(This was the less important project I lost with my corrupted flash drive.  Originally it was going to be bigger, better and more interesting, with one post per year.  Now you get the crappy, shorter and cramped version.  Originally it was going to be posted the last weekend in August.  Now you get it before I go to bed the morning of September 1.)

For me, music is really defined, in a lot of ways, by the summers of the 1990s.  Until I was about eight years old, music was just “whatever my parents had on in the car.”  Sure, I liked some of it; Pink Floyd remains my favorite band to this day.  But the explosion of musical styles, music distribution and the centering of the music year around the summer came together to make me honestly care about music for the first time.

1993 was the first summer I noticed music, probably because the grunge push really came to the forefront, and alt-rock filled the gaps.  By then, we’d all heard Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy” (man, Vedder in that video was awesome, wasn’t he?) and we knew we wanted more, so 1993 gave us “Plush,” by Stone Temple Pilots, and Soul Asylum’s runaway hit “Runaway Train.”  If I wasn’t feeling particularly grungy (let’s face it, I was a bright youngster, but some parts of grunge’s theme were beyond my knowledge because they were way outside of my experience), 4 Non Blondes had their only memorable hit with “What’s Up?” while the Proclaimers used their own hit to announce with remarkable Scottish accents that they would walk “500 Miles,” and, of course, Blind Melon gave us the Bee Girl in “No Rain.”

If ‘93 hadn’t convinced me to start paying attention to music, the incredible summer of 1994 would have.  It’s still the most memorable summer musically for me because there was just so much going on, and because it probably (I imagine I’ll never be sure) predated the beginning of my personal issues.  In the wake of Kurt Cobain’s death, grunge kept me interested with its last peak year, which featured Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun,” Stone Temple Pilots’ “Big Empty” and Collective Soul’s “Shine” (Collective Soul’s only real grunge song, and an oddly positive grunge song at that) as well as Pearl Jam’s “Daughter” still getting play.  Grunge and alt-rock were intermingling more anyway, with a side of punk, as “Buddy Holly” and “Longview” were introducing me to Weezer and Green Day, respectively; the latter band was the one that’d keep my interest.  And women were getting playtime on rock radio, too.  The Cranberries’ “Linger” never left (and introduced me to the concept of “attractive short-haired girls”), Melissa Etheridge joined the party with “Come to My Window” (and news stories about her introduced me to the concept of lesbianism) and Lisa Loeb’s “Stay” was probably my favorite song that year.

Plus, there was always other music to hear.  The nebulous “World Music” category took a big step forward with Enigma’s “Return to Innocence,” a terrific song and still a favorite of mine, despite it arguably carrying the blame for Pure Moods Syndrome, where people just threw out compilation albums packing two or three good songs with any piece of foreign new age crap they could cheaply license (“Return to Innocence” is actually the first song on the first Pure Moods album, which is itself a fine compilation; the Syndrome kicked in for the imitators and sequels).  Erasure proved that synthpop, maligned since the decade ticked over, wasn’t actually a bad thing by giving us “Always,” and Trent Reznor brought industrial music into millions of homes and Nine Inch Nails onto my “favorite bands” list with “Closer” and the accompanying music video.

During a time when innovation seemed to be the rule and if it wasn’t new it wasn’t interesting, Hootie & the Blowfish came out of nowhere with “Hold My Hand” and sold an absurd twelve million copies of Cracked Rear View, proving there was still an audience for uninventive but well-executed music.  And while R&B wasn’t yet huge in 1994, it was really setting itself up for its run at the top.  No matter which station you were listening to or which of the (two!) TV music channels you were watching, you would eventually hear All-4-One’s “I Swear,” Janet Jackson’s “You Want This,” Boyz II Men’s “I’ll Make Love to You” or Mariah Carey’s “Without You;” usually, it was “I Swear,” which was damn near inescapable.

And at the center of it all was Woodstock ‘94.  Having a tremendous music festival so near to me really got it through to me that music was something to listen to and have opinions about, not just to hear.  My parents and their friends snuck in the first two days, and on Sunday, when the fences stopped holding people out and the guards stopped caring, even we kids got to see a little of it.  I suppose technically my first concert was watching Jimmy Cliff close the South Stage of Woodstock with “I Can See Clearly Now,” though I can assure you that night was far more memorable to me as the first time I saw a topless woman in the flesh.  Music has had to compete with naked women for my attention ever since then.

1995 saw R&B march forward, as I couldn’t get away from Seal’s “Kiss From a Rose,” TLC’s “Waterfalls” or, as much as I wanted to, Michael Jackson’s “You Are Not Alone.”  The runaway hit was a rap song, though; pretty much everyone my age still knows the lyrics to “Gangsta’s Paradise” by Coolio, and just saying the opening line, “As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,” to us will have us bobbing our heads to the beat by the time you’re through.  Beyond that, what really sticks out to me from this summer are the female vocalists, building on ‘94.  Alanis Morissette became a name to us with “You Oughta Know,” particularly when we realized what she was singing about (and that she was still a teenager when she wrote and recorded it).  Annie Lennox appealed to my synth/electronic pop side with “No More ‘I Love You’s” and Sophie B. Hawkins’ “As I Lay Me Down” introduced me to the reborn hippie pop that would floruish at a low level through the rest of the decade; both of those songs are in my iPod’s main playlist today.

1996 and 1997 basically served as parts II and III of 1995: omnipresent rap and R&B, big dance hits and softer alt-rock.  1996 was the year of the Macarena, proving once and for all that America will put the worst song in the world on repeat if there’s a not-too-difficult dance white people can do that’s associated with it.  In my circle, “C’mon N’ Ride It (The Train)” by the Quad City DJs was the preferred dance hit, a catchy dying gasp for booty bass.  The last great song of rap’s golden age, 2Pac’s “California Love,” was still getting plenty of airtime.  The Fugees hit it big with their “Killing Me Softly” cover, then proceeded to split up and start singles careers.  Bone Thugs-n-Harmony gave us “Tha Crossroads” while leading us to believe the world was running out of band names.  And once again I was able to retreat to alt-rock when I needed.  The Wallflowers released the inordinately catchy “One Headlight,” Smashing Pumpkins gave me my grunge-reminiscent fix with “Tonight, Tonight” and Dishwalla brought on post-grunge by asking for all my thoughts on God in their lone hit, “Counting Blue Cars.”

In 1997, it was “I’ll Be Missing You” that I couldn’t escape no matter how I tried, and, holy hell, did I try.  It was basically the summer of Puff Daddy, for better or worse; he’d co-written and produced the Notorious B.I.G.’s two hits off his posthumous album Life After Death, “Hypnotize” and “Mo Money Mo Problems,” both very good and catchy songs.  Puffy’s own album No Way Out came out that summer, and I heard plenty of “It’s All About the Benjamins” (featuring B.I.G.) and “Can’t Nobody Hold Me Down,” as well as, to my dismay, a ton of “I’ll Be Missing You.”  The alt-rock/post-grunge releases stuck with me more, though.  I loved the Foo Fighters’ “Everlong,” the Verve’s “The Freshmen” and Third Eye Blind’s “Semi-Charmed Life,” and while we weren’t sure what genre Blur’s “Song 2” was, we all loved it, too.  I got my female vocals fix with “Bitch” by Meredith Brooks (a song I happily rediscovered when I started thinking like a feminist), Jewel’s “Foolish Games,” Shawn Colvin’s “Sunny Came Home” (which actually won two Grammy Awards for Song of the Year and Record of the Year, despite me not remembering that at all) and, yes, Aqua’s “Barbie Girl,” which was great Eurodance and wonderfully subversive.

1998 was probably second only to ‘94 for me.  Sure, it wasn’t much different from the three years that preceded it; it was just better than those three.  The big hits from the rap/hip-hop/R&B charts were all very good: Usher’s “My Way,” the Beastie Boys’ “Intergalactic,” Pras’ “Ghetto Supastar” and Aaliyah’s “Are You That Somebody?“  Fastball got an unexpected monster hit out of “The Way,” which I listened to pretty much nonstop.  Matchbox 20 pushed post-grunge with “3 A.M.,” still getting airtime from the winter, and “Real World,” their summer single; Semisonic joined them with “Closing Time” and Harvey Danger provided the wonderfully mad “Flagpole Sitta.”  Pop-rock had a solid year, as well, with Barenaked Ladies’ memorable “One Week,” Natalie Imbruglia’s “Torn” (which reinforced the idea of “short-haired chicks are hot”) and Jennifer Paige’s “Crush” running through my head much of the summer.

And then we have 1999.  In 1999, bubblegum pop took over.  In 1999, the equation changed.  Five of the ten best-selling albums of 1999 belonged to the Backstreet Boys, ‘N Sync, Christina Aguilera, Ricky Martin and Britney Spears; “…Baby One More Time” was the year’s runaway success song and therefore was fucking everywhere, as was the music video featuring the still-jailbait Spears in a Catholic schoolgirl uniform.  For the first time, I really had to turn away from the popular stuff to find the music I was interested in.

Mostly, that was alt-rock with pop influence.  The Goo Goo Dolls followed up on the previous year’s underinspired “Iris” by giving us “Slide” and their terrific summer single, “Black Balloon.”  The Foo Fighters kept post-grunge kicking with “Learn to Fly,” and Silverchair’s haunting “Ana’s Song (Open Fire)” stuck out not just because it was good, but also because it was the first time I heard a man talking about anorexia.  In the catchy pop category, Len’s improbable hit “Steal My Sunshine” just put a smile on my face every time, Vertical Horizon had a catchy name to go along with their catchy single “Everything You Want,” and Tal Bachman was briefly relevant with “She’s So High.”

But the real stories of 1999 for me were the dark horse songs, the songs that were somewhat successful despite not fitting into the Summer of ‘99 Mold.  The archetypes here are Fatboy Slim’s dance-rock “Praise You” and especially Eiffel 65’s “Blue (Da Ba Dee),” the latter of which both proved that Nu-Italo disco could be successful in America and, thanks to its being absurdly overplayed, ensured that Nu-Italo disco would never get a fair break in America.  Orgy brought back synth rock and industrial with their album Candyass, getting me through the summer with the singles “Stitches” and their cover of “Blue Monday.”  But it was clear that if I wanted to hear the music I enjoyed, I needed to find something other than the radio and the television.

Lucky for me, then, that 1999 was also the summer of Napster.