Anyway, here's "Wonderwall"
Ranking "Wonderwall" covers, 90s reunions, $148 Hollister back to school shirt 👚
It’s back to school season! I will never forget the rush of shopping at Limited Too and dELiA*s, making photo collages to put in the clear front pocket of my binders, and picking out my color-coordinated notebooks and folders.¹ The first day of school was my version of Kids Fashion Week!!!! If you have any back to school pics, please share them with me!
ICYMI, last week’s issue included lots of Avril, lots of links, and Victoria Beckham singing in French. Never a dull moment over here!
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Huge thank you to Nicstalgia supporters who I will love forever: Janine, Marie, Liv, Mitra, CY, and Aleena! 💐💐💐
🎸 Anyway, here's "Wonderwall"
Liam and Noel Gallagher, brothers from the British alternative rock band Oasis, have consistently caused controversy for the last 30 years. They’ve made offensive and derogatory comments about their rivals – namely, each other. Phil Collins, one of their many adversaries, once described them as “rude and not as talented as they think they are.” Oasis is reuniting for the first time in 15 years, going on tour together in 2025, and agreeing being contractually obligated to spend an extended period of time in each others’ presence. They must be planning to make a fortune off of this.
Oasis’s “Wonderwall” is one of the most covered songs in music history because yes, it’s a nice song, but also because it has a very easy chord progression that even the most novice guitar player can learn. “Anyway, Here's Wonderwall” is a catchphrase turned viral meme from a 2014 YouTube video. The account has less than 1k followers, so it’s likely the phrase gained traction on Tumblr. Let’s rate “Wonderwall” covers!
One Direction: 5/10. They’re cute, they’re relaxed, they’re just having fun on the beach. However, they cannot hold a candle to BSB and *NSYNC’s harmonies. Not even close!!!!!!
Jay-Z: 8/10. Noel made a comment in an interview about how hip hop should not be at the famed Glastonbury festival and that Jay-Z should not be headlining. Jay-Z came out on stage and mocked that statement by singing a cover of “Wonderwall”. Top tier trolling. Deducted two points because I really never want to hear Jay-Z sing for any reason.
Radiohead: 3/10. Another parody. “There are many ways that I would like to sing to you, but I don't know how” is clever. I feel like they have better things to do though.
AI Spongebob: 7/10. It’s absurd, but it makes sense. He even has a ukulele.
AI Kanye: 9/10. “I miss the old Kanye.” Sigh. In a parallel universe, this Kanye exists and is going the T-Pain route, where we realize he’s good at singing after 15 years. Good call to train the AI voice model on the Boyce Avenue cover as opposed to the original.
Boyce Avenue: 10/10. I literally never listen to them and know nothing about them, but idk I feel like they never miss! I’m so fascinated by Boyce Avenue as extraordinarily successful content creators who were really just in the right place at the right time. Is there a documentary on them I can watch?
Darren Criss: 2/10. Comments on this video said, “this is what Maroon 5 would sound like if they’d stick to their earlier roots” and “I love that Darren Criss is still wearing the same style of sunglasses after all these years” and I think those two points are exactly why this is so unsettling to me. Sidebar: I did meet him at Barry’s once. He was super nice and extremely attractive!
The Killers: 6/10. So apparently Liam performed a few songs at this festival then bolted or whatever, and Brendan Flowers prefaced this cover by saying he wasn’t trying to disrespect Oasis. In fact, Liam is his “king”. Minus six points. Also minus four points because I don’t love his voice with this song. But then give him six points back because he’s still one of my longstanding celebrity crushes.
Ed Sheeran: 7/10. Ed Sheeran is talented, but there’s something that doesn’t quite add up to me about him. Then again, if he’s singing “Wonderwall”, it’s preventing him from singing worse pop songs.
Gin Blossoms: 12/10. 90s band covering another 90s band! You really do love to see it. The lead singer looks great.
Ryan Adams: 1,000,000/10. The song gets a 10/10, but the other 999,990 points are assigned to Alexandra Patsavas, my personal hero and the music supervisor for The OC.
❤️ I’ll never let you go
Call it a cash grab, call it a nostalgia grab, call it a ploy for relevance or denial of aging, obsolescence, and mortality. The fact remains the same: people of all generations love the 90s! Millennials and Gen Xers who are nostalgic for their pre-The Chasm™ childhood and coming-of-age are delighted that their generation’s Beatles or Stones are reuniting, still touring, and revisiting their old work in a new way.² No Doubt reunited at Coachella this year. Bands that had gone on hiatus, like blink-182, Garbage, Weezer, Foo Fighters, Hootie and the Blowfish, The Wallflowers, Spin Doctors, The Smashing Pumpkins, Limp Bizkit, and even Creed are all on tour.³
Many bands like Cake, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Third Eye Blind, Goo Goo Dolls, Barenaked Ladies, Everclear, The Offspring, and Green Day either stayed together and/or largely remained in public consciousness despite not releasing new music or enduring lineup changes. (In Wheatus’s case, they experienced a resurgence in interest due to TikTok.) I’m even more interested to see what bands reunite or emerge from relative obscurity, as compared to the peak of their popularity in the 90s, as the post-2020 state of touring reestablishes itself.
Sixpence None The Richer and New Radicals releasing new songs wasn’t necessarily on my Bingo card for 2024, but I’ll take it. SNTR released a deluxe 25th anniversary edition of their album with “Kiss Me” on it, and I imagine the 25th anniversary of She’s All That, the rom com in which the song is memorably featured, reinforces the song’s sweet, nostalgic quality.
I started thinking about New Radicals again last year when Saltburn came out. Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s “Murder on the Dancefloor” was quite memorably featured in the ending scene.⁴ Apparently, New Radicals had recorded a demo of the song, and their cover version is now on Spotify. FWIW, I like her version a lot better.
Maybe some people would call Sixpence None The Richer and New Radicals one-hit wonders. I disagree! Let’s not forget about SNTR’s covers of Crowded House’s “Don’t Dream It’s Over” and The La’s “There She Goes”. A better example would be New Radicals teaming up with bubblegum pop sensation/actress Mandy Moore and Christian rock band Switchfoot to form the deeply moving soundtrack to 2002’s A Walk to Remember. This album went platinum in my house.
📲 I’m just a simple girl in a high-tech digital world
Charli XCX Is Taking Over London Fashion Week With H&M – And Everyone Is Invited. The Charli x H&M collab hits stores on September 12th. I probably won’t feel compelled to buy anything, but this is more evidence that cheetah print is going to be everywhere this fall. Fishnet flats, slingbacks with grommets, and pearls are also on the horizon.
I LOVE these recent ads from Gap (featuring Troye Sivan) and Old Navy prominently feature DANCE!!!!! THIS is the kind of advertising that the people (me) want to see!!
This founder had to train his AI not to Rickroll people. Lmao I love technology.
Gen Z Loves Cassettes. But Wait, How Do These Things Work? It’s a Physical Media Renaissance™, baby!
“I feel like all my books are sort of millennial books. A book like Spoiled Brats is very much a millennials are turning 30 book. This is a we're turning 40 book. But a lot in [Spoiled Brats] feels really dated by now. It was over 10 years ago, but that book was very much satirizing a certain kind of Brooklyn-ish pretentiousness that I'm not sure exists anymore.”
The Brooklyn pretentiousness absolutely still exists, albeit now in a Gen Z form. It always will. I recently read My Year of Rest and Relaxation, set in NYC in 2000, and the Gen X/Xillennial beanie-wearing hipster described by the narrator was uncannily, eerily accurate as a recent predecessor to the Millennial Brooklyn hipster. I loved Spoiled Brats, which probably had to do with the fact that I was a New York-based Millennial about to turn 30 two months later. Maybe I’ll read Glory Days in another 5.5 years. Great piece from Dirt!
🦋 Social butterfly
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¹ People stand by their opinions soooo strongly on what color folders go with which school subjects, but I really don’t. I’m pretty sure I changed my associations of colors and subjects every year, depending on my class selection. Math was red. Social studies/history/geography was orange, but civics/politics was blue. Language arts/reading was yellow, but english/writing was blue. Science was green. Italian was purple, unless psychology was purple, then Italian was blue. Chaotic good!!!!
² I could write a whole separate paragraph on reunions, resurgences in interest, tours, etc. for every genre! Because of Sixpence None The Richer and New Radicals specifically released new music, I’m zoning in on the fairly homogenous 90s rock genre. I’m keeping my eyes peeled for bands that are coming back and reconnecting with their audience in an interesting and engaging way!
³ Can’t believe they got Billy Corgan on TikTok. That’s so weird to me.
⁴ Yes I would’ve included a link to the scene of Barry Keoghan’s full-frontal nudity, but there are only cropped versions on YouTube. Sorry if you’re disappointed, and you’re welcome otherwise!
The soundtrack to A Walk to Remember is…omg absolute perfection 🥲💘