i have to stop listening to “90’s on the 9;” my current satellite radio station of choice which plays non-stop, commercial free music from the nineties {aka my adolescence.}

it’s bad enough that i already had every lyric of the divinyls “i touch myself” committed to pitch perfect memory, but now i have re-added “two princes” by the spin doctors, and this i’ll only admit to a select few, but the party of five anthem, “closer to free” by the bodeans, is shamefully tempting my itunes purchase finger at this moment. don’t do it katie. 

all such wretched songs, and i sing my heart out to them like it’s my final round audition for Glee; for which i have been working on a sick rendition of jamie waters’ 1992 ballad from the fox tv hit {?} the heights, “how do you talk to an angel?” aka how do you keep your breakfast down? how do you keep a straight face while singing such a stupid song? but sure enough this girl knows ALL OF THE WORDS! and i’m going to wager a guess that as a 16 year-old i most likely pined, angsted, and binge ate listening to this song, hoping some loser, cheating, high school wrestler was in his room thinking about how to make me a mixed tape with this song on it. true story. 

thank god for bel biv devoe saving me every other car ride with a dosage of “poison” for my shoulders to bump and grind to, and bring me back to planet hip. hop. 

it’s been two months now listening to 90’s on 9, and i cannot seem to change the station. every song takes me back to a specific time in junior high, high school or college. the ability to feel the emotions of the time, to smell the rooms, to see the faces is acute. and it’s not a warm, positive feeling. it makes me feel old and sad. i keep repeating the sentence, “oh my gosh…..that was {insert 10 plus} years ago” 

but the station remains. i have this sense that i’m supposed to figure something out with all of this nostalgia. these misty, water-colored memories feel like they’re trying to tell me something, get me to realize something. what that is i don’t know yet. 

or maybe i’m just hanging on until i hear TLC’s “no scrubs.” 

do you have a particular musical era or genre that takes you back in time too?