I truly love the spontaneity that came over me after being inspired by a 2000s playlist I was lucky enough to come across a few days ago. In fact, I had been postponing this post for far too long. I believe that today is precisely the right moment to express myself and, in a way, relive some moments that marked not only my life but also the most turbulent days of my existence. It’s no exaggeration to say that adolescence is lived with a completely different intensity.
“I’m Feeling This” is a song by Blink-182 that I listened to again not long ago, and it truly left me impacted. It’s not particularly remarkable from a strictly musical standpoint. I mean, it’s not exactly a masterpiece of composition. But it did represent a pop-punk anthem around 2004/2005. For those who may not know, I was born in 1992… so do the math. In the early 2000s, I was no longer a child and was beginning to listen more closely to my own rebellion.
Bands like Korn, Blink-182, System of a Down, Linkin Park (with Chester, may he rest in peace), Daft Punk, drum and bass (I mean the electronic music genre), and many more were on my MP3 player at the time. Do you remember that device? Small, revolutionary, and able to download music directly from the computer so you could listen with the press of a simple button. Those were my days, my months, my years as a teenager. I still remember what my body felt when I saw songs by Green Day or The Offspring on MTV.
It’s funny, you know? As a teenager, I used to criticize Avril Lavigne and call her a “poser,” and a couple of days ago I found myself crying while watching the music video for her song “Losing My Grip” on YouTube, from her debut album. It’s not that the lyrics were especially sad — not at all. It’s just that I still miss the 14-, 15-, 16-, and 17-year-old girl I once was. I always thought my weirdness was some kind of curse, but now that I can see the whole picture with a bit more perspective, I honestly have nothing but gratitude for the music that shaped my character and my cultural preferences, and also greatly refined my taste for an art form that maybe in the 2000s wasn’t as mainstream as someone like Taylor Swift is today, but allowed me to experience a special kind of youth.
Three Days Grace, Box Car Racer, Weezer, Foo Fighters, Queens of the Stone Age, Arctic Monkeys, Kittie… Oh God, the list keeps growing as I write. Wait — A.F.I. Ugh, what spectacular bands. I feel that going back through music is something that, beyond making us feel “old,” is actually something we should applaud and be grateful for. We can relive over and over again what those riffs produce in our skin and minds. Nod our heads to the hits that literally marked our lives. Revisit moments with people who, for different reasons, are no longer by our side — or perhaps we are the ones who have left — and everything reconnects just by opening Spotify, or better yet, YouTube, and becoming once again that ’90s-born girl sitting in front of the TV, waiting for her favorite song or band. Music has always been intertwined with my life; it shaped it and gave it meaning. Today, at 32, I remember my teenage years and smile kindly and nostalgically.
