September 01, 2009

Summer Girls

First, let me say how grateful I am that I have no memory of this song from when it was "popular". Still, MattY has declared it the worst summer song of all time, and without really tabulating a list, I have to agree. Alyssa Rosenberg lists a few reasons why it sucks. Maybe I'm just thinking too hard about this, but what bugs me the most is trying to figure out in what year this story takes place. I mean, it's a summer with Home Alone ( Christmas 1990, or November 1992 if you go Home Alone 2), Abercrombie & Fitch is popular (frankly, I'm nowhere near cool, but I don't remember that store being popular until the late 90s or later), Michael J. Fox is playing Alex P. Keaton on Family Ties (September 1982-May 1989), and New Kids On The Block had "lots of hits" (debut album in '86 (wow), mega hit "Hangin' Tough" followup in '88, "Step By Step" in '90). If you throw in the fact that the band members were born in the mid-70s, which would make them mid-teens in turn of the 80s to 90s, and I'm mega confused.

Now look, I was a nerdy kid. Hell, I'm a nerdy adult. Still, is it really "cool" to be pining for the summer when you were 15? I mean, again, nerdy teen here, but the summer of my fifteenth year was nothing compared to the summer of my 20th year. And really, the continuity is just all over the place. Alex P. Keaton simply cannot have been a major summer topic in the same year that Home Alone was big. And seriously, supposedly "cool" kids were talking about Home Alone enough for it to have been a factor? I mean, yeah, I like Home Alone, but I was 11 when it came out and I'm not in a supposedly cool boy band. That I also like Home Alone 2 is surely not to my credit.

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