My Weird Nostalgia for Music in 2009
Welcome to another episode of “Mostly Pointless Reminiscing.” See, it occurred to me the other day that, while of course I have nostalgia for a lot of the music of my youth, the feelings I have for stuff I was hearing in 2009 stands out.
This is not because of the music itself, actually. 2009 was one of those transitional years for me. I went from eighth to ninth grade. I went to a different high school than most of my eighth grade class did, so it was mostly unfamiliar faces. My family also moved to a new house that summer (though it wasn’t far from the previous one, and this was actually totally unrelated to my attending the new high school).
Plus I got my first iPod the previous Christmas. That’s a big deal right? I mean when we’re talking about music, it kind of is. I was, as I had been for a couple years, really trying to get more acquainted with music, and particularly alternative music. Actually, it wouldn’t be long before I would secretly become one of those cringey “UGH today’s popular music is HORRIFYING, listen to real music you FOOLS” kids but we don’t need to talk about that.
You know what type of stuff was happening in 2009? A sequel to Michael Bay’s Transformers movie released. Honestly I only ever saw the first one, but as an adolescent boy, that crud was like tailor-made for us.
Anyway, Linkin Park had a new song for the movie, “New Divide.” For years this song was erased from my memory, but when I am reminded of it, I instantly think back to mornings in August 2009, heading to school. The song itself is not very interesting. The chorus has a similar feel to “What I’ve Done,” which was used in the ending of the first Transformers—you could probably switch the drums and no one would notice. But “What I’ve Done” just feels like the original, and this feels like trying to do it again, except you end up with less juice. The weird breakdown/bridge where we abruptly go into a totally different key is probably the most interesting thing about it. I do not really need to hear this song again, but I definitely remember it well.
Another song in this movie, apparently, was “Never Say Never” by The Fray, which you may recognize from the chorus of “Don’t let me go.” The Fray feels like one of those bands that, perhaps even more than Linkin Park, is never going to get a lot of respect from critics. Except Linkin Park at least has a large fanbase, and their first couple albums really spoke to a generation of adolescents. You don’t see The Fray fanbase online fighting battles in comment sections. It’s just not a band people talk about, either positively or negatively, generally. Now, of course, growing up in the Denver area, we had to give any band with local roots some extra love (more on that later), so that may be one reason I liked them. But whatever people think of this band today, for a few years, they were doing real well in the adult contemporary space. And honestly, I’d rather hear “Never Say Never” today than that Linkin Park one. It’s a straightforward, kinda cheesy ballad, which can be hit or miss for me—but in this case, it’s a hit.
Of course I also remember “You Found Me” being one of the songs I had on my iPod early in 2009. I think I’ve been sick of that song since then, but I can’t say I hate it.
Hey speaking of adult contemporary, do you remember Coldplay’s “Viva la Vida?” Of course you do. One of those hit songs that will probably never fully go away. And you know what? I don’t remember the last time I listened to it on purpose, yet I can’t complain when I do happen to hear it. I just like the production. The strings are good.
One of the producers on the track was Brian Eno, and here is where I make a connection to something a bit weird. In early 2009, U2 released an album called No Line on the Horizon, Brian Eno being one of its producers. Now is it that weird to talk about U2? Well I think it is a little weird that a 13-year-old in 2009 cared about U2, frankly. But I had no interest in what was on the Top 40; I pursued the music I was interested in. But how did I even get interested in them to begin with? Ok well basically I guess my mom always thought they were good, and in sixth grade we had to do a project on a rock band, so I chose U2, and yeah, they actually seemed pretty good. Jump to 2009, and somehow I happened to learn about this new album—there must have been some significant marketing and hype, as it had been several years since their previous album. I don’t know why I took such interest in the album, really, but I did.
Honestly, it might’ve been the first or maybe second time I bought a full album. The thing about 2009 was, kids would sometimes ask each other, “How many songs are on your iPod?” I felt like if you had a lot of songs, that was something to be proud of. Someone with a thousand songs must be pretty cool. Now, I started out with digital music just buying individual songs that seemed good. But at some point it dawned on me that if you want to get a lot of songs, buying an album is actually a better deal.
Was that seriously my motivation to start listening to albums? I mean I think it was part of it. And news sites and magazines and iTunes seemed to care about albums, anyway, and you know I always have been one to be influenced by what reviewers think about things.
So anyway, that’s the story of how I ended up buying this U2 album.
No one really talks about this album.
This album actually has some pretty non-poppy stuff on it—some really long, slow instrumental portions, and it gets weirder than you might expect. The layered, slightly intricate production is what makes this album good for me. I mean, the songs on their own are fine, but certainly not anywhere near the band’s best. But they did sound good to me coming out of those cruddy iPod earbuds. I mean, I actually can recall this sense of anticipation as I play back in my mind the second track, with its long intro and its expert mixing of synths and the Edge’s distinct guitar style. There’s a long instrumental break and towards the end of the song and there are these strings that come in, and back then I was like “WHOA THIS IS AMAZING.” I haven’t listened to this album in years, but it is definitely one I think about every now and then.
I consider my enjoyment of it one of my first steps on my journey to music nerddom.
Something I think about sometimes is how all my years of being in school orchestra playing cello affected how I listen to music. I really feel like you can’t fall in love with playing an instrument in a group without it affecting the music you listen to outside. Did playing the same four notes in Pachelbel’s Canon change me as a person? Yeah probably. Sometimes in an orchestra, you get the boring part. But I actually never was that bothered by it; the goal is to create a whole piece, not be entertained just by your own playing.
So anyway, uh, yeah, the U2 thing was notable. Too bad the band turned the youth collectively against them in 2014 with an iPhone incident I don’t even have to mention (and I listened to that album once, and it seemed pretty mid). But for me personally in 2009, I enjoyed that No Line on the Horizon album.
Weirdly enough, I feel almost no nostalgia for one of the other albums I bought while still in eighth grade—We the Kings’ self-titled album (apparently this was a 2007 release so I’m kind of stretching my unspoken rules by talking about it). At the time, this music had a youthful energy that appealed to me to a ridiculous extent, with some really pleasant melodies. Like much of the music I enjoyed, it was pop punk—much more pop than punk. The melody of “Skyway Avenue” made you want to just belt along with it. Kids singing about jumpin off buildings and stuff. This is the sort of music you can love when you’re 13, but for me at least, the appeal didn’t last a whole lot longer. I remember starting to feel that the drums on the album were very repetitive with how heavy on the cymbals they were (but maybe you can partially blame the iPod earbuds, I don’t know).
I really started to dislike the band after a good bit of time with their follow-up album, which really dialed back the rock elements and also seemed to be marketed towards girls (so it wasn’t completely about the music for me, I guess). I actually didn’t realize it came out in 2009, though it was a December release and I probably got it later—in any case, I’m not going to talk about it at length. The first single was a 2009 release, of course, and I was definitely hyped for it, only to be somewhat disappointed by the airy synths and piano that overshadowed the guitar. Still, the youthful energy was there, and the chorus kinda made you want to shout it, just like before. But yeah, I think within a year I had pretty much moved on from the band.
I actually listened to The All-American Rejects’ album Move Along a lot in the summer of 2009, but that came out in 2005, so I’m not going to talk about it much. It’s another album that will get stuck in my head every now and then. I feel like it’s a decent album, but not one I ever feel like going back to. That does remind me though: AAR had a newer hit song in 2009 called “Gives You Hell.” (Yeah it was technically a 2008 release but so was “Viva la Vida,” and as long as it’s close enough we can talk about it; and both of these songs were on the Billboard Year-End Hot 100 for 2009 anyway so HA). Even though those were slightly bad words (I was strict, ok), I couldn’t deny enjoying it.
Another song that screams “summer of 2009” to me is “Use Somebody” by Kings of Leon. Kings of Leon is not a band I ever really got into, though I feel like they deserve some respect. I have mixed feelings on this particular song. It’s not a bad song. It’s not a great song. I definitely had it downloaded from iTunes. I remember hearing it on the radio during this specific instance I was in our minivan as we were leaving the house so a potential buyer could visit. There’s no story there. It’s just a random memory.
Another band I heard at a grocery store recently who charted in 2009? Shinedown. TELL MY MOTHER, TELL MY FATHER, I’VE DONE THE BEEEST I CAAAAAN…. What was the deal with this band? Apparently, they’ve had a ton of hits, but maybe you had to listen to rock radio and not alternative radio to actually hear them, and I never did that because I never liked much hard rock. But a couple of their songs broke through to adult contemporary radio around this time. So that was something. I guess I liked “Second Chance” fine, but I never cared enough to get it on iTunes.
What’s weird is I did get the song “Light On” from American Idol winner David Cook on iTunes that year. Kind of embarrassing for me; I mean that song is super generic and uninteresting and it didn’t even get that popular. Nobody remembers that dude. But hey, even though my iTunes money was limited, sometimes I just didn’t think that hard about it. I guess back then if a slightly gruff-sounding dude sang some high notes well enough on a rock track, you could fool me into liking it for a moment.
I’ll tell you one band from 2009 that, for better or worse, was not generic: 3OH!3. Remember what I said about local bands? 303 is our area code and the band is called 3OH!3; isn’t that neeeeeat? Yeah, this is a duo from Boulder. When I would take the bus during eighth grade, the driver had the radio on channel 93.3, which I appreciated, but I swear I must’ve heard this song every morning for a while. “I’m a vegetarian and I ain’t [long silence for censor] scared of him.” This was not the sort of song I was inclined to like at the time, to be honest. It was too “beep-boop” synthesizer to be rock, and the singing seemed kinda rough to me. But all that exposure must’ve worn me down eventually. There was something fun about it, and also it was kind of naughty—different from my usual style back then for sure. Later singles from this band seemed terrible to me, but I guess I have some amount of appreciation for this one. I did buy their song “Still Around,” I will say.
2009 was when I found I could not escape two very popular Taylor Swift songs. I mean, I didn’t think they were that bad, but I wasn’t happy about them either.
As I went into high school, another artist I couldn’t escape was The Black Eyed Peas, who had released an album during the summer. I gotta say, I went the whole summer break without hearing any of it. “I Gotta Feeling” is annoying and yet you can’t quite hate it. I like how “Boom Boom Pow” has that just droning synth in the background. Other than that I don’t care for it. But hey, the group had released worse music. Much, much, much worse….
Of course Green Day had a new album around this time…. Hey wait a minute. “21 Guns” was on the dang Transformers soundtrack too! Man, I heard that song every day for a while. It sucks. Ok that’s a little harsh, but I dunno, I just think it’s uninteresting. Definitely brings me back to 2009 though, a time when I actually somewhat enjoyed the song. I feel like since then it’s been banned from the radio forever (not literally). Somebody realized that if you pitch the song up a bit it sounds just like Phineas (the cartoon character) is singing it. It’s amazing.
Now there are a bunch of other songs on the Billboard year-end chart I could talk about, because I heard a lot more radio back then than I do now, and maybe I have little memories with all of them, but I can’t spend all day writing this. The end of summer 2009 was defined for me mainly by those Transformers songs and The Black Eyed Peas. And also “Party in the USA” by Miley Cyrus, which, unsurprisingly, I didn’t like. You know, I watched Hannah Montana and maybe I liked those songs more than I wanted to admit, but I just wasn’t feeling her first solo song at all.
Now, while I was trying to remember how I first heard about a certain band, it dawned on me that in spring 2009, I joined Facebook. Facebook had all sorts of random apps (I’m not sure if that was the word we used for them at the time) back then, and there was one app there that let you make lists of albums (and maybe other stuff?), complete with the art. Someone I knew, who always seemed to know a lot about music, had Appeal to Reason by Rise Against as their number one album ever. Which I think was how I became curious about the band. So jump ahead to the fall, and one song that is currently popular on alternative radio is Rise Against’s song “Savior.” Which as far as I can tell is one of their non-political songs. It was definitely a little louder and heavier than all the pop punk I was used to, but I started to love that energy. I got more into that band in 2010, but “Savior” was the start for me. I’m not crazy about the song today, honestly, but it’s alright.
One of the most important music memories of 2009 for me was the release of Paramore’s album Brand New Eyes. I had heard a little bit of Paramore before. As one of the only popular bands at the time with a female singer, they definitely stood out, and really, how could you go through middle school in 2007-2009 without some exposure to them? The only song by them I had downloaded from them at that point was “crushcrushcrush,” and that was only because it happened to be high on the iTunes alternative chart when I was looking through it one day. But with this new album, I was ready to just jump into it based off the hype. And let me tell you. It did not disappoint.
This is a good album. The first half is in large part quite angry, going from the aggression of “Ignorance” to the casual disdain of “Playing God” before moving on to the more optimistic, yet still critical “Brick by Boring Brick.” One of my favorite tracks has always been the cynical “Turn It Off,” not really for the lyrics but for the vocals, as well as the guitar and drums—but especially the vocals. But after that you get “The Only Exception,” which is a turning point and a beautiful song.
I feel like the biggest mistake this album makes is putting “Feeling Sorry” with its loud beginning right after “Only Exception,” which has hypnotized me into a dreamy state by the end. It’s so jarring and has always made me dislike “Feeling Sorry.” But, although that song is another one dishing out some criticism to someone, the next couple songs are a lot more optimistic and cheery. In every aspect, the band sounds far more grown-up than before without the feeling of slowing down or losing energy as they play these fun pop-punk songs. For the last two songs of the album, we get a wistful acoustic number, followed by a finale that starts off subdued but turns into something huge and powerful. As “Careful” was a powerful opener, “All I Wanted” is a masterpiece of a closer.
Even though this album is not really in my rotation today, obviously I still admire it greatly.
And uh aside from all that, nothing else really stands out that much for me when it comes to 2009 music. Right?
Wait. There’s one more evil thing I have to mention. And it involves Weezer.
Ok I am not actually one of those Weezer haters. But their album Raditude released in 2009, and today it is known as probably the most hated from the band. Now, I didn’t buy the album, but since I was listening to alternative radio so often, there was a new single prior to the album which I heard extremely often. It’s called “(If You’re Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To.” And you know what? I liked it. The lyrics were kinda funny. It did some fun harmony stuff in a couple places. Just a fun little summery track. But man, you can ruin a lot of decent songs by overplaying them. And that’s pretty much what happened. When the song left the frequent radio rotation, I never once thought, “Wow, I wish they would play that song again.” I have no desire to hear it again even now. But yeah, I do closely associate it with my freshman year of high school.
So uh, that’s my unorganized list. I could have gone chronologically or something, but nah, it was more fun just following my brain around from one point to the next chaotically. Better get back to the present day instead of all this reminiscin’, I reckon.