“Loosen up my buttons”
“Shake that ass”
“peaches and cream”
Especially with students around. I do go—and dance!—at the party for our graduating seniors, but I opt out of some songs. “Push It” just barely made it through, apparently softened by nostalgia value.
Speaking of nostalgia value—why are my graduating students, roughly born around 1988, jamming to songs released before they were born? They flooded the dance floor for “Thriller”.
20 June 2009 at 6:02 am
Retro nostalgia? Maybe that film with Jennifer Garner — 13 GOING ON 30 — the one that has them doing the dance from Thriller–and then the youtube video that went viral of the Cebu-Phillipine inmates doing it in the prison courtyard. A wild hunch/guess, but it’s something I noticed recently at a dance club in Seattle where everyone went bonkers for Thriller and many folks who looked too young to have been there when it came out, knew the dance from the video.
23 June 2009 at 1:30 pm
Every time I walk into a shopping mall, I say, “I know that song…sort of.” Since about 2000, every song kids are listening to seems to be a weird, watered-down version of something I was crazy about in high school.
A few years ago, I walked into a class and said, “I just walked through the student mall and they were playing some techno version of a Bronski Beat song.” “Who’s Bronski Beat?” the students asked. “EXACTLY MY POINT!” I yelled. “Get your own damn music!!”
23 June 2009 at 6:30 pm
Ah, yeah, I hadn’t figured the remake industry—I think my parents had the same reaction.
Thriller is pretty understandable—I couldn’t remember the song the students liked that really surprised me. Possibly Push It, but I think even less of a classic than that.