevent gun violence in the United States than every Senator COMBINED! Congratulations on doing more than nothing! Thoughts and prayers for EVERYONE!

5.3.1997

16) "MMMBop," by Hanson

Hanson makes legitimately wonderful music. Even when they were children with hair like the kid from Room, they were making songs that were exceptionally well-crafted, even if they were about some nonsense. You can kind of tell, on this song, that Hanson was trying to make a point about aging and losing touch with people and friendship that they couldn't make because they were legitimately 14, not music 14 where they're 14 and singing songs written by 40-year-olds but actual immature 14. The song is honestly far better than it has any right to be, and every day I remember Hanson weathered the storm and became normal people who make insanely good pop music is a good day.

45) "Don't Wanna Be a Player," by Joe

...JOE?! Hold up. So many R&B slow jammers didn't make it all the way to 2007. Hell, significantly fewer artists made it from 1997 to 2007 than made it from 2007 to 2017, and one of them was this random dude named Joe, this dude with one of the five most generic names as a stage name who has no defining personality traits. This dude? This dude's who y'all took with ya? I'm not even going to pretend to try to get this. Like all he's swearing to a girl is that he won't cheat on her. He's not pledging eternal love, he's not swearing he will climb a mountain, he will not defend her against the armies of every nation, he's just saying, "I will finally stop fucking other people." That's a really shitty promise. Like, way to spend four minutes promising a girl the bare minimum.

85) "Feelin' It," by Jay-Z

hey. hey, guys. jay-z? this jay-z cat? he's pretty amazing at rapping. be sure to give him a follow and show him some love in the comments.

94) "6 Underground," by Sneaker Pimps

this song sounds like the episode of buffy where seth green goes through an entire season of plot in one episode and then leaves the show forever. what i am trying to say is, this song sounds like two werewolves feeling a deep desire for one another but one of the werewolves a sweet lesbian witch girlfriend he doesn't want to abandon but he can't stop himself from abandoning her when he's in werewolf form so he runs to the mountains. that's what this song reminds me of, is that feeling when that. i'm that. i don't know what i came into this paragraph to do but i know i have the "wild at heart" wikipedia page open and Marti Noxon says of the episode "The whole issue of sexuality between men and women is kind of fraught because of the beast" and boy that is just a quote right there, innit. this song's over! huzzah. electronic music is still mostly bad, turns out.

96) "Can U Feel It," by 3rd Party

YouTube Comments Under Shitty Dance Music, Vol. III "ive been listening to this since i was a kid and since release lol. i had this on a cassette tape when there was no CD's" Buddy, what the heck kind of dystopia were you living in that didn't have CDs in 1997? OK but real quick I don't understand the nostalgia for cassette tapes. Cassette tapes sounded like garbage and sucked to carry around. I get owning one as a fun novelty, "Haha this band I like was selling them at a concert and I had to, and I mean it's nice to support the things I love!" But if you're defending the audio quality of cassette tapes, you have taken irony too far and are no longer a hipster, and you need to have a serious talk with yourself about what you hope to achieve in this life.

5.10.1997 28) "G.H.E.T.T.O.U.T.," by Changing Faces

The chorus of the song features the two women harmonizing over the words, "I can do bad all by myself," and 1997 just keeps on surprising us, this time revealing the origins of a Tyler Perry movie title. I did some research. The only other results for "I can do bad all by myself" are all related to the Tyler Perry film. That kind of speaks to the quality of the lyric, y'know? Like, if a director of some repute (haven't seen any of his movies, they are not for me but assuredly competently helmed) carried this lyric with him long enough to name his movie-musical after it, surely, there's some value. Great work, Changing Faces. I hope more people than just me figured out the title was a reference to something.

42) "Blood on the Dance Floor," by Michael Jackson

Shortly before the voting results for the starting line-ups of the MLB All-Stars were announced, certain among the baseball internet argued that, as they were future Hall of Famers, players like Miguel Cabrera should be given extra consideration for a spot, since you aren't going to remember Justin Smoak in thirty years, but you might tell your grandchildren about Miguel Cabrera. And there is merit; Miguel Cabrera is more deserving of the All-Star designation than a Justin Smoak, since Miguel Cabrera is an actual star baseball player and Justin Smoak happened to hit 20 of his ~100? career home runs in three well-timed months. But if you're such a profoundly boring grandparent that you would tell your grandchildren about baseball players you watched on TV, and you tell them about Miguel Cabrera, are you going to tell them about the time he hit a grounder to second in the second inning of the 2017 MLB All-Star Game? Your grandchildren will ask you why you weren't watching a cooler sport. This song is okay, but if you introduced your grandchildren to Michael Jackson with this song, and your grandchildren discovered Michael Jackson years later, your grandchildren would emancipate themselves from their parents just to not be related to you anymore. Also, it would be worth noting to your grandchildren that Michael Jackson was probably a pedophile.

44) "Thinking of You," by Tony! Toni! Tone!

A more appropriate name for this band would have been Tony. Toni. Tone. (I'm sorry, Tone, but if I'm not gonna remember how to make the accented e for Beyonce, you are just incredibly out of luck.) This is chill. Maybe you can justify one exclamation point, but determining who gets the exclmation point probably would have caused intra-group strife, and I think it would've been more appropriate if the band's name reflected how chill they were. When Panic! At the Disco were going through their Beatles phase, they switched to Panic at the Disco. You should have been looking ahead through time and taking notes from them.

76) "I Wanna Be There," by Blessid Union of Souls

This song sounds like the song that kicks off the slow dances at the junior high school dance. It'll stop the kids from getting so rowdy that they start grinding, but isn't so romantic that they'll start making out on the dance floor. A safe ballad to keep the hands above the waist and prevent glances from being too meaningful. It simultaneously sets and kills the mood. It's a hard trick to pull off, but my stars, it does it!

83) "ESPN Presents: The Jock Jam," by Various Artists

/slow clap The YouTube description states, "FOR ENTERTAINMENT USE ONLY," and I want to meet the person who intended on using this for educational purposes.

90) "Call Me," by Too $hort ft./Lil' Kim

Imagine the thinkpieces if any of today's female rappers put the line "I slip myself a mickey, now that's the proper set off" in their song. Boy, this song sure exists! I don't think I've ever heard a song end with the two credited artists fucking. That's kind of amazing. What a song this is. This is off the soundtrack for the film Booty Call, and however much the music supervisor paid to have Too $hort and Lil' Kim make a song for their movie, they got their money's worth and more. Unless Booty Call is actually porn, there is no way it lives up to this song.

92) "The Old Apartment," by Barenaked Ladies

This seems like as good a point as any to stop the post, as I am not in the business of critiquing BNL. BARENAKED LADIES ARE TRIPLE PLATINUM. ARE YOU?!

The Top 20 for 1997 so far! 20) "MMMBop," by Hanson (5.3) 19) "Everyday Is a Winding Road," by Sheryl Crow (3.29) 18) "It's All About U," by SWV (1.18) 17) "In My Bed," by Dru Hill (1.11) 16) "Talk to Me," by Wild Orchid (3.1) 15) "Please Don't Go," by No Mercy (2.8) 14) "Don't Keep Wasting My Time," by Teddy Pendergrass (4.19) 13) "Feelin' It," by Jay-Z (5.3) 12) "Step by Step," by Whitney Houston (3.15) 11) "On and On," by Erykah Badu (1.25) 10) "I Want You," by Savage Garden (3.1) 9) "Silent All These Years," by Tori Amos (3.22) 8) "What They Do," by The Roots (1.11) 7) "Step Into a World (Rapture's Delight)," by KRS-One (4.5) 6) "I'm Not Feeling You," by Yvette Michele (2.22) 5) "Bill," by Peggy Scott-Adams (3.29) 4) "I'll Be," by Foxy Brown ft./Jay-Z (2.15) 3) "Bitch," by Meredith Brooks (4.26) 2) "Return of the Mack," by Mark Morrison (3.1) 1) "Hypnotize," by The Notorious B.I.G. (4.26) What a solid list. And it’s only gonna get more solid, what with the Third Eye Blind and Backstreet Boys and Robyn coming our way. It’s not gonna be as strong as this section was, I don’t think, but it at least has the capacity to surprise. Tune in Monday, I hope!

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