Barenaked Ladies: Grade 9
[purchase]
A game of thematic spin the bottle -- to play, just close your eyes and click randomly on the archives to the left -- calls up our end-of-summer School Days theme; perusing the excellent selections, I remember running out of time to share this lesser-known Barenaked Ladies popnumber, one of my many favorite tracks on their 1992 debut Gordon. Better late than never being the name of the game this week, I'm happy to present the most startlingly accurate portrayal of my younger self I have yet encountered in popular song.
To be fair, the song would have slid just as easily into our more recent set of Silly Songs. And being just a few years younger than these canadian masters of quickwit and geekiness, this song actually speaks to my middle school years. But I was a precocious child: it all resonates, from the pop culture references (that Rush guitar quote!) to the generally "freaks and geeks" portrayal of freshman despair and desperation. I've never been so happy to cringe as here, in celebration of a time when we were all so dorky, yet afraid to be uncool. My, how times have changed.