The ’90s comeback

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This article was published 23/02/2017 (3334 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Just when I think we’ve hit peak ’90s revival, we reach a new pinnacle.

On Friday, Jewel 100.5 FM became Hot 100.5 FM. Its format is ’90s hits (and more!) There’s a certain amount of inevitability to this programming move. People who came of age in the 1990s are now in their 30s and 40s. Those pop songs you think came out “a couple years” ago are now old enough to not only drink but rent a car. Kurt Cobain would have turned 50 over the weekend. What I’m saying is, we’re old.

I’d say that the ’90s are back, but they’ve been hanging around for several years now, exerting influence over all manner of popular culture. Oversized flannel, crushed velvet babydoll dresses, slinky slips (worn over a basic white T-shirt), chokers, Adidas tracksuits — all back. If you like your nostalgia a little more literal, Urban Outfitters is selling T-shirts emblazoned with the AOL logo. Another T-shirt features the cast of Friends.

It’s not just fashion, either. Skim upcoming concert dates and you’d be forgiven for not knowing what decade we’re in; Everclear and Weezer are coming to town in the coming months, as is the I Love the ’90s tour featuring Salt N Pepa, Color Me Badd, and Biz Markie. Family sitcoms such as Full House and Boy Meets World got resurrected as Fuller House and Girl Meets World, respectively. Mulder and Scully reunited in 2016 for the X-Files reboot; David Lynch’s cult favourite Twin Peaks returns in May.

Allow me to paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld, that other ’90s cultural touchstone: what’s the deal with the ’90s?

The easiest explanation is that many designers, creators and consumers of pop culture were either born or grew up during in the 1990s. I’m in the latter camp; I was four years old when the calendar flipped from 1989 to 1990, and 14 when we were collectively freaking out and hoarding canned soup for Y2K. That means in 1997, I was the Spice Girls’ target demographic. I wore scented body glitter, Gap Dream perfume, and dressed like a Dawson’s Creek extra. I collaged my room with those Got Milk? ads featuring celebs with milk moustaches.

In other words, I am here for this revival of all things ’90s for the simple fact that it reminds me of my childhood. Nostalgia is a potent beast. Hot 100.5 made me nostalgic for the sleepovers spent calling in requests to Hot 103.

The recycling and fetishization of a past decade is not a new phenomenon. The ’90s fetishized the ’70s, and the ’70s fetishized the ’50s. The decade that brought us Winona Ryder isn’t just resonating with the tweens and teens that lived it the first time around. Kids born in the early 2000s are also sentimental for a decade they didn’t experience. Same as it ever was.

Underpinning all of this is the longing for a simpler time, or, at least, a time that could be perceived as simpler. The grievances of someone who came of age in the 1990s aren’t all that different from the grievances of someone who came of age in the 1980s or 1970s or earlier. “In my day, you made plans, and then you showed up.” “In my day, we read newspapers.” “In my day, we didn’t have Instagram telling us what was cool.” “In my day, we played outside.” Nostalgia is often tied to childhood or youth, when we had fewer responsibilities and nothing but time. Remember how long summer used to feel?

Still, the late ’90s felt like the edge of a precipice in many ways: 9/11 hadn’t happened yet, and the Internet was basically a patchwork of crude Geocities fanpages accessed by dial-up. My generation is the last to know life without the Internet. After the year 2000, the world seemed to accelerate. Everything became immediate, everything became urgent, and everything came crashing in on itself — a war, a recession, an unstable job and housing market, the current hellscape we’re in now.

When I ask my 30-something friends about what they loved about the ’90s, many of their responses are variations on “no social media” or “no Internet.” Increasingly, millennials are looking for a chance to disconnect and deal with their smartphone addictions, which is why digital detoxes — including formal retreats where you can pay good money to have someone take your phone away from you for a weekend — are becoming the next new thing.

So maybe the ’90s revival is about more than a renewed love of brown lipliner. Maybe it reminds of a time, not when we were young, but when we were unplugged.

jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @JenZoratti