We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. – Chuck Palahnuik, Fight Club
In the above quote, Tyler Durden is speaking to a group of disgruntled Generation X males creeping into midlife and finding that it wasn’t what they were promised by the media of their childhoods and adolescence. This was before “entitlement” became a favored insult of conservatives, before the participation trophy movement really hit its stride, when Millennials were just annoying high school kids who were yet to kill everything we were told to love.
It was a common attitude in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the knowledge that culture and technology had changed so quickly that the Beloit College Mindset list, which had been a source of comedy for Generation X from that point, was starting to make them feel old.
Nostalgia had always been mined for profit, but only now were Generation Xers starting to linger when a marathon of I Love the 80s or I Love the 90s showed up on VH-1. Nostalgia was already dominating VH-1’s schedule, and the failed experiment of I Love the 00’s was yet to happen, and Best Week Ever hadn’t futilely attempted to be nostalgic for what happened five days ago. South Park’s “Memba Berries” story arc was years away to chide society for being too indulgent of nostalgia, and Ready Player One needed another two years before it supplied Gen X with chapters of nostalgia highs and a masturbation manifesto. (It’s in the book. Seriously.)
In 2004 Bowling For Soup was just a band with a dumb sounding name until they hit big when a clean edit cover of SR-71’s “1985”, which had been recorded earlier in the same year. Both versions of the song describe a middle-aged woman, Debbie, aching for her glory days in 1985, when her whole life still laid before her, and she waxes nostalgic for the culture that permeated those times.
However, despite the almost identical lyrics, the tonalities and interpretations of the original and the cover go in two different directions, rather, the direction of the nostalgia’s cause.
She Hates Time – SR-71’s Midlife Crisis
- Source: Youtube
The original version, SR-71’s “1985” addresses the building anger of a Generation X reaching midlife and realizing it didn’t turn out the way she wanted. What was once cool and edgy is now considered “uncool” by her Millennial children who are already shifting cultural priorities to them. Instead of mocking Baby Boomers for their commercialism, SR-71’s Debbie is realizing she’s fallen victim to the same pitfalls as her parents, having settled down for a CPA husband, driving an SUV, and living in the suburbs.
When Debbie voices her nostalgia, it’s not for the culture or marketing of the 1980s, but rather for the potential that existed for her, the Bruce Springsteen “Glory Days” that have, in fact, passed her by, that her aspirations of being a famous actress and a sex object for hair metal bands are not only impossible, but now considered pathetic and worthy of mockery by her children, likely just as she had mocked her own parents. “She hates time, make it stop” is a lament that Debbie is more aware of her age and regrets with each passing day.
Her unhappiness is most evident in the “Where’s her fairy tale, where’s her dream?” when she wants to know where the quarterback from high school ended up, and how she’s only with her CPA husband because “the rubber broke” and she got pregnant. It speaks to a woman not who longs for the 1980s, but wants a different life than she ended up with, common with the midlife crisis. The recitation of bands and popular culture doesn’t speak of nostalgia, but mourning dead fantasies of fame and fortune that were derailed by faulty birth control.
And Bring Back… - Bowling for Soup’s Nostalgia High
- Source: BowlingForSoupVEVO, Youtube
While Bowling For Soup has the full SR-71 cover on their album, it was their “clean edit” of “1985” that got them a top 40 hit, a platinum selling album, and a music video that was played in heavy rotation in 2004. The “Clean Edit” casts aside a lot of the midlife Weltschmerz for a sunnier, gently chiding view of Debbie. She’s still monogamous, married to a CPA, and her kids still think she’s lame, but the tone of the song is much different in the “Clean Edit”. No longer is one of her children the result of a busted condom, nor is she fantasizing about the quarterback from high school.
While SR-71’s cover laments lost potential, Bowling for Soup’s cover is almost snide in the way it mocks what Millennials think is cool, putting the culture of 1985 on a pedestal. While SR-71 also remarks on missing when they had “music still on MTV”, BFS’s cover pities Debbie’s children for not knowing the majesty of Springsteen, Madonna, U2, and Blondie. SR-71’s Debbie mourns when her culture reflected her youth, while BFS’s Debbie believes that pop culture hit its summit in 1985 and it’s all been downhill ever since.
In the lamentation bridge section of SR-71’s cover, where Debbie wails for the quarterback and believes her life would’ve turned out better if she hadn’t gotten pregnant, BFS’s only laments that the high points of 1985 are now vanished or simply uncool. She wonders why Ozzy Osbourne is now an actor, or the decline of scripted sitcoms in favor of reality TV. BFS’s Debbie isn’t just “preoccupied with 1985”, she’s still stuck in it. “She hates time, make it stop” isn’t mourning lost potential, BFS’s Debbie believes that moving further away from 1985 will only make society more lame and uncool.
The Toxicity of Debbie’s Nostalgia
Both versions of “1985” address the issue of someone who is still living in the past, but the faults exist for different reasons. Both versions are also delivered from a Third Person Limited point of view, drawing a vital line between the listener and the mind of Debbie herself. In third person, Debbie’s story is one to mock, or at least chuckle at. Chiding those still living in the past isn’t a new topic, as Bruce Springsteen’s “Glory Days” is practically the same song, message wise. Both describe people who can’t move on from their late teens and early 20s, both feature a woman who got pregnant before she planned, but while “Glory Days” implores the listener to cherish their youth while they have it, SR-71 exhorts the listener to not end up lame and uncool like Debbie.
The BFS cover is, at first listen, just as mocking, or intends to be, as the original material, but unlike the SR-71 version, it’s largely toothless in its calling out of Debbie’s midlife crisis. Instead, it indulges her nostalgia and implies that her negative judgment of Millennial-targeted cultural offerings is completely valid, and that pop culture is reaching its nadir. It’s not an uncommon attitude for a Generation Xer. Even Henry Rollins remarked in “A Rollins in the Wry”, “We were the generation that was cooler than our parents, and we’re going to be the generation that’s cooler than our kids.”
He was wrong, of course, because every generation believes that.
The toxicity lies in the intention of the nostalgia. Springsteen and SR-71’s nostalgia follow the common intent, that of distraction, but the distraction serves to forget the existential crisis of midlife, wasted potential, and regret of missed opportunities. The message is often meant as a cautionary tale, to advise the listener to not make the same mistakes.
The BFS cover, however, is more a celebration of nostalgia than anything else, nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake, a judgment often levied at fare like VH-1’s “I Love The…”series, nostalgia marketing in food items, Funko Pops, Wreck-It Ralph, and Ready Player One. Take out the spot-the-reference backpats, and you’re left with C-list comedians giving history lessons, brightly colored cereals, a huge collection of bobbleheads that can never be taken out of the box, and generic riffs on a fifteen second skim of “The Hero’s Journey” article on Wikipedia.
Nostalgia’s always been a potent force, but “1985” signified a major step forward in “nostalgia marketing”, which Generation X had proven itself to be susceptible to, as the references gave them a chance to feel what their parents felt with every new commercial and film: Relevant. “1985” gave an edit of a song that removes the mocking, and celebrates a Generation Xer for their culture and taste, even if it’s something they made fun of at the time.