My Worst Mixtape

Let’s kick it off with the magnum opus of late 90’s electronica: Sandstorm by Darude. Your average alarm clock produces rhythms that are less grating and more complex than DJ Darude’s keyboard, yet somehow this song became one of the best-selling international singles of all time. Just hearing the first few bars of this techno-ballad pumps the listener full of both adrenaline and an overwhelming sense of urgency – sort of like an air raid siren.

The second song on my mix boasts an impressive pedigree: it received Grammy nominations for Record of the Year and Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group, and the date of its album’s release was even declared an Oklahoma state holiday. You guessed it - MMMBop by Hanson. I’ll always remember this ditty because it was chosen (by popular vote) as our middle school class song. It’s worth mentioning that legitimately classic albums like Reasonable Doubt, Evil Empire, The Score, and Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness were released during the same two-year period. Looking back, though, this song was actually an appropriate choice; Hanson’s album sums up Cooper Middle School like The Chronic sums up early 90’s Compton.

Time to slow it down a bit and bend our ears to Gordon Lightfoot’s 1976 ballad The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. “Hey, that’s not a bad song,” you might say – provided you had never actually sat down and listened to it from beginning to end. Seriously, it’s not a terrible song at all…just really, really weird. Haunting and extremely monotonous, the ballad commemorates one of the worst shipping disasters in the history of the Great Lakes. Have you ever felt anything but depressed after listening to this song? Under what circumstances would anyone actually put this song on a mixtape? Could you imagine ever playing this song at any gathering (party, sporting event, wedding, etc.), even ironically?

My fourth song is also a tribute of sorts – in fact, you could even call it a tribute to a tribute: American Pie by Madonna. Don McLean was never able to able to reduplicate the popularity or cultural impact of his all-time classic, written as an allegory for the decline of American music following Elvis’ conscription in the Army in 1958 and the tragic deaths of Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and J.P. “Big Bopper” Richardson the following year. By chopping the record down to 4 minutes and putting it in the soundtrack of a romantic comedy, Madonna was able to not only symbolize the decline of American music but also hasten the process.

Although Old Bear’s excellent mixtape was dedicated to the year 1999, I feel that he left out one of the worst and most memorable songs of that year: Bawitdaba by Kid Rock. I think we can all remember “that guy” at our high school who was waaaay into Kid Rock. He’s the same guy who put fake bullet-hole stickers on his car and followed the WWE until college. There’s not a whole lot else I can say about this song, so I think I should let the lyrics speak for themselves: “bawitdba da bang da dang diggy diggy diggy said the boogie said up jump the boogie.”